Julia Alvarez
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez blends fiction with the true story of the three Mirabel sisters, operating under the code name “the butterflies.” The sisters were assassinated in 1960 for their opposition to the dictatorship of General Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.
The novel opens in 1994 with a journalist interviewing Dedé, the surviving sister, about the events leading up to the murder of her siblings. It unfolds in the alternating voice of each of the sisters (Patria, Minerva, Dedé, and Maria Theresa), and spans the decades between 1938 to 1960. It describes their lives as young girls, as teenagers, as young wives and mothers, as members of a clandestine guerilla cell, and ends with their murder. The Dedé 1994 sections which frame the narrative, articulate Dedé’s guilt at her failure to be as politically active as her sisters, her survival, and her ongoing struggle to come to terms with their deaths while honoring their memory decades later.
Alvarez breathes life into these historical figures. Each sister is portrayed as a unique individual who gradually gets drawn into the struggle to overthrow Trujillo. They are shown as inching their way to becoming revolutionaries, each with her own reasons for doing so. Forming a guerrilla cell, they meet regularly to plan and hide crates of guns and ammunition in preparation for the uprising. Eventually, they and their spouses are discovered and sent to prison. After the sisters are released from prison, they are placed under house arrest, their movements and phone calls monitored by the Military Intelligence Service (SIM). They live in fear, but their resolve is unwavering. It is while returning from a visit to their spouses in jail they are ambushed and murdered.
Through her powerful diction, Alvarez captures the sheer terror of living under a military dictatorship in which people are in constant fear of stepping out of line. Loved ones are routinely murdered, incarcerated, or disappeared. The filth, squalor, starvation, and constant fear of torture and beatings the sisters experience during their incarceration reinforces the trauma of life under dictatorship.
By blending historical fact and fiction, Julia Alvarez disseminates information about the heroic struggle of the Mirabel sisters to a wider audience. Their courage and determination elevates their stature to mythic proportions.
Recommended.