On a day like today, 57 years ago, Dr. Manolo Tavárez Just was assassinated, leader of the Revolutionary Movement of June 14 who surrendered along with 14 of his comrades to the military troops pursuing the guerrillas he led in Las Manaclas since November 28, 1963.
Manolo had stood out as a fervent popular leader who founded with his wife Minerva the first major anti-Trujillo group after the June 1959 expeditions that arrived in the country from Cuba to confront the tyranny of Rafael Trujillo, but which were crushed and about 200 captured guerrillas were massacred at San Isidro Air Base.
Taking refuge in the public guarantees solemnly given by the government of the Triumvirate led by Manuel Tavares Espaillat that he would respect the integrity of the guerrillas who took part in the surrender, Manolo and his comrades went down to a road to deliver. to the soldiers, but instead of capturing, they were shot.
The only survivor was the historian Emilio Cordero Michel, who was mortally wounded and was not shot by the executioners.
Next to Manolo the members of the guerilla of the Manaclas died: Leonte Schott Michel, Rubén Brown Diaz, Alfredo Peralta Michel, Antonio Barreiro (Tony), Juan Ramon Martinez (Monchi), Manuel Diaz Herrera (Reyito), Federico Jose Goatherd (guerrilla doctor), Jaime Ricardo Socías, Arturo Ramírez Torres, Carlos Manuel Fondeur, Rubén Mart Aguayo, Caonabo Abel, Antonio Filó (Manchao) and José Daniel Fernández.
The triumvir Tavares Espaillat who had gone to the state television to ask the guerrillas to surrender under word that their rights would be respected, after learning of the execution of the group, returned this day to the station to “report the country that the guerrillas had suffered 16 casualties “from the guerrillas who were trying to establish in the country” a communist dictatorship, analogous to that which oppresses the fraternal people of Cuba. “
Five of the guerrillas of Las Manaclas decided that they would not accept these guarantees and would try to get off the hills by their own means: José Daniel Ariza Cabral and Luis Peláez left the mountain heading east to try to reach Santiago and Rafael Reis, Polón Méndez and Joseíto Crespo to the west.
Three days before the group’s disaster, Fidelio Despradel, military commander of the guerrilla front; Marcelo Bermúdez, Domingo Sánchez Bisonó (El Guajiro) and Germán Arias (Chanchano), had gone on a mission to the city to try to save the guerrillas from the disaster that was being consumed by hunger and cold, without fighting, in the Central Mountains. .
The testimony of Ariza Cabral
At the age of 93, José Daniel Ariza Cabral has just published his fourth book: “Relevant facts of Dominican history”, in which he recreates the events of Les Manaclas and sets out his thesis on what has happened.
For Ariza Cabral, the Americans were determined to prevent June 14 from becoming a “July 26” and the Dominican Republic a new Cuba, if not with Fidel Castro at the helm, let alone with Manolo Tavarez. .
In his opinion, the real perpetrators of the deaths of the sisters Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal, connoted leaders of “June 14” and wives of three of the most important leaders of this revolutionary organization, were not the work of Trujillo, but of the intelligence services of the United States through the minister of the Armed Forces, Jose René Roman Fernandez (Pupo).
According to the conclusions of Ariza Cabral, Román Fernández was committed to these services and was in the line of succession of the command for when the effects of the death of the Mirabal, collapsed the image of Trujillo and the CIA and the Dominican patriots liquidated to he pulls it off.
Assassinated the Mirabals and exacerbated national sentiment against the tyrant and his old regime, the Americans allegedly gave the green light and weapons to satrap subordinates to assassinate him, which materialized six months after the crime of the ladies.
According to Ariza Cabral, with these two actions the Americans had liquidated the eloquent leadership of Minerva Mirabal and the dictatorial pretext of the trujillato so that in a Dominican Republic a Castro platoon would not ignite.
There were elections in December 1962, won by Joan Bosch as a candidate of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), but was overthrown seven months later by a US-led military coup.
The country was again under the influence of a perverse combination: the civic ones who were antitrujillistas in the political command and the trujillistas military with total control of all the machinery military and repression.
But even though Manolo was alive and leading a powerful revolutionary movement that had warned: “Feel it gentlemen of the reaction, if they make impossible the peaceful struggle of the people, the” June 14 “knows very well where are the steep mountains of Quisqueya; and to them … to them we will go, following the example and to realize the work of the heroes of June of 1959. And in them we will maintain ignited the torch of the freedom, the spirit of the Revolution … because we will not remain , then, another alternative, that of Freedom or death! ”.
The next step for the Americans to liquidate any serious threat that the country would fall into the “communist orbit” was to seduce the great leader Manolo to go to the mountains, and if with useless weapons better, to hunt him down there.
On November 28, guerrilla fronts rose in the three regions of the country at 6:00 am and fell one by one without posing a single serious threat to the coup government or its military establishment.
One of the most connoted leaders, Hipólito Rodríguez Sánchez (Pol) was shot in La Forma, Ocoa, precisely at the hands of the troops of an Army officer, allegedly committed on June 14, Captain Calderón, while Luis Genao Espaillat, commander of the Eastern Front, was easily captured.
The other three fronts, made up of fighters of great value and little military experience, had already fallen in Barahona, Puerto Plata and San Francisco de Macorís.
The fall of Manolo meant such a great setback for the Dominican revolutionary movement, that 57 years later, it could not be overcome and progressive forces go to the saga of conservative political projects that care little about the sacrifice and blood of the sisters Mirabal and Manolo and their companions.