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Through our research, we found that the LGBTQI+ community under Trujillo was routinely debased and used as a political weapon by the dictatorship. Can you tell us about your findings and what they add to our understanding of this period?
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In 2019, the Memorial Museum of the Dominican Resistance received a Project Support Fund grant to research and share the experiences of LGBTQI+ communities under the dictatorship. Our police forces, who are supposed to protect the people, continue to repress these groups in ways very reminiscent of the dictatorship. One of the biggest legacies of this lack of justice is that today in the Dominican Republic minorities still face systemic discrimination, particularly the LGBTQI+ community, migrants, women and the poor. It has turned a blind eye to impunity and consequently many of the actors during the dictatorship, or their successors, remain in government today. Because of this approach, this lack of justice, our democracy is not entirely built on a strong foundation. Trujillo dictatorship, which lasted over thirty years, there were many serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed that were never acknowledged, much less put through a transitional justice process. Our museum’s mission is to educate our visitors about human rights and democratic principles by using the experiences of the past to help increase civic awareness about our history and build a better future. For those unfamiliar with this context, can you say a bit more about Trujillo’s dictatorship and its legacy? During this time, numerous human rights atrocities took place, including the infamous Parsley massacre in 1937, which claimed the lives of an estimated 20,000 Haitians. Memorial Museum of the Dominican Resistanceĭictator Rafael Trujillo ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. A link to their completed toolkit in Spanish is available here. In this interview, the Coalition speaks with Laura Pérez, Deputy Director of the Memorial Museum of the Dominican Resistance (MMRD), a Site of Conscience in Santo Domingo, about their recent Project Support Fund which allowed them to research and connect the experiences of LGBTQI+ communities under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961) with their contemporaries today. While same-sex conduct is not technically criminalized in the Dominican Republic, unlike many Caribbean countries, LGBTQI+ Dominicans routinely face violence and discrimination.