A Historically International Movement: The Early Trajectory of Feminist Activists in the Dominican Republic

• In Event: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Global Cases of Gender Based and Feminist Movements

Abstract

This paper argues that the Dominican feminist movement has a long history of transnational practice which explains the fact that “Dominican women’s international influence has long been disproportionate to the relative geopolitical position of their nation” (Manley 2018). The movement started with the female teachers or “normalistas” first trained by poet and educator extraordinaire Salomé Ureña de Henríquez in the early 19th century (e.g., Candelario 2005; Zeller 2012; Candelario, Manley, and Mayes, 2016a). From the beginning, the movement has used the counterhegemonic strategy of linking itself to international networks (Crehan 2002) as shown in the active correspondence between its leaders and their peers in Cuba, Spain, Puerto Rico, and the United States at the turn of the century, as well as their participation in the international conferences organized by feminists in other countries. In particular, Petronila Gómez, one of the few women of color among the feminist leaders of the time, defied the color line by linking Dominican feminists with the most important transnational feminist networks such as the International League of Iberian and Hispanic American Women. The paper examines this early history of the Dominican feminist movement up to the beginning of the Trujillo dictatorship when autonomous feminist organizations were coopted by the regime and offers some preliminary lessons about the connections between these early feminists and the challenges and achievements of the movement today.

Author

• Esther Hernandez-Medina, Pomona College