In In The Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez utilizes the power struggle between Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic in 1994 and the Mirabal sisters, who try to overthrow the government, as a means to demonstrate the power struggle the people faced during this time period of Trujillo’s reign. Trujillo is a man who thrives on power and put spies in place to make sure that none of the people were even hinting towards a revolt. When Papa makes a snide comment about Trujillo being a female ruler, in that moment, “the dark fills with spies who are paid to hear things and report them down at Security” (Alvarez 10). This was the beginning of the end of three out of the four Mirabal sisters. Trujillo posts his face on every newspaper, book cover, and anything that people commonly use in order to promote how great he is. There are only positive things surrounding him and no one ever dares to say otherwise because he is ¨having everyone killed¨(Alvarez 19). In the beginning, we are introduced to Minerva. She is one of the sisters who has been brainwashed into believing that Trujillo can do no wrong. She discovers early on in the novel, when she arrived at Inmaculada, that Trujillo is not the man that he claims to be. When she is enlightened about this information, she describes this event as “how 1 got free” (Alvarez 13). Minerva’s enlightenment was the start of her own internal rebellion. She has unearthed the truth about Trujillo and his ways and now she is okay with