Three Butterflies in a Spider's Web - Colonialism in Julia Alvarez's in the Time of the Butterflies

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was given the dice by Minerva’s great Uncle. “That Chiche! He stole a piece of bone from Columbus’s crypt and had these made for me.” Trujillo then puts the dice he was referring to back on the scale where he keeps them. Minerva notices that the scales do not balance, and realizes the dice are loaded. By using the image of the loaded dice, manufactured from the bones on Columbus, Alvarez symbolizes Minerva’s realization that the dice are always weighted in favor of the conquistador. Furthermore, this scenes clearly illustrates the imbalance of the scales of justice in this patriarchy. Lastly, Alvarez’s description of the dice make a clear connection between Trujillo’s regime, and Columbus’s original conquest. This is further reinforced on the next page, when Minerva and Trujillo role the weighted dice to decide weather Minerva is allowed to attend the university. They both roll double sixes, and for a moment Minerva feels the possibility of liberation. However, Alvarez smashes this hope in the next line: “I look down at the lopsided scales as he puts his dice back. For a moment, I Imagine them evenly balanced, his will on one side, mine on the other.” In this line Alvarez informs the reader that Minerva is fully aware that the dice are and will be weighted against her. Minerva is left imagining a world in which they are evenly balanced. However the dice remain loaded, resting on the tilted scales of justice.

From this point on, Minerva’s story roughly matches the original struggle of her island’s original Taino Inhabitants. This story has played out time and time and time again, across the Caribbean, and across the world. Once one realizes that one has been conquered and colonized, the first response is rebellion. Similarly, Minerva rejects the legitimacy of her conquistador colonizer, and begins conscious resistance. Alvarez conveys Minerva’s next evolution through her exchange of Neruda’s love poems for Fidel’s revolutionary rhetoric. In her diary, Mate writes of Minerva, “Instead of her poetry, she’s always reciting, Codem me, ‘It does not matter. History will absolve me!’” This shows that Minerva has began to shatter her cage, and reclaim what has been conquered.

Finally, towards the end of the novel, as the Three Mariposas drive to visit their husbands one final time, the Taino god Huracan once again expresses his rage, mourning the loss of his devotees. This journey grounds Minerva’s struggle in the plight of the Dominican people. Alvarez uses this trip to show that Minerva’s thinking has expanded, that she finally knows she is not alone, and that this is a struggle between the colonized and the oppression of the conquistador. Alvarez informs us of Minerva’s realization through her dialogue with other sympathisers like the manager who sells the sisters new purses. “The attendant gave me an intent look. Jorge Almonte, he said, I put my card in your purse if there should ever be any need.” In this interaction, Minerva opens her eyes to the invisible web connecting the oppressed in their fight for liberation. This is the next stage in Minerva’s gradual realization. She understands that this is just Minerva Mirabal vs El Jefe, this is the colonized vs the colonizer Unfortunately it is the final stage.

In the Time of the Butterflies ends like countless other stories of colonization. When the Mariposa’s jeep ends its final journey at the bottom of a cliff, Alvarez informs the reader that this story of colonization is no different. Trujillo, the modern conquistador, erases the uprising, just as the first conquistadors erased the Taino.

However, Alvarez choses to inform us of the girls passing through Dedé´s recollection of the events. This confusing, pieced together account is eerily reminiscent of the scattering of half truths that make up the retelling of europe’s introduction to the Taino. Lines like “It all came out at the trial of the murderers. But even then there were several versions Each one of the five murders saying that the others had done most of the murdering. One of them saying they hadn’t done any murdering at all, just taken the girls to the mansion in La cumbe where El Jefe had finished them off.” By presenting the fall of the butterflies is this scattered format, Alvarez emphasizes that just like the story of the Taino, the Mariposas have become an integral part of the history of people’s struggle for liberation. The conquistador may have erased the reality, but the story and the myth remains.

At the end of the novel, Alvarez finally informs us why it is essential that we read and experience the lives of her characters. Toward the end, Dedé says,, ¨It comes to me slowly as I head north through the dark countryside, the only lights are up in the mountains where the prosperous young are building their getaway houses.¨ In this moment, Dedé wonders to herself, “Was it for this, the sacrifice of the butterflies?” From this we can interpret that Dedé feels that the island was never truly liberated, and that the conquered remain colonized. That what was called a victory was just a transition power, that the dice are still loaded, and that the scales have yet the balance. Still the story is not over, and through Dedé’s recount, the Taino, Minerva, and the struggles of oppressed people everywhere