The names Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa Mirabal are synonymous with resistance. Across the Dominican Republic and Latin America, people young and old know the story of how the Mirabal sisters—or las Mariposas, as they’re often called—died fighting to topple the 31-year dictatorship of Dominican President Rafael Trujillo. 

For some, the sisters’ clandestine activities against the Trujillo regime make them symbols of political struggle. For others, undermining “El Jefe” in a patriarchal society where women had no place in politics make them feminist icons; in fact, the United Nations General Assembly designated the anniversary of their death, November 25, as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. But regardless of what las hermanas Mirabal represent to different people, the resilience, grace, and courage the young sisters embodied more than six decades ago still inspire generations today to rise up against state violence and injustice—in all its forms.

“Their story was a prime example of what happens when machismo reigns,” Rosalia Piña Vélez, a Santo Domingo-based artist whose work educates Dominicans on gender violence, tells Refinery29 Somos. “In their case, because they said ‘no,’ a word that violent men don’t know how to accept, they had an inhumane death. And we still see this today.” 

Here, four Dominican activists who are inspired by the Mirabal sisters discuss how they are carrying on their legacy by educating the public, speaking out against injustice, and fighting for political and social change. From voter suppression to abortion access, they have a common goal to build a just, people-first country for themselves and each other.

Annette Gonzalez Español 

Annette González Español has always cared about uplifting her community. As a teen, she partnered with nonprofit organizations to teach extracurricular classes on youth leadership that encouraged young people to participate in social activism. But in 2020, as an electoral crisis took shape, her focus shifted to politics.

On February 16, 2020, the Dominican government suspended the nationwide municipal elections for the first time in the country’s history. An electoral board found that electronic voting machines were malfunctioning in 60% of the country. With some voters unable to see complete ballots, officials scheduled a new election for March where only paper ballots would be used. But for voters, this wasn’t enough. Protests erupted throughout the country. Many demonstrators believed that the governing party, the Dominican Liberation Party, which had held the presidency for 16 years, was taking advantage of the malfunctioning machines for political gain. Like thousands of other Dominicans, González Español wasn’t having it.

“Historically, the Dominican Republic has a low voter participation in the municipal elections, but this election had the highest in history,” she tells Refinery29 Somos.

Amid demands for members of the electoral board to resign, González Español began learning about voting issues in her country and joined the fight to end voter suppression. Currently, she is a member of Los Guardianes de la Democracia, an initiative that promotes voter participation and defends the rights of citizens against electoral crimes, and the founder and lead content creator of Muy Humanos, a social media platform that educates voters and encourages Dominicans to use their voice at the polls. 

As Muy Humanos gained traction through its illustrations that break down statistics and complicated concepts and laws, she expanded her content to include educational art and videos ranging from menstrual health to Covid-19. She says her mission is to help people understand issues and support movements that may or may not directly impact them.

“When we allow the violation of a human right, we are allowing the violation of all human rights,” she says. “My job is to make people understand the struggle by condensing heavy topics in a way that is easy to understand, inclusive, and accessible to all people.”

Julia Jarinet “Jari” Ubiera 

Julia Jarinet “Jari” Ubiera is a reproductive rights activist and university student who advocates to decriminalize abortion and facilitates workshops for young people on sexual and reproductive health. “Our politicians don’t consider the lives of women when it comes to delegating laws, and instead focus on their own right-wing, regressive agendas,” Ubiera tells Refinery29 Somos.

The Dominican Republic is one of two dozen countries in the world with a total abortion ban, which has had devastating consequences across the Caribbean island. People who have unplanned or unwanted pregnancies—including those resulting from rape or incest—are forced to choose between clandestine abortions or continuing their pregnancies, despite health risks to them or their fetus. While some pregnant people can afford to travel outside of the country to obtain abortions where it’s legal, most can’t, leaving them to deal with fatal or serious pregnancy complications or unsafe illegal abortions. Moreover, those who do terminate a pregnancy face up to two years in prison, while doctors who help aid the abortion risk 20 years behind bars. 

“We need sexual and reproductive rights to be promoted and guaranteed as fundamental human rights, recognizing our autonomy, liberty, and sexuality,” Ubiera said during a forum with the Dominican Republic’s Commissioner of Justice and Human Rights in May 2021.

During the assembly, Ubiera called on the government to decriminalize abortion in at least three circumstances: when the life of the person is in danger, when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or when the fetus has complications that are incompatible with life outside of the womb. “A penal code that does not include Las Tres Causales is condemning us to a life that we didn’t get to choose, and the world is looking at you as their perpetrators,” she said. 

In addition to her work to decriminalize and destigmatize abortion in the Dominican Republic, Ubiera also challenges machismo and gender violence with the youth-led initiative Resetéate and the Dominican Republic’s chapter of the United Nations Population Fund, a reproductive and maternal health agency.

“With my activism, I seek to put faces and stories to these issues. Before, it was just statistics, but we want to go even further and drive the message so people can understand,” Ubiera says. “In order to have a well-developed society, it’s necessary to care about women’s rights.” 

Rosalia Piña Vélez 

As a college student, Píña Vélez, the Santo Domingo-based activist who uses art and media to combat gender violence, worked on a 300-page thesis about sexual harassment. For her research, she conducted a focus group with 360 people to understand their daily experiences with cat calling and street harassment. To contextualize this data, she also interviewed psychologists, sociologists, and sexologists. Her findings changed her life and the course of her career.

Píña Vélez’s thesis inspired a screenplay and Catcalls of DR, an extension of the international youth-led Chalk Back art movement that aims to combat street harassment through public art. Across the Caribbean country, she and her team gather anecdotes about cat calling and scribe these stories on sidewalks with colored chalk. Alongside the quotes, they add a memo: “If you find it uncomfortable to read, imagine living it.” 

“Our mission is to educate, prevent, and bring awareness to sexual harassment,” Píña Vélez tells Refinery29 Somos. “We also offer workshops on the denormalization of sexual harassment on the street, where people learn the difference between a pick-up line and harassment.” The workshops also teach attendees what sexual harassment is, how to respond to it on the street, and the internal and systemic barriers victims experience when reporting this form of violence.

According to Píña Vélez, creating safe public spaces for women and nonbinary people, and protecting their human rights, has also empowered her and given her art new meaning. “Activism has given me purpose to create,” she says.

Johan Mijail

Nonbinary performance artist and poet Johan Mijail envisions a future for the Dominican Republic that rejects white cisheteronormativity—and they’re helping to build it. 

Through intimate, thought-provoking, and often (intentionally) shocking visual performances, they use their body to challenge gender norms and binaries. In “Imaginarios contrasexuales,” for instance, Mijail poses in lingerie and extra-long acrylic nails while spreading whipped cream all over their body. Mijail’s objective for the piece: to make audiences uncomfortable and spark change through that discomfort. In the Dominican Republic, LGBTQ Dominicans experience discrimination and violence at high rates; however, like other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, there aren’t anti-discrimination or hate crime laws that presently protect queer communities. “My artistic practice … uses rebellion as a place of enunciation before the modern colonial world-system,” Mijail, who has performed in the United States, Costa Rica, Chile, and Germany, tells Refinery29 Somos.

Mijail’s work also encourages fellow Dominicans to confront internalized anti-Blackness. Currently, they’re a member of Cantinga Ediciones, an independent editorial project that publishes and promotes work and events by queer Black and Afro-descendant Dominicans. While anti-Black racism certainly isn’t unique to the Dominican Republic, colonialism, a history of state-sanctioned anti-Black propaganda and policies, and ongoing anti-Haitian immigration measures created lasting violent racial tensions. Further, while nearly 90% of Dominicans are of African descent, an overwhelming majority don’t identify as Black.  

“Racism cuts through all forms of relationships within Dominican society,” Mijail says. “My work helps to the extent that it creates an interruption in the material and symbolic representations of [social norms].”

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Dominican-American singer DaniLeigh faces backlash on social media after previewing her upcoming song “Yellow Bone,” an AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) term that refers to a light-skinned Black person with yellow skin undertones. The song’s questionable lyrics sparked an online conversation on colorism, the fetishtization of lighter skin, and the normalization of non-Black Latinas exploiting Black culture.  

In the initial Instagram clip, which was posted on January 21 and has since been deleted from DaniLeigh’s account, the singer dances along to the song, repeatedly saying, “Yellow Bone is what he wants.” As the clip circulated online, people called out DaniLeigh for perpetuating anti-Black discourse at a time when people are denouncing America’s deeply-rooted history in perpetuating whiteness and protecting white supremacy. “Yall still makin songs that enforce colorism and fetishization of light-skinned ppl in 2021,” asked one Twitter user. There is also speculation that this song is a diss track for the ex-girlfriend of DaniLeigh’s rapper boyfriend DaBaby, who is the mother of his daughter and a dark-skinned Black woman, which further angered people as it feeds into the myriad of attacks towards Black women, who remain unprotected and constantly attacked.

It didn’t take long for DaniLeigh to respond to the backlash as she wrote in a now-deleted comment: “Why can’t I make a song for my light skin baddies? Why ya’ll think I’m hating on other colors when there are millions of songs speaking on all types…why ya’ll so sensitive and take it personal…gahhh damn.” The controversy continued to unfold when she took to Twitter to address her ethnic background in light of the heat she was getting. “I’m Dominican… I’m Spanish. I’m black I’m white… leave me alone,” she wrote, insinuating that being Dominican makes her Black.  

Let’s be clear: Dominican is an ethnicity, not a race, and while its population is inextricably linked to the African diaspora, it does not automatically make you Black. The Dominican Republic’s complex history with racial identity, where most native Dominicans identify as “Indio” or Spanish instead of Black — even when they are Black — on the census, often creates blurred lines on who truly is of African descent. These blurred lines allow non-Black Latinx people like DaniLeigh to pick and choose their Blackness at the expense of actual Black Latinx people. When that is not enough, they will attempt to show off their African ancestry results or tokenize a distant Black relative to justify their anti-Black and colorist behavior, such as saying the “N” word without facing backlash or exploiting terms like “Yellow Bone,” that are exclusive to the Black community. 

These same blurred lines also appear in conversations surrounding race in the U.S., where non-Black people use the one-drop-rule, which developed in the 19th century as a way to make sure white people knew who was property and ensure that any child of a female slave would be slave, too — no matter the shade of their skin. Now, non-Black people use this rule to pretend to be Black under the assumption that if they have the smallest percentage of African ancestry, then they are fully Black. They’ll make the case that they deal with the same oppression as their Black counterparts to take advantage of the limited privileges afforded to Black people while simultaneously using their proximity to whiteness when it conveniences them.

At the base, white Latinas like DaniLeigh benefit from their ability to pass as solely white or racially ambiguous for personal gain. They’ll also use the same one-drop-rule to justify their racist actions, as we’ve seen with recent cases such as Miya Ponsetto, also known as “Soho Karen.” This concept is extremely harmful and problematic due to its racist roots. During the early 1900s, Arkansas passed Act 320 (House Bill 79), which criminalized interracial marriages and defined a person as Black if they had even one drop of “any Negro blood whatever.” While this law is now obsolete, its racist rhetoric has made its way into the modern-day culture, where many people claim to be Black without facing the same level of oppression as Black people. 

But DaniLeigh’s “light skin anthem” doesn’t just further perpetuate the misconceptions that exist within Latinidad; it’s also extremely problematic in that it feeds into the erasure of dark-skinned women. Historically, light-skinned women have always been favored in society and mainstream media, facing fewer microaggressions at work, earning higher salaries, being deemed as more attractive, or getting the opportunities to be “the first.” We’ve seen it in Hollywood, where light-skinned actresses are often cast in roles meant for a darker-skinned women. Colorism is nothing new. This reality all traces back to Spain’s caste system in the 16th century, where characteristics like height and hair, mouth, nose [shapes] would play a role in how you’d be racially classified — with a tighter focus on the color of your skin. 

“Yellow bone is what he wants” sends a harmful message to young Black women that they need lighter skin to be desirable, which not only encourages this mindset to exist further, but it can also provoke some women into using lightening filters or even take dangerous measures such as skin bleaching.

Ultimately, a light-skinned anthem has never or will never be needed, especially from a non-Black Latina, who has seemingly benefitted from being racially ambiguous. Not only is posing as Black forgery, not flattery, it’s also harmful when it’s done to allegedly attack Black women who are, as Megan Thee Stallion recently best put it: “still constantly disrespected and disregarded in so many areas of life.”

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Miya Ponsetto, the white woman dubbed as “SoHo Karen” on social media, was forcibly arrested in California yesterday. Her arrest comes after she racially profiled and assaulted 14-year-old Keyon Harrold Jr., son of Grammy award-winning jazz musician Keyon Harrold, in a New York City hotel lobby on December 26. According to a spokesperson for the Ventura County Sheriff, who worked in conjunction with the New York City Police Department, Ponsetto was confronted at a traffic stop and pulled from her vehicle when she refused to get out.

On the day of the attack, Keyon Harrold posted the video of the altercation on his Instagram of Ponsetto falsely accusing his son of stealing her iPhone. “The lady in this video assaulted my 14-year-old son and me as we came down from our room in the Arlo SoHo to get breakfast,” he wrote in the caption. “This person ‘lost’ her iPhone, and apparently, my son magically acquired it, which [is] merely ridiculous. This incident went on for five more minutes, me protecting my son from this lunatic. She scratched me; she tackled and grabbed him. He is a child!!” 

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Shortly after, the clip circulated throughout social media as people were outraged with not only the hotel’s lack of intervention during the attack but the baseless accusation and assault. People drew comparisons to Amy Cooper, a Karen who called the police on a Black man in Central Park last year and falsely reported that he threatened her. An online petition, posted by civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, garnered more than 100,000 signatures. The hotel released a statement regarding the incident on December 27, writing via an Instagram post: “No Arlo guest – or any person – should be subject to this kind of behavior. We want to apologize to Mr. Harrold and his son for this inexcusable behavior.” 

A few days later, the NYPD released the hotel’s footage of the racially-charged attack on Twitter, asking for the public’s help in finding Ponsetto. In the footage, Ponsetto charges at the teen, who was walking away with his back turned to her, then grabs his waist and tackles him to the ground. According to the NYPD, she fled the hotel before officers arrived at the scene. Soon after, Ponsetto’s attorney confirmed that she had left her phone in an Uber car, which the driver returned after the incident. 

But even with the lingering threat of police involvement before her arrest, Ponsetto wasn’t afraid to use her whiteness as a weapon again — this time, sheltering it with her Latinidad. In a video that circulated on January 2, a reporter caught Ponsetto exiting a Mcdonald’s in California and asked her a few questions surrounding the assault. “Are you worried that the police are looking for you,” the reporter asked. “Are you concerned about the warrant for the arrest? Why did you do it? [Harrold] ‘s young.” With an unworried expression on her face, Ponsetto turned towards the camera and quickly interjected. “I’m actually 22, so I don’t know what the problem is here — and I’m also Puerto Rican, so thank you,” Ponsetto claimed.

Yet, the problem is clear. Being a white Latina does not exempt you from being racist just because Latinidad falls under the “POC” umbrella term. Ponsetto’s assumption that identifying as Puerto Rican justifies her actions is invalid because Latinx is not a race. You can be Latinx and still be a Karen. Let it be known that Harrold Jr. also is of Puerto Rican descent. At the base, white Latinas like Miya Ponsetto benefit from white privilege, yet they’ll use this privilege to choose when they can or cannot demonize Black people in the white spaces that accept them as one of their own. Then, they’ll use this same Latinx identity and exploit the oppression of other Latinx people to defend their racist actions. But if an officer arrived at the scene at the time of the incident, they wouldn’t see two Puerto Ricans: they’d see one white woman accusing one Black young man — and historically, we know how that story goes.

Let’s not forget the deep-seated racism in Latin American cultures that stems from a long history of colonization, assimilation, and the preservation of whiteness that remains ingrained in its people today. Ponsetto weaponized her Puerto Rican ethnicity as an attempt to insinuate that she does not have the power to racially profile a Black teenager. “How is one girl accusing a guy about a phone a crime? What is the deeper story here?” Ponsetto asked Gayle King on CBS This Morning hours before getting arrested — questioning how her actions were racist. According to King, Ponsetto insisted that it’s not racial profiling during the interview. This is similar to when George Zimmerman, a white man, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a Black teen, and Zimmerman and his family used his Peruvian heritage to imply that Martin’s murder was not racially motivated. 

Despite the heightened racial tensions in the United States and the fate of many Black people — including Black Latinos — at the hands of racist police officers, and the unfairness of how differently violence is wielded when it comes to Black and brown folks peacefully protesting for justice versus white Trump supporters terrorizing the U.S. capitol, white Puerto Rican women like Ponsetto are still determined to use their whiteness to put a Black Puerto Rican teen in danger. Ponsetto allegedly has claimed that she wants to apologize to the Harrold family and her lawyer stated that she has “anger management issues and anxiety.” Still, her comments not only undermine the severity of her attacking a Black minor, but also disregard and perpetuate the erasure of Keyon Harrold Jr.’s own Latindad. In an attempt to use her identity to shield herself, she showed us that white privilege within Latinidad is very real, and it is dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands.

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During an MSNBC interview on Sunday, actress Eva Longoria credited President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory to Latinas. “Women of color showed up in big ways!” she told host Ari Melber. “Of course, you saw in Georgia what Black women have done, but Latina women were the real heroines here, beating men in turnout in every state and voting for Biden-Harris at an average rate of 3:1.”

Following intense backlash on social media, which called out Longoria’s dismissal of the work of Black women voters, the actress issued a public apology and attempted to clarify her position. “My wording was not clear and I deeply regret that,” she wrote. Still, Longoria’s refusal to acknowledge Black women’s accomplishments in order to elevate non-Black people from her own community is part of a larger problem, one that exposes the ongoing erasure of Black women. It is indisputably anti-Black and unacceptable — and we’ve seen it time and time again.

Black women are the backbone of our democracy, as Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris — the first Black, South Asian, and woman vice president — said in her victory speech on Saturday. We are the visionaries, the leaders, the fighters, and the healers. We always deliver — even when society constantly tries to tear us down and eradicate our contributions and existence from history.

I want to speak directly to the Black women in our country. Thank you. You are too often overlooked, and yet are asked time and again to step up and be the backbone of our democracy. We could not have done this without you.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 9, 2020

As a Black Latina, who is first and foremost a Black woman, I’ve watched a number of privileged non-Black Latinx people use their platforms to perpetuate anti-Blackness and feed into the anti-Black rhetoric that has historically existed in Latinx communities. From Gina Rodriguez interrupting a Black interviewer when he praised Yara Shahidi for being a role model for young Black women to Lisa Vidal claiming to be “everything” when she was asked about her identity, members of the Latinx community have participated in perpetuating the erasure of Black people. 

Additionally, when white Latinas praise other Latinas, they’re often not talking about Black Latinas. We do not exist in Latinidad. We are dismissed, overlooked, disrespected, and disregarded. For centuries, Latinx power has only applied to non-Black Latinx people. We are not seen as the “real heroines.”

That’s why Longoria’s comment was so harmful and insensitive to those of us who have long been erased. Not only did I feel my own voice was being diminished, but so were the voices and work of resilient Black women like Stacey Abrams, who, after losing the Georgia gubernatorial race in 2018 in an election with mass suppression of Black voters, devoted two years to advocating for voter equality and registered 800,000 Georgia residents to vote. Abrams’ civic duty and hard work helped Georgia flip from red to blue for the first time in 30 years. 

In the midst of a chaotic presidency and an even more chaotic election season, Black and brown people have called for unity to end Donald Trump’s racist reign. Combined, Black and Latinx voters made up roughly 25% of voters, yet we felt the world’s pressure to make the “right” vote, whether or not we benefited from the outcome. Black and brown communities often lack access to adequate health care, housing, education, and protection, no matter how we vote.  

However, marginalized voters were the easiest targets to scapegoat. Latinx people were blamed for Joe Biden losing Florida, even though Miami and Orlando — whose populations are nearly 70% Latinx and 32% Latinx respectively — went blue. More importantly, Latinx communities are not a monolith, and the ways that some groups within the Floridian Latinx community voted should not be used to judge the larger, predominantly blue Latinx vote in the rest of the country. It’s not dissimilar to when Black people were blamed for Hillary Clinton losing the 2016 Presidential Election because of the harmful myth that we do not vote — even though Black people have stable and higher voter turnout rates than other marginalized groups. 

From a record-breaking number of Latinas running for Congress to a record-breaking number of Black people registering to vote, both communities strongly influenced the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections. Exit polls showed 55% of white women voted for Trump compared to the 70% of Latinas and the resounding 91% of Black women who voted for Biden. 

Numbers like that demonstrate who the real heroines are. They also show why it’s important for Eva Longoria — and the rest of the world — to know that, in a society that constantly silences intersectional communities, including those who are often stuck in the middle like Black Latinx people, it is not okay to add to the erasure of our voices. 

When Latinx celebrities only view people who look like them as their equal, and look at other marginalized communities as competition or as being their inferior, they are going against them. They are also furthering the divide between non-Black Latinx people and Black Latinx people like me, who already feel disconnected from their Latindad due to the systemic racism in Latin America. Before Longoria attempts to speak on behalf of her entire community, she needs to recognize her racial biases and privileges, and her apology should have acknowledged her own contribution to anti-Blackness. 

You don’t dismiss your Black sisters and plug in your own feats — you uplift them. You use your platform to shed light on their struggles and victories. You educate your own so they don’t repeat these same errors. Above all, when you diminish the work of Black women from within and without your community, from society, and from history, you are also invalidating their experiences, their roots, their identity, their existence.

Black women are here. We’ve always been here. And we will always be here saving the day, whether or not we are acknowledged. Let’s never downplay that, especially when enough of society attempts to do so — no ifs, ands, or buts.  

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