Statement of Priniciples of Acción Feminista Domincana
(AFD, founded May 14, 1931, Dominican Republic)
This group will be made up of women of good conduct, who have reached their eighteenth birthday and who know how to read and write. Its main goal is to tend to the betterment of the intellectual, social, moral, and legal condition of women, as well as to campaign for social defense against alcoholism, prostitution, and narcotic drugs, and the like, to fight for the passage of laws for the protection of mothers, children, adolescents, the aged, and the blue-collar workers. To advocate for the establishment of tribunals for children, to work to instill in women the understanding of the necessity to be frugal and to dissuade them from spending on unnecessary luxuries; to persuade Dominicans not to sell their land to foreigners; to fight so that our traditions are preserved and to sponsor every idea that would mean the advancement and welfare of the Republic.
The Acción Feminista aspires to enroll in its rank all their compatriots, so that a true feminist union will result, formed by ladies and young ladies who live, some by their rents and incomes, others by teaching, by industry, blue-collar work, students, and so on. One of its principal goals will be to accustom Dominican women to the agreement of thought and of mutual tolerance and protection, at work. The Acción Feminista wishes to make mothers truly conscious of their mission; it wishes to prepare mothers to earn a livelihood in a dignified manner for themselves and their families, should the need arise; it wishes that even women with means to receive such training so they are prepared to administer their fortune and make them fit to sustain the moral and material equilibrium of the home, because lest we forget, whosoever says balance at home, says balance in the fatherland.
Feminism will tend to bring about the happiness of women by preparing them so that they always marry for love, and not of necessity and in a hurry with the first to come for fear of facing the demands of life; it will work so that laws are passed that would support marriage and the stability of the family.
Fair use excerpt from The Dominican People: A Documentary History by Ernesto Sagas and Orlando Inoa, (Editors) Publisher: Markus Wiener Publishing (January 2003), p. 184. In turn, reprinted from Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Documents of Dissidence: Selected Writings by Dominican Women (NY: CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, 2000), pp. 61-62.
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