Juan David Latorre
The Dominican Republic Embassy announced last Wednesday the passing of Bernarda Jiménez Clemente, a Spanish-Dominican citizen recognized for her struggle in favor of diversity and social justice in Spain.
The doctor born in Moca, died of a cardiovascular accident while on vacation in Santo Domingo, along with her husband Pedro Álvarez Pastor.
The Dominican ambassador, Juan Bolívar Díaz, wanted to express his appreciation to the figure of Bernarda Jiménez with a paper entitled El infinito vuelo de Bernarda Jiménez, which reads as follows:
Bernarda Jiménez has lifted her infinite flight without giving the slightest warning, Spreading consternation among the Dominican community in Spain and all who knew them in the Dominican Republic from where she left four decades ago to become the greatest defender of the rights and dignity of the Dominicans whom they sought in the old continent opportunities for progress that they did not find in the country.
It is difficult to find in the entire Dominican diaspora around the world a person who has accumulated as many merits as Bernarda Jiménez Clemente and who fought with such courage, involving her Spanish husband and their two children, against discrimination and exclusion since 1987 when he led the Foundation of Dominican Mothers’ Volunteering in Spain (VOMADE) until his sad departure on September 3, presiding over the Dominican Foundation to Prevent Youth Violence created almost three years ago to manage the project sponsored by the Dominican Embassy in Spain with the aim of offering care and trying to rescue the Misfit boys who take refuge in two Dominican leadership groups operating in the neighborhoods of Madrid.
VOMADE is a reference in Spain, having helped to regularize the immigration status of between 45,000 and 50,000 women, mostly domestic workers, who emigrated to this country in the last two decades of the last century and in the first one of the current century. It also provided other services, such as technical training, job placement, health and family reunification.
I met her at Christmas 1992 when I interviewed her on the Uno+Uno news programme of Teleantillas and during several visits to Madrid I had the opportunity to see for myself the scope of the work she was doing with her husband, the philosopher Pedro Álvarez, He joined his children Pedro Luis and Stephanie. VOMADE was so successful that it expanded to serve immigrants from other countries, especially Latin American, with support from the central government, community and municipal governments. Over the years my relationship with this family deepened.
Last December, President Luis Abinader granted Pedro Álvarez Dominican citizenship in a privileged capacity for the services rendered to our migrants, as well as to political and social leaders, including José Francisco Peña Gómez and Hatuey de Camps.
Bernarda was a doctor, specialist in endocrinology and nutrition as well as aesthetic medicine, and never abandoned her profession, combining it with the immense social activism that took her to much of Europe, the United States and the Dominican Republic, to participate in seminars and lectures on migration movements and social inclusion. He also took time to write several books, including a Handbook for Immigrants of which 20,000 copies were printed, and another that has three editions on the murder of Lucrecia Pérez, which relates the beginnings of Dominican migration to Europe.
He led the demonstrations to demand justice for the murder of this Dominican immigrant in the Aravaca sector of Madrid on 13 November 1992. His strong character and determination contributed to the mobilization of broad segments of Spanish society, leading to the arrest and exemplary sentence of 50 years in prison of the civil guard who shot him and 20 years for his two accomplices, making it the first hate crime and racism in Spain.
The tenacity of those mobilizations was decisive for Spain to update its migration policies and adopt the social inclusion of immigrants, with several regularization processes that have included facilities for family reunification and acquisition of nationality. The National Institute of Statistics updates the number of “Spanish of Dominican origin” to 123,000, apart from another 70,000 “Dominican citizens with resident status”.
With justice Bernarda Jiménez was awarded in 1995 by King Juan Carlos and elected in 2008 as a member of the National Executive Committee of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party representing immigrants, for a period of 4 years, and for six years he was a member of its National Political Committee.
The Dominican physician kept her Dominican roots alive by travelling several times a year to the country, with an apartment in Santo Domingo and linking up with countless political and social activities. His natural sympathy and immense generosity gave him an immense legion of friends, admirers and collaborators in all the fields where he made an impact.
As the Ambassador of the Dominican Republic to Spain, I benefited from his deep friendship, his advice and suggestions, so that his surprise departure leaves an immeasurable void felt by all members of our diplomatic delegation and my wife Ada Wicovitch. She was almost always present in our dozens of activities with the Dominican community over the last three and a half years. We are dismayed to sympathize with his beloved family and his legion of friends, consoling ourselves with the conviction that he has traveled to the infinite from where he preceded and to whom he belonged.
