Having the Courage to Rise Against Imagine this… the United States, a beloved nation, being ruled by one individual, the rules of the country being entirely arbitrary, rules based on violence and force, having no difference between state and government, and last of all having little to no rights or freedom. The picture that was just painted would be the United States if it were under a dictatorship. Currently in the world there are still forty nine countries that are run under a dictatorship. Out of one hundred and ninety five total countries one hundred and forty six managed to escape the fate of a being under a dictatorship. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez is a novel that explains about the brutal dictatorship that the Dominican Republic was under and how 4 …show more content…
From 1931 to 1961 the Dominican Republic was under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Born in 1891 Trujillo was raised in San Cristobal and in a middle class family. Wanting to escape his rural life Rafael Trujillo joined the army and through force was deemed the highest office possible. After his time in the military Trujillo placed himself as a candidate in the presidential elections and “organized a secret police force to torture and murder supporters of the opposing candidate. Not surprisingly, Trujillo won the election by a landslide” (Rafael Trujillo Biography, 2014). While this was happening the people of the Dominican Republic didn’t know. To them he won fair and square, and he was going to take care of their country. This was the first of many of wicked Trujillo's unfair stunts he pulled on the people of the Dominican Republic. Only one hundred and forty miles away from the Dominican Republic was the little country of Haiti. Due to the two countries being so close to each other, naturally some Haitians lived in the Dominican Republic and vise versa. September of