La Romana: Religious School Years

Margarita Ruiz Severinghaus (Rita) was born January 16, 1950 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and raised in La Romana, a relatively wealthy town situated near the beaches, which since the 1970s, has been built around a tourism infrastructure. Rita grew up in a single-parent household with her mother, who separated from her father at a young age, remarried, and gave birth to two younger brothers. Her mother earned a living as a seamstress (which at that time offered a well-to-do salary) and received child support from Rita’s father, which afforded her the resources to send Rita to a religious school.

Cotui: Sustainable Farming Years

Rita grew up in a government dictatorship, where people lived in fear of persecution. In 1961, when she was 12 years old, Dictator Rafael Trujillo was assassinated, creating an insurgency of chaos. Her mother decided to leave the country and seek refuge in New York City, leaving Rita with her uncle in Cotui, an impoverished town in the DR, and her brothers in La Romana. Cotui was a sustainable farming town in extremely poor conditions; it was here that Rita learned the challenges of low-resource communities, and spent the rest of her schooling years up until the first year of high school.