the bad dominicana

Dra. Evangelina Rodriguez

this is the person dominicans remember only as an “ugly, crazy black woman”, if at all…. who happened to fight her whole life for the rights of poor women, especially black ones. who grew up poor and became the first dominican woman MD, was a fierce activist against trujillos regime, introduced intersectionality and problackness to dominican feminism, wrote several books on poor womens
empowerment, opened the first maternal clinic, introduced sterilization techniques that brought
down infant mortality and birth complication rates, gave free milk to poor mothers and children, and free
medical services and birth control to poor women and even prostitutes which is still taboo. but for all of her efforts she paid a steep price. she was a black woman and so, deemed trash, either way.

she struggled w antiblackness to where no one recognized her whole lifes work, and was treated like shit, like a pariah the entire time she was alive, and then erased from our
history….

….and while folks still weep over the rich white mirabal sisters martyrdom by trujillo, who together aint do 1/100th of what evangelina did by herself,
evangelina died from trauma from bein tortured by trujillo.

she’d be the true martyr of the era and a dominican national hero, if justice were served, but dominicans are still too racist and classist for that.