Rafael Trujillo
For more than three decades, the Dominican Republic was ruled by Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina (1891–1961), a megalomaniac who held on to power through terror, intimidation and corruption. He established his regime in 1930 with the approval of the United States which had recently ended its occupation of the Dominican Republic and above all else desired stability in the region for economic and strategic reasons. A military officer trained by the U.S. Marine Corps, Trujillo "won" the Dominican presidency in May 1930, in a contested election. By the time he officially took office as president on August 16, 1930, he had used terrorism to end the lives of enough real and potential opponents to look forward to a regime with little, if any, organized opposition to his rule. Those that opposed him frequently disappeared or ended up dead.
The nature of his lust for power and wealth was crystal clear by the end of the first decade of the Era of Trujillo. He was feared, powerful, and rich by the time he became commander-in-chief of his nation's armed forces. His investments in urban properties only whetted his appetite for more wealth and, once established in the presidential office, he took personal control of the nation's salt production. Now the owner of the Barahona salt mines, Trujillo promulgated a law prohibiting the traditional production of sea salt, which was virtually free, so that the people would have to purchase salt produced at his mine. With the monopoly in place, he raised the price of salt from 60 cents to $3 for a hundred pounds. He soon established a meat monopoly by taking over the slaughterhouses in the capital, Santo Domingo de Guzmán, and eventually his network of monopolies included rice and milk. Trujillo also created a bank for cashing government checks that was managed by his wife María Martínez Trujillo . By the time his first presidential term ended in August 1934, he was by far the richest man in the Dominican Republic. One of the most infamous episodes of his dictatorship (which first influenced Minerva), however, was the massacre of thousands of Haitian citizens in 1937. Trujillo’s soldiers murdered Haitians working as sugar cane cutters or living in Dominican territory. Estimates of the men, women and children killed range from 13,000 to 20,000.
Trujillo also received an honorary doctorate from the national university and an appointment as a professor of political economy. Among the countless honorific titles bestowed on him over the years were Benefactor of the Fatherland, Restorer of Financial Independence, and Father of the New Fatherland. In 1936, the name of the national capital was changed from Santo Domingo de Guzmán to Ciudad Trujillo. October 24, the day of his birth, became a national holiday, and in 1955 he celebrated 25 years of his rule, proclaiming that entire year to be the "Year of the Benefactor." In the final years of his dictatorship, Trujillo even demanded that the Roman Catholic Church bestow upon him the title of "Benefactor of the Church," which it refused.
On the evening of May 30, 1961, Trujillo was shot dead in a machine-gun attack on his limousine led by a former general who had fallen from grace because his sister had become a member of the resistance.
The nature of his lust for power and wealth was crystal clear by the end of the first decade of the Era of Trujillo. He was feared, powerful, and rich by the time he became commander-in-chief of his nation's armed forces. His investments in urban properties only whetted his appetite for more wealth and, once established in the presidential office, he took personal control of the nation's salt production. Now the owner of the Barahona salt mines, Trujillo promulgated a law prohibiting the traditional production of sea salt, which was virtually free, so that the people would have to purchase salt produced at his mine. With the monopoly in place, he raised the price of salt from 60 cents to $3 for a hundred pounds. He soon established a meat monopoly by taking over the slaughterhouses in the capital, Santo Domingo de Guzmán, and eventually his network of monopolies included rice and milk. Trujillo also created a bank for cashing government checks that was managed by his wife María Martínez Trujillo . By the time his first presidential term ended in August 1934, he was by far the richest man in the Dominican Republic. One of the most infamous episodes of his dictatorship (which first influenced Minerva), however, was the massacre of thousands of Haitian citizens in 1937. Trujillo’s soldiers murdered Haitians working as sugar cane cutters or living in Dominican territory. Estimates of the men, women and children killed range from 13,000 to 20,000.
Trujillo also received an honorary doctorate from the national university and an appointment as a professor of political economy. Among the countless honorific titles bestowed on him over the years were Benefactor of the Fatherland, Restorer of Financial Independence, and Father of the New Fatherland. In 1936, the name of the national capital was changed from Santo Domingo de Guzmán to Ciudad Trujillo. October 24, the day of his birth, became a national holiday, and in 1955 he celebrated 25 years of his rule, proclaiming that entire year to be the "Year of the Benefactor." In the final years of his dictatorship, Trujillo even demanded that the Roman Catholic Church bestow upon him the title of "Benefactor of the Church," which it refused.
On the evening of May 30, 1961, Trujillo was shot dead in a machine-gun attack on his limousine led by a former general who had fallen from grace because his sister had become a member of the resistance.
Trujillo's Connection to the Mirabal Sisters
Throughout his reign, Trujillo employed scores of “beauty scouts” to scour the countryside for young girls — often very young — for him to romance, kidnap, and/or rape. One such mission resulted in him forcing the Mirabals to come to one of his parties. Minerva soon realized that she was his target, and politely turned down his entreaties. When he forced the issue, she slapped him in the face, gathered her family, and left.
Thereafter, Minerva struggled as Trujillo personally toyed with her life. Despite being a brilliant student, upon starting her second year at law school, Minerva found she was barred from classes until she gave a public speech extolling Trujillo’s virtues. When she graduated years later — summa cum laude — the government denied her the license to practice law.
Minerva’s parents were not spared, either. Shortly after Minerva first refused Trujillo’s advances, her father was imprisoned. After a period of brutal treatment, he was released, only to die shortly thereafter. Some time later, Minerva and her mother, on a visit to the capitol of Santo Domingo, were kept as virtual prisoners in their hotel. Minerva learned that if she slept with Trujillo, they would be released. She refused. Eventually she and her mother escaped.
Gradually, Trujillo’s wrath also turned Patria, Maria Teresa, and their husbands into activists. With the Mirabal family finances ruined by Trujillo’s meddling, and the family’s every word monitored, the entire Mirabal clan were primed for transformation. The final push into all-out rebellion came after a failed attempt by exiled Dominicans to oust Trujillo. The Mirabals decided to continue their resistance. They distributed pamphlets, gathered materials for weapons, and even made makeshift bombs out of firecrackers around Minerva’s kitchen table. Collectively the three activist sisters became known by the codename Las Mariposas (the butterflies).
When their attempt to assassinate Trujillo at a 1960 cattle fair was exposed, the entire group was thrown in jail. Due to international pressure, Trujillo had to release the women, leaving the men imprisoned. When Trujillo’s political fortunes continued to worsen he began to blame the Mirabal sisters for all his problems, and so he ordered them killed.
The Mirabals’ deaths served as a catalyst for overthrowing Trujillo — six months later, military leaders assassinated him. Although many factors were at play in Trujillo’s downfall, as Bernard Diederich wrote in his book Trujillo: The Death of the Dictator, “the cowardly killing of three beautiful women in such a manner had greater effect on Dominicans than most of Trujillo’s other crimes… It did something to their machismo. They could never forgive Trujillo this crime.”
Thereafter, Minerva struggled as Trujillo personally toyed with her life. Despite being a brilliant student, upon starting her second year at law school, Minerva found she was barred from classes until she gave a public speech extolling Trujillo’s virtues. When she graduated years later — summa cum laude — the government denied her the license to practice law.
Minerva’s parents were not spared, either. Shortly after Minerva first refused Trujillo’s advances, her father was imprisoned. After a period of brutal treatment, he was released, only to die shortly thereafter. Some time later, Minerva and her mother, on a visit to the capitol of Santo Domingo, were kept as virtual prisoners in their hotel. Minerva learned that if she slept with Trujillo, they would be released. She refused. Eventually she and her mother escaped.
Gradually, Trujillo’s wrath also turned Patria, Maria Teresa, and their husbands into activists. With the Mirabal family finances ruined by Trujillo’s meddling, and the family’s every word monitored, the entire Mirabal clan were primed for transformation. The final push into all-out rebellion came after a failed attempt by exiled Dominicans to oust Trujillo. The Mirabals decided to continue their resistance. They distributed pamphlets, gathered materials for weapons, and even made makeshift bombs out of firecrackers around Minerva’s kitchen table. Collectively the three activist sisters became known by the codename Las Mariposas (the butterflies).
When their attempt to assassinate Trujillo at a 1960 cattle fair was exposed, the entire group was thrown in jail. Due to international pressure, Trujillo had to release the women, leaving the men imprisoned. When Trujillo’s political fortunes continued to worsen he began to blame the Mirabal sisters for all his problems, and so he ordered them killed.
The Mirabals’ deaths served as a catalyst for overthrowing Trujillo — six months later, military leaders assassinated him. Although many factors were at play in Trujillo’s downfall, as Bernard Diederich wrote in his book Trujillo: The Death of the Dictator, “the cowardly killing of three beautiful women in such a manner had greater effect on Dominicans than most of Trujillo’s other crimes… It did something to their machismo. They could never forgive Trujillo this crime.”
Post TrujilloWith the end of the Trujillo dictatorship, Dominicans expected their country to move easily toward democracy, having been denied its blessings for so long. However, unrest, instability, poverty, and social inequality continued to plague the nation into the next decades, and the ghosts of the past were not easily put to rest. Trujillo's last puppet president, Joaquin Balaguer, remained a major player in the Dominican political game, not retiring (under pressure) until 1996. The Mirabal family had to accept the catastrophe that had befallen them. The surviving sister Dedé helped the widowers to raise the children who had been deprived of their mothers.
According to scholar Kelly Adams, the Dominican Republic provides a compelling case with which to examine the role of literature in enacting justice, not only because of the lengthy dictatorship it experienced under General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina (1930-61) but also because of how the presidents that followed Trujillo chose to engage with his legacy. She says, "In contrast to neighboring Haiti, which has also experienced dictatorships and political unrest, the Dominican Republic has never formed a truth commission"--a retributive justice that typically incorporates a trial in order to provide restitution for historical acts, as was seen in many post-Holocaust trials. These truth commissions typically work in order to restore and heal rather than be divisive. However, following Trujillo's reign, the DR "implemented an official policy of silence after the end of Trujillo’s rule, known as “borrón y cuenta nueva (erasure and fresh start).” The first president elected in the aftermath of Trujillo’s assassination, Juan Bosch, instituted this policy as a way of “moving on from and letting go of the painful memories of the dictatorship.” In imposing this policy of forgetting, Bosch “deterred heightened awareness of the past and curtailed conflict related to the confrontation of that past.” Bosch prioritized reconciliation above concerns about truth and justice, likely because he imagined that this tactic would promote peace at a time of strife in the fragile country. In this way, novels and plays, such as In the Time of the Butterflies act as a means of remembering or restoring the past. In essence, these fictional, yet based in reality stories act as literary truth commissions. Indeed, the Dominican Republic’s efforts to "deal with the past" have been sporadic, or what scholar Ana Liberato characterizes as "low intensity. . . with eruptions of episodic remembering." According to Liberato, the Dominican state has played a “timid role” in memory efforts so that “[h]istorical and literary works have served as more permanent facilities of memory, particularly in relation with the Trujillo Era." Further Reading/Viewing |
Additional ResourcesCrassweller, Robert D. Trujillo: The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator. NY: Macmillan, 1966.
Diederich, Bernard. Trujillo: The Death of the Dictator. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 1998. Galíndez, Jesús de. The Era of Trujillo, Dominican Dictator. Edited by Russell H. Fitzgibbon. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1973. |
