The Long Shadow of the Dominican Dictatorship: Rafael Trujillo’s Reign of Terror in the Works of Julia Álvarez, Edwidge Danticat and Junot Díaz.

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina has been referred to as one of the cruelest and most brutal dictators of modern times. From 1930 to 1961, he established a reign of terror and recklessly ruled over the Dominican Republic through his absolute power and by murdering his political opponents and those who conspired against the regime. In October 1937, he ordered the systematic killing of thousands of Haitians who lived and worked in the Dominican Republic, in the so-called Parsley Massacre. In this thesis, I briefly introduce the history of the Dominican Republic before and during Trujillo and I analyze three novels by the US-Caribbean authors Julia Álvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and Junot Díaz. Their works In the Time of the Butterflies, The Farming of Bones and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao focus on the Trujillo dictatorship in different ways, while maintaining some points in common, such as the authors attempt to create a new Caribbean collective memory about the Trujillo dictatorship. In particular, in In the Time of the Butterflies Álvarez focuses on the tragic story of the Mirabal sisters, who strongly opposed the regime and were murdered on November 25, 1960. In The Farming of Bones, Danticat analyzes the Parsley Massacre and themes such as labor and racial oppression in the Dominican Republic from the point of view of a Haitian housemaid. Finally, in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Díaz investigates political oppression, racism in the United States and diaspora through magical realism, fantasy and Sci-Fi.