In the Time of the Butterflies

By 1960, the year of the novel’s climax, the Republic’s population exceeded 3 million (3,047,070). Its cities, primarily Santo Domingo in the south and Santiago in the north, were growing rapidly, although 65 percent of the people still lived in rural areas. The largely agricultural nation boasts a fertile, north-central valley, the Cibao, where the novel’s Mirabal sisters lived. Farmers like their father often raised cacao in the Cibao. The nation’s most profitable crop, sugarcane, grew in the north; cattle were reared in the south.

Poverty was widespread (average per capita income $200), as was illiteracy in 1960 (80 to 90 percent in rural areas). Almost everyone subscribed to the Roman Catholic faith, and people of mixed ancestry dominated the population. But in contrast to other Latin American nations, mulattos (of black and white ancestry) made up the most numerous ethnic group here. The mulattos, along with some mestizos (of Indian and white ancestry), comprised 70 percent of the population, greatly outnumbering a black minority (20 percent) and an even smaller white minority (10 percent) in 1960 (Hanover, p. 66).

In control of government, the economy, education, and social life at the time was the dictator Trujillo, who prided himself on his whiteness (though his family history included some black blood) and kept an all-white corps of elite guards.

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