The Dominican Wake: Contradictions of the Human and Human Rights in the Dominican Republic with Dr. Génesis Lara

As a part of the Sovereignty & Solidarity Fall Speaker Series, the Huerta Center is thrilled to host Dr. Génesis Lara from UC-Irvine to speak on topics related to her upcoming book. 

The May 1961 assassination of dictator Rafael Trujillo propelled the Dominican Republic into the center stage of Cold War Caribbean geopolitics. This presentation places the Organization of American States (OAS) human rights inspection of the Dominican Republic in contrast to the writings of Dominican women to showcase the limitations of hemispheric entities of human rights in the Caribbean. The paper argues that in the absence of public platforms for truth and reconciliation, the strategic employment of human rights and maternalism on behalf of Dominican women sought to hold the Dominican state accountable for state violence. Through the close reading of personal correspondence and state memoranda, I examine how varying definitions of human were utilized by Dominican women to extract specific demands from Dominican officials. This presentation also examines the ways conservatism and rising Dominican radicalism influenced the demands women made of the state. Critically, this paper excavates the central role of Dominican women in hemispheric development of human rights and reconciliation to argue for its inclusions in evaluations of the legacies of the Cold War radicalism in the Caribbean and Latin America.