Representations of a Dictatorship and its Dissidents: An Analysis of Gender and Genre in Three Illustrations of the Trujillato

Abstract

This thesis probes how three memories of the Trujillato, a Dominican dictatorship that endured for 31 years, have transcended space, time, and genre. A turn to Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat, Julia Álvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, and Mariano Barroso’s cinematic adaptation of the latter brings to the fore questions about the impetus for (hi)storytelling, as well as the various ways in which an audience is called to react to distinct accounts of the same cultural period. The analysis encourages readers and viewers to question not only how, but also why numerous writers and directors have portrayed Rafael Trujillo's regime and its atrocities from unique vantage points: recognizing points of convergence and divergence across the works makes clear that an audience’s perception of the Caribbean dictator, his crimes, and his victims is meaningfully altered by specificities of content and presentation. Ultimately, there are two overarching questions that this thesis explores by way of Vargas Llosa's, Álvarez's, and Barroso's conceptualizations of Dominican history: which project is most successful in portraying Trujillo’s regime, and what does this success entail?