“News of ‘Crazy’ Women Demanding Freedom”: Dominican Feminist Activism in a Post-Dictatorial State (1961–1990)

In the late 1970s a feminist movement in the Dominican Republic began consolidating around a loose set of objectives. Comprised of multiple diverse groups the movement drew on the legacies of the mid 1960s anti-imperial and anti-occupation struggles, as well as the half-century of authoritarian rule that had imprinted an intense form of paternalism upon the nation’s political structure. Centering on the imperatives of a small island-nation transitioning out of an extended period of authoritarianism, late 20th century Dominican feminism was also impressively global and regionally influential. This article sketches the contours of this movement, heretofore neglected in scholarly and popular narratives of the larger regional movement and of the nation itself. It argues that, despite this silence, this case of local and global activism was deeply impacted by the legacies of intervention and authoritarianism yet still managed to carve out a crucial social and political space for feminist advocacy in the country and serve as a key model for the larger Latin American struggle for women’s rights. The efforts of this movement are illustrative of the post-dictatorial challenges that many feminists across the Global South have faced (and face still), a model of the types of interventions possible with a trained focus on class and gender, and a lesson for understanding the resurgence of feminism following elite, conservative, “first-wave” feminist movements, authoritarianism, and neocolonial incursion. It is also a call to see the Dominican Republic as central to larger Latin American and Caribbean feminist/activist movements.