Rosa Smester

Rosa Smester Marrero (August 30, 1874 – February 15, 1945) was an educator and writer from the Dominican Republic. She became prominent for her feminist writings and opposition to the United States' occupation of the Dominican Republic. Her career as a teacher rendered her a prominent figure in her home city of Santiago de los Caballeros, where she founded a school and the St Vincent de Paul Hospice.

Early life Smester was born in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic on August 30, 1874. She was the daughter of Paul Emmanuel "Pablo" Smester and Dolores Trinidad "Dada" Marrero. Her father was born in Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe, and moved from Haiti to Santiago in 1870 to work as a German, English, and Italian translator.

Smester was self-taught and educated at home by her mother. She recalled that her mother taught her the décimas of Juan Antonio Alix and reading from her favorite book, La Historia Sagrada.

Teaching career In 1897, Smester began teaching French to children at home, which she credited with the discovery of her vocation.

Writings

Smester's writings are scattered across magazines and journals. though she published a short story entitled Juan de Dios.

Opposition to the American occupation With the Junta Patriótica de Damas, led by Floripez Mieses, Abigail Mejía, Luisa Ozema Pellerano and Ercilia Pepín, Smester was one of many women who publicly agitated against the United States occupation of the Dominican Republic, which took place between 1916 and 1924. Smester expressed her opposition in the national press, publishing in literary magazines in Santiago.

Smester refused to speak English as a form of civil resistance.

Feminism

In 1926, Smester wrote to Petronila Angélica Gómez, founder of Fémina, the first feminist Dominican journal, that "your magazine is the only genuine feminine, genuinely Dominican, and therefore deserving of the greatest help." In the same year, Smester requested to publish in the magazine, and so recorded her first two contributions to feminist journalism, publishing a further article in 1929. She became one of the magazine's main contributors.

Of the three articles written by Smester for Fémina, two concerned the masculine condition. Smester contributed to a broader feminist position that pacifist strategies disqualify androcentric warmongering, thereby including female voices in war discourses, such that "honoring and glorifying enlightened men is a form of patriotic love". In her 1929 article Así Es, Smester praised Francisco Henríquez y Carvajal's intellectual attributes, which lent him to be an "enlightened" feminist man.

In her Escrito Pro-Feminismo, Smester wrote that feminism has proven to be "essentially constructive", tending "to widen the sphere of action of the woman, to bring into play the activity of her spirit, to develop all her capacity", all without harming "the home and family".

In a conference speech to the cultural society Renovación of Puerto Plata, Smester explained her view that feminism "tries to intensify the femininity in women". By campaigning for women to be as cultured as men, feminism allows women to "be the best collaborator of man to attenuate human miseries and achieve world peace". She advocated complementary gender roles:

Later life and death Smester chaired a chapter of the charitable Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. At her urging, in 1923, the La Caridad society, which had founded the first hospital in Santiago in 1891, established the 'St Vincent de Paul Branch' under her leadership, for the foundation of a nursing home in Santiago.

From 1927 to 1937, Smester lived in Paris, Smester lectured at the University of Barcelona and spoke to the newly-founded , a women's group that called on her help as a cultural figure and influence.

Smester died on February 15, 1945. While she was in Paris, said she had "one of the most outstanding intellectual capacities" and was "one of the best literary pens the Republic has".

A street in Santo Domingo bears Smester's name. In Santiago, a housing development was named after her. In Monte Cristi, an educational establishment was named the Rosa Smester Basic School.

Smester educated former Dominican President Joaquín Balaguer. Balaguer recalled Smester's great influence on his intellectual formation in his memoirs. a fellow member and later President of the Amantes de la Luz society,

A 1982 poem by Dominican poet Armando Oscar paid tribute to Smester: "[She] went towards the conquest of ethical values [...] On her heart, she carried a crucifix [...] She was a woman, a believer above all else \ And God crowned her with the pain of a son!"

In its 2016 International Women's Day celebrations, the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic named Smester among sixty-three "outstanding Dominican women in the struggles for peace and democracy".