Santo Domingo, RD.
Santiago Cross Valerio, the last one of the men indicated like confessed assassins who, by orders of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, participated in the death of the Mirabal sisters in 1960 died the weekend after living decades hidden and without to have fulfilled the his conviction.
Former MP Minou Tavárez Mirabal, daughter of Minerva and niece of Patria and Maria Teresa Mirabal, attributed to the “impunity” with which the Dominican governments allegedly act the fact that Cruz Valerio has lived “quietly” in the country until this his death was announced on Monday.
“He was the one who killed Minerva Mirabal with sticks (…) it’s really very painful for us that we thought this gentleman had died years ago, that was what we knew, what they told us,” Tavarez said in statements to Efe.
November 25, the date of the death of the Mirabal sisters, 3 opponents of the Trujillo regime, was instituted by the United Nations as the International Day of Nonviolence against Women.
The Dominican media realize this Monday that Cruz Valerio has died at the age of 83 and that for decades he lived under a false name in a neighborhood of the city of Santiago (north, second in the country).
Cruz Valerio, Emilio Estrada malleta, Ramón Emilio Rojas and Néstor Pérez Terrer, were sentenced to 30 years in prison and Ciriaco de la Rosa, to 20 years in 1963, after being found materially guilty of the crime of the sisters and the ‘driver Rufino de la Cruz, who had transported them in his vehicle to Port Plata where they kept their husbands in prison.
However, they all escaped from the Ozama Fortress in Santo Domingo at the beginning of the April Revolution of 1965 and never returned to prison.
“All of them were able to do so (escape from justice) due to the impunity with which so many governments have acted, in this country Trujillismo is still alive today and is still ruled by Trujillistas and the children of Trujillistas,” he said. say Tavárez Mirabal, the father was the national hero Manolo Tavárez Just.
The former presidential candidate opined that “there is no democracy” in the Dominican Republic, “because there is no Justice.”
Tavárez said he would like to know how Cruz Valerio lived so long surrounded by neighbors who never reported him and if there was “someone else” to protect him.
“I would also like to know, because it would be like a ‘curita’ for my heart, to know if there were people around him who spoke to him, who rejected him, who tried to denounce him …”, he referred.
The Mirabal sisters, remembered as The Butterflies, were posthumously awarded last November 25 by the Dominican Government, which granted Minerva Mirabal the equatorial doctorate in law that Trujillo never issued to her for her rejection of her regime.