Very rarely do I come across a book assigned to me in my English class, fall in love with it, and read it multiple times after the unit ends, but In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez was an exception. I received this book during my freshman year, and I have been unable to put it down since. Butterflies recounts the true story of the four Mirabal sisters during the Rafael Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic. At first, the sisters believe what most Dominicans believed at the time — that Trujillo was their lord and savior — but they soon began to realize that he was a corrupt, malevolent dictator who only looked out for his own interests and cast those of his citizens to the side. As many dictators do, he stopped at nothing to reach his own selfish agenda, even if it cost innocent lives. The sisters pledged to fight Trujillo, and when word got out about their movement, it grew and they named themselves “Las Mariposas” (The Butterflies), after the alias of the second-youngest sister Minerva (she was the first involved in the underground resistance against Trujillo). Unfortunately, on November 25, 1960, Minerva, María Teresa, and Patria were exposed and assassinated by Trujillo’s henchmen on the road while on the way to visit their husbands in prison, who were also revolutionaries. Dede was the only surviving sister.
Despite the tragedy, their story lives on today through this compelling book and in a variety of other ways (in 1999, the United Nations General Assembly declared November 25 International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women). When I last read this book, it was shortly after the movie Hidden Figures came out in 2016, which starred Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monae. Henson, Spencer, and Monae portrayed Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, respectively. These three black, female scientists paved the way for NASA innovations and explorations — most notably, the Space Race, in which the United States competed against the Soviet Union for dominance in spaceflight capability. Yet most had not heard of them until the movie’s release, myself included. They are similar to Las Mariposas in this respect — before reading Butterflies, my classmates and I had never heard of the four Maribal sisters, or how they contributed to the liberation of the Dominican Republic and were one of the groups that paved the way for women’s’ rights and intersectional feminism.
It brought up a question that resurfaces every time stories like this are brought to the forefront — why are only certain perspectives of the story told? Why are some of the most revolutionary, innovative game changers and wunderkinds robbed of the spotlight and recognition that is rewarded to others? To be frank, why are the experiences of women, people of color, and all other groups of marginalized people silenced and forgotten while the stories and tales of victorious white men plastered on every page in our textbooks? Why, also, are we conditioned to side with the “victors” of history? We were all taught that white settlers, who crossed the ocean blue in 1492, saved the poor Natives from depravity, but we were not taught the truth. We are taught next to nothing about the Black Panther movement; only that they were militant, violent criminals who killed innocent white people. I have never been taught about the Brown Berets (or, Los Boinas Cafes), a pro-Chicano/Latino movement started by David Sanchez in 1967 or the American Indian Movement that was founded a year later by Dennis Banks and
Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt.
This is why I am grateful for books like In the Time of the Butterflies now more than ever, because it is up to our generation to make sure that the stories of the silenced are finally told, so we no longer have to resort to making the same problems and mistakes as the generations before us. We need to take time to extensively research the incredible people who fought for the underdogs of society and the movements that surround and follow them. There are many of them, and it would be ignorant and unwise to assume that they all look like Susan B. Anthony or Gloria Steinem.
MorganAnn Malone ’19
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Time_of_the_Butterflies
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabal_sisters
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Trujillo
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Movement
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Berets
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race
beauvoice 