Possible Research Questions (feel free to adopt, adapt, reshape, or revise):
- Questions Relating to the Trujillo Regime:
- How did Trujillo’s childhood, particularly his education, impact his actions and decisions as a ruler?
- How did Trujillo’s experience in the military impact his actions and decisions as a ruler?
- Why did Trujillo organize and orchestrate the Parsley Massacre in 1937?
- What was the role of propaganda during the Trujillo regime?
- How was Trujillo able to maintain power over the Dominican Republic for so long (31 years)?
- What role did the United States play during Trujillo’s regime, and what role does the country play in the Dominican Republic today?
- How did the Trujillo regime influence the sort of government that the Dominican Republic has today?
- What role did SIM, Trujillo’s secret police, play in his regime?
- How did Fidel Castro’s rise to power influence the members of the Fourteenth of June Movement?
- What other dictators or events influenced the Trujillo regime?
- What other dictators or events did the Trujillo regime influence?
- Questions about las Mariposas:
- How did the media frame and explain the deaths of the Mirabal sisters on November 25, 1960? What can you learn from newspaper articles and other historical documents about the different ways their deaths were reported?
- Why is November 25 observed as the International Day Against Violence Towards Women? Why isn’t the date simply a day on which the deaths of the Mirabals are recognized?
- Questions about the Social & Cultural Aspects of the Dominican Republic:
- What role has the Roman Catholic Church played in the history of the Dominican Republic?
- Why was there little stigma associated with extramarital affairs or fathering children out of wedlock during the during the time of the Mirabal sisters?
- Why did Dominican women have fewer rights and opportunities than men did during the time of the Mirabal sisters?
- Why were so many Dominicans illiterate during the regime of Trujillo?
- Why were some Dominicans (including Trujillo) interested in the practice of skin lightening and whitening during the twentieth century?
- Why was the inheritance and the farming of the same land so important to some Dominican families? See page 153 in Butterflies.
