How can it be that dictatorships could lead to democratic openness and gender equity? This is the central question that Manley explores, positing that dictators Trujillo (1930-61) and Balaguer (1966-78) bolstered patriarchal values entrenched in Dominican society, all the while opening venues for conscious or unconsciously subversive female roles.
During these regimes, upper- and middle-class Dominican women engaged with the state as credible and legitimate political actors, continuing a late nineteenth-century liberal trajectory for education reform that was augmented during the years of the first US military occupation (1916-24). Female political personas were grounded in a moralizing and maternalist discourse, highlighting women's civic duties as mediators for peace and guardians of national integrity. Both dictators appropriated the patriotic feminist discourse to suit their local populist and international propaganda needs. However, Manley asks that the historical record acknowledge women's activities, whether in support of or in opposition to these regimes, as significant contributions that defined the limits of authoritarian rule and the possibilities for democratic inclusion.
In the first chapter, the author traces the early twentieth-century Dominican feminist movement that gave priority to increased access to education for women and defense of national sovereignty over demands for suffrage. Although vital to the group's legitimacy, the strong international linkages these urban literate women established proved to be a double-edged sword. The Dominican feminists joined Doris Stevens and the Inter-American Commission of Women in the hemispheric struggle for female suffrage and equal rights. Trujillo, obsessed with publicity in foreign media, took advantage of these Pan-American networks during the 1941 elections by incorporating local feminists into the campaign.
As Manley points out in her second chapter, there is a profound irony in obtaining political rights within a dictatorship (58). Indeed, once militant feminists had endorsed Trujillo as a progressive and democratic leader, regime discourse returned to centering women as genteel defenders of family, church, and state. The women who had campaigned for equality were relegated to decorative roles within the administrative apparatus, parroting ideas of anticommunism, political stability, and national cohesion.
Chapter 3 analyzes the resistance groups of the 1940s and 1950s, expanding the cast of characters in opposition to the dictator, beyond the Mirabal sisters. Manley focuses on other activists who questioned Trujillista feminism and denounced the regime's violent intrusion into everyday life. These women, many of them exiles, voiced their alarm at the myriad crimes being committed in the name of political stability and anticommunism. Their protests shattered the illusion of “gendered protections” of home and family (119), as the regime spiraled downward into a frenzy of destruction. Even its staunchest advocates in Washington and the Vatican withdrew their support, setting the stage for the ajusticiamiento (a settling of moral debts) in May 1961.
The years of turmoil that ensued, covered in Chapter 4, resonated with calls to a restoration of morality and peace undermined by the dictatorship, once again placing weighty burdens on women to lead the nation forward. Manley describes the wide spectrum of women's activism in the demands for justice and freedom during this difficult transition. At that time, the central question for Dominican women wanting to engage with the state was whether the maternalist rhetoric could serve not only as a healing salve but also as a catalyst for political equity in a nascent democracy.
The chapters devoted to Balaguer's administration contain Manley's most significant contributions to Dominican historiography. The journey from dictatorship through civil war and invasion led to another authoritarian regime in which women were to occupy their “seemingly appropriate public spaces” (157). Balaguer, artificer and direct heir of the Trujillista ideology, asked that women serve symbolically as “vehicles of conciliation” and practically as quotidian liaisons for clientelistic patronage. Once again, the paradox of paternalism legitimized women as valuable political actors and links within international networks, all the while conscripting them as obedient foot soldiers for conservative continuity.
Chapter 5 brings to light many previously unexplored aspects of what might be termed second-wave Dominican feminism. First, it examines how international family planning directives mobilized local women's groups around issues of reproductive and family rights. These groups crafted innovative cross-party and cross-class collaborations that led to groundbreaking legislation and long-lasting institutional linkages. Second, the book shows us how a new generation of Dominican feminists embraced the maternal identity previously espoused by Trujillista women, rejected the trujillista assertion of patriarchal predominance, and eschewed the pervasive machismo of the Left. And third, it demonstrates that the sociopolitical landscape promoted wider-based participation, from working-class heads of household in rural and urban settings to university professors, widows of dissidents, and guerrilleras who had cut their political teeth in the 1965 trenches.
Manley's book gives us an in-depth and balanced view of Dominican feminism, a fluid movement informed by international currents but aware of its own constraints, with a basis on maternalism and difference. As Manley concludes, the experiences of Dominican feminists’ struggles illuminate the long-term importance of female agency, whether openly conceded or secretly withheld by an authoritarian state.
