The Mirabal Sisters: An Analysis

Before one can identify the courage they perceive or see in someone, I think it important to clearly define and understand exactly what courage is. Is courage always displayed externally for all to see? Does courage entail a brave deed that somehow separates actions from what previously would have been unexpected or unachievable? Could courage possibly be a less romantic, yet unmistakable internal decision that contradicts an action which a person would at any other time take rather than risk an undesirable consequence? The answers may be all of the above, and yet they may be as subtle as simply the last. My feeling in looking at the Mirabal sisters, and their evolution as ordinary young women into the courageous symbol and impetus for a continued
There was a stigma and perhaps unwanted assignment of superiority she often tried to shed. She was the good girl who would someday become woman of the cloth. Her days at Inmaculada were shortened when at last she “had heard”(Alvarez,49) her calling. It was not the anticipated calling, the one it seems she had been preparing for most of her life, but Patria embraced it like she did her faith. While washing the citizen’s feet for Holy Thursday, Patria was smitten by the calling to be a woman for a man, and not the bride of Christ. So for Easter, she steps out and wears the bright yellow dress in celebration of her new direction. This would be Patria’s coming to life on Easter Sunday. Her life proceeds with marriage to Pedrito, and they start a family. It is during these times that would pass, that Patria began to change. Both her faith and her physical body would undergo a transition that would set the direction for the rest of her life. Pregnant with her third child, and a subsequent trip on a retreat with her church support group and the priest up in the mountains, would in many ways complete her transformation. It was the attack on the old convent during their retreat that Patria, in a space of emptiness and fear , was awakened to a calling to save all the children of the island. A little boy had been shot right in front of her during the attack and she would be forever moved.(Alvarez, 162). It would be her anger
From her early days at school she began to have her eyes open to the reality of exactly what the Dominican people controlling them. The life at home had included the nearly synonymous inclusion of Church adoration and Trujillo adoration. When Minerva met her friend Sinita at school , and heard the horrifying story of her family’s murder, there must have been seeds that were planted in her sub-conscious. At the Performance,(Alvarez, 24), she witnessed both the unforgiving spirit of Sinita, and the cold unmitigated hardness of the El Jefe regime. After hearing stories about the dictator’s choice for young girls, and their subsequent disappearances from schools and towns, Minerva’s mind begins to open even wider to a reality she never thought existed. The formal display of both fear and resolute that occurred at the Discovery Dance with Minerva slapping Trujillo for his advances, was also a confirmation to herself of where she now realized her path was taking