Yolanda Guzmán: Afro-Dominican Resistance in the Shadow of Dictatorship
Collage of Afro-Dominican revolutionary Yolanda Guzmán. Photo of Yolanda Guzmán retrieved from BlackPast.org/Fair Use Image.
By Karla Méndez
Revolutionary Yolanda Guzmán’s courageous fight against dictatorship and imperialism reveals the struggles shaping Dominican democracy.
Introduction
Afro-Dominican activist Yolanda Guzmán’s life was defined by defiance against dictatorship, foreign occupation, and the gendered boundaries of political leadership. Her story unfolded in the shadow of the Trujillo regime and the upheaval of the 1965 Dominican Civil War yet remains largely absent from the nation’s official histories. Reclaiming her legacy offers a fuller account of the forces that shaped the mid-20th-century Caribbean and the women who risked everything to secure liberty.
Early Life and Political Awakening
On April 19, 1965, Afro-Dominican activist Yolanda Guzmán was executed by Dominican military forces for her role in organizing against authoritarian rule. At the time of her death she had already emerged as a prominent figure in the struggle to dismantle the remnants of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship and to resist the United States’ intervention in Dominican political affairs. Her death occurred in the opening days of the 1965 Dominican Civil War, sparked by the overthrow of democratically elected president Juan Bosch in a 1963 coup backed by the U.S. government.
Guzmán was born on July 8, 1943, in San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic to politically engaged parents Beatriz Guzmán, a domestic worker, and Carlos Maria Paulino Fernandez. They both served in the brief Bosch administration and were fierce anti-Trujillistas, which shaped her early worldview. Growing up under Trujillo, she witnessed the violence, surveillance, and repression that defined Dominican public life. The 1960 assassination of the Mirabal Sisters by Trujillo’s forces deepened her commitment to political resistance. She became active in movements opposing both the remnants of the dictatorship and the military-backed provisional government that followed Bosch’s ouster. For Guzmán and her contemporaries, the fight for democracy was twofold, waged against local authoritarianism and foreign intervention, and complicated by the gendered barriers that sought to limit women’s leadership within revolutionary spaces.
“Afro-Dominican activist Yolanda Guzmán’s life was defined by defiance against dictatorship, foreign occupation, and the gendered boundaries of political leadership. Her story unfolded in the shadow of the Trujillo regime and the upheaval of the 1965 Dominican Civil War yet remains largely absent from the nation’s official histories. Reclaiming her legacy offers a fuller account of the forces that shaped the mid-20th-century Caribbean and the women who risked everything to secure liberty.”
Women’s Roles in the Resistance
The mid-20th century saw an expansion of women’s political participation in the Dominican Republic, particularly in the years surrounding the end of Trujillo’s thirty-one-year dictatorship. While Minerva, Patria, and María Teresa Mirabal became emblematic of resistance, many other women, including Guzmán, played decisive roles in organizing, communications, and direct action. These women acted within a political culture that often marginalized their contributions as secondary to men’s, despite their indispensable labor and leadership.
Guzmán’s involvement in the 1965 constitutionalist movement placed her at the heart of efforts to restore Bosch to the presidency and defend the 1963 constitution, situating her among a cadre of women whose participation challenged both authoritarian governance and entrenched gender hierarchies. Like other women in the anti-Trujillo movement and during this period of fighting for liberation, Guzmán’s participation most likely included helping with weapons training, instructing other combatants, managing funds and food between the capital and the interior, organizing secret communications and care for the wounded, procuring food, and burying the dead.
The Road to the Dominican Civil War
The Dominican Civil War began on April 24, 1965, when constitutionalist forces launched an armed uprising to reinstall Bosch and the 1963 constitution. The movement quickly drew thousands into the streets of Santo Domingo, with civilians and soldiers joining in open defiance of the provisional government.
For decades before, the U.S. had supported the Trujillo administration, viewing it as a stabilizing force that protected U.S. economic and political interests in the Caribbean. Trujillo’s staunch anti-communism aligned with U.S. Cold War policy, and his regime’s cooperation ensured American influence over the island’s political direction. As the conflict escalated, the U.S., citing fears of a communist takeover, deployed over 20,000 troops to the island in what became the largest U.S. military intervention in Latin America during the Cold War. Guzmán, active in the early mobilizations, was quickly identified by Dominican military authorities as a dangerous insurgent.
Dictatorship and Its Aftermath
Trujillo’s dictatorship, which lasted from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, was one of the most enduring and repressive regimes in Latin American history. Through a combination of military control, an extensive intelligence network, and the cultivation of a personality cult, Trujillo consolidated power over nearly every aspect of Dominican life. His brutality included targeted assassinations, suppression of political opposition, and violent campaigns such as the 1937 Parsley Massacre, in which thousands of Haitians and Black Dominicans were killed along the border.
Women played critical yet often unacknowledged roles within the resistance, navigating a dangerous political landscape to organize underground networks, support families of the disappeared, and sustain morale in communities targeted by the regime’s suppression.
While his death created an opening for political change, the institutions and loyalists that sustained his regime remained deeply embedded in the Dominican state. In the years that followed, dismantling Trujillo’s political machinery became central to the country’s democratic aspirations, setting the stage for the conflicts in which Guzmán would later play a pivotal role.
“Guzmán’s activism represents the often invisible labor of women who fought for democracy amid dictatorship and foreign intervention. Her story–like those of many women sidelined in historical narratives–demands recognition for both her courage and the strategies that shaped resistance movements in the Dominican Republic.”
Bosch’s Presidency and the 1963 Coup
In December 1962, the Dominican Republic held its first free elections in decades, resulting in the victory of Juan Bosch, novelist, educator, and founder of the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD). Taking office in February 1963, Bosch pursued a reformist agenda aimed at breaking the entrenched power of the military and landed elites. His administration sought agrarian reform, expanded labor rights, and strengthened civil liberties, including freedom of the press and association.
These policies quickly alienated conservative sectors of Dominican society, including business leaders, the Catholic Church, and remnants of the Trujillista military establishment. In September 1963, after only seven months in office, Bosch was overthrown in a military coup supported by domestic elites and tacitly endorsed by the United States, whose Cold War priorities favored the containment of perceived leftist influence in the Caribbean. The coup reinstalled a provisional government that rolled back Bosch’s reforms and reignited tensions between democratic aspirations and authoritarian control.
Organizing for Constitutional Restoration
The overthrow of Bosch galvanized a constitutionalist movement determined to restore the 1963 constitution and return the elected president to office. This coalition, comprising students, trade unions, left-leaning intellectuals, and younger military officers, mobilized through clandestine meetings, public demonstrations, and neighborhood committees that coordinated resources and disseminated information.
By April 1965, tensions reached a breaking point when constitutionalist officers launched an armed uprising. Guzmán, already known for her resistance activities against the Trujillista state, was deeply engaged in these networks. Her political commitments placed her at the center of the movement’s leadership circles, and in the crosshairs of the military establishment.
“As an Afro-Dominican woman, Guzmán’s marginalization in public memory is compounded by racial hierarchies that shape whose sacrifices are honored.”
Legacy and Erasure
Guzmán’s activism represents the often invisible labor of women who fought for democracy amid dictatorship and foreign intervention. Her story–like those of many women sidelined in historical narratives–demands recognition for both her courage and the strategies that shaped resistance movements in the Dominican Republic.
The erasure of Guzmán from dominant historical narratives reflects a broader pattern in the memorialization of women’s political activism in the Dominican Republic. While the Mirabal Sisters have been rightfully enshrined as symbols of resistance, the stories of women who operated within urban guerrilla networks, coordinated political communications, or took up arms in moments of national crisis have often been left unrecorded. As an Afro-Dominican woman, Guzmán’s marginalization in public memory is compounded by racial hierarchies that shape whose sacrifices are honored. This pattern is not unique to the Dominican Republic. In the United States, women, particularly Black women, played central roles in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, yet their leadership was often minimized in favor of male figures. In both contexts, the exclusion of women of African descent from the center of national memory reflects the intersection of gendered and racialized forces that determine whose sacrifices are remembered.
Recovering Guzmán’s story is therefore not only an act of historical correction but a recognition of the intersecting forces, race, gender, and political ideology that shaped her life and death. Her place in history is long overdue, and revisiting her story is part of the ongoing work to claim a fuller, more inclusive historical record. Her courageous resistance amid dictatorship and foreign intervention remains profoundly relevant in today’s global struggles for democracy and social justice. Her story reminds us that political freedom is inseparable from the fight against entrenched systems of racial and gender oppression that continue to marginalize women and Afro-descendant peoples across the Caribbean and beyond. Recovering and honoring the histories of activists like Guzmán challenges dominant narratives that erase women’s leadership and insists on a more inclusive, intersectional memory. In doing so, it inspires new generations to persist in building movements that recognize the complexity of freedom, not only as the absence of authoritarian rule but as the presence of dignity, equity, and collective care for all.
About the author: Karla Méndez is an arts and culture writer whose work examines the histories of Black and Latin American women and their representations within visual art, literature, poetry, and performance. She is interested in how women put forth representations of themselves that are accurately representative of their expansiveness and how they use these avenues to engage with topics of identity, gender, race, and the female body. Ultimately, her work seeks to explore and reinstate forgotten and ignored histories as a site of care for ourselves and our communities.
She is the lead columnist of Black Feminist Histories and Social Movements, a column for the advocacy organization Black Women Radicals. She is a contributor for the Boston Art Review and Elephant Magazine and her work has appeared in the Brown Art Review and Ampersand: An American Studies Journal.