THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC EXPERIENCED many setbacks on the road to the democratic system under which it functioned in the late 1980s. The nation did not enjoy full independence until 1844, when it emerged from twenty-two years of occupation by Haiti; this liberation came later than that of most Latin American countries. Reacceptance of Spanish rule from 1861 to 1865 demonstrated the republic's insecurity and dependence on larger powers to protect it and to define its status. Dominican vulnerability to intervention from abroad was also made evident by the United States military occupation of 1916-24 and by a more limited action by United States forces during a brief civil war in 1965.
Politically, Dominican history has been defined by an almost continuous competition for supremacy among caudillos of authoritarian ideological convictions. Political and regional competition overlapped to a great extent because mainly conservative leaders from the south and the east pitted themselves against generally more liberal figures from the northern part of the Valle del Cibao (the Cibao Valley, commonly called the Cibao). Traditions of personalism, militarism, and social and economic elitism locked the country into decades of debilitating wars, conspiracies, and despotism that drained its resources and undermined its efforts to establish liberal constitutional rule.
In the late 1980s, the republic was still struggling to emerge from the shadow of the ultimate Dominican caudillo, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina (1930-61), who emerged from the military and held nearly absolute power throughout his rule. The apparent establishment of a democratic process in 1978 was a promising development; however, the survival of democracy appeared to be closely linked to the country's economic fortunes, which had declined steadily since the mid-1970s. As it had throughout its history, the republic continued to struggle with the nature of its domestic politics and with the definition of its economic and political role in the wider world.
The island of Hispaniola (La Isla Española) was the first New World colony settled by Spain. As such, it served as the logistical base for the conquest of most of the Western Hemisphere. Christopher Columbus first sighted the island in 1492 toward the end of his first voyage to "the Indies." Columbus and his crew found the island inhabited by a large population of friendly Taino Indians (Arawaks), who made the explorers welcome. The land was fertile, but of greater importance to the Spaniards was the discovery that gold could be obtained either by barter with the natives, who adorned themselves with golden jewelry, or by extraction from alluvial deposits on the island.
After several attempts to plant colonies along the north coast of Hispaniola, Spain's first permanent settlement in the New World was established on the southern coast at the present site of Santo Domingo. Under Spanish sovereignty, the entire island bore the name Santo Domingo. Indications of the presence of gold--the life's blood of the nascent mercantilist system--and a population of tractable natives who could be used as laborers combined to attract many Spanish newcomers during the early years. Most were adventurers who, at least initially, were more interested in acquiring sudden wealth than they were in settling the land. Their relations with the Taino Indians, whom they ruthlessly maltreated, deteriorated from the beginning. Aroused by continued seizures of their food supplies, other exactions, and abuse of their women, the formerly peaceful Indians rebelled- -only to be crushed decisively in 1495.
Columbus, who ruled the colony as royal governor until 1499, attempted to put an end to the more serious abuses to which the Indians were subjected by prohibiting foraging expeditions against them and by regulating the informal taxation imposed by the settlers. Being limited to this milder form of exploitation engendered active opposition among the settlers. To meet their demands, Columbus devised the repartimiento system of land settlement and native labor under which a settler, without assuming any obligation to the authorities, could be granted in perpetuity a large tract of land together with the services of the Indians living on it.
The repartimiento system did nothing to improve the lot of the Indians, and the Spanish crown changed it by instituting the system of encomienda in 1503. Under the encomienda system, all land became in theory the property of the crown, and the Indians thus were considered tenants on royal land. The crown's right to service from the tenants could be transferred in trust to individual Spanish settlers (encomenderos) by formal grant and the regular payment of tribute. The encomenderos were entitled to certain days of labor from the Indians, who became their charges. Encomenderos thus assumed the responsibility of providing for the physical well-being of the Indians and for their instruction in Christianity. An encomienda theoretically did not involve ownership of land; in practice, however, possession was gained through other means.
The hard work demanded of the Indians and the privations that they suffered demonstrated the unrealistic nature of the encomienda system, which effectively operated on a honor system as a result of the absence of enforcement efforts by Spanish authorities. The Indian population died off rapidly from exhaustion, starvation, disease, and other causes. By 1548 the Taino population, estimated at 1 million in 1492, had been reduced to approximately 500. The consequences were profound. The need for a new labor force to meet the growing demands of sugarcane cultivation prompted the importation of African slaves beginning in 1503. By 1520, black African labor was used almost exclusively.
The early grants of land without obligation under the repartimiento system resulted in a rapid decentralization of power. Each landowner possessed virtually sovereign authority. Power was diffused because of the tendency of the capital city, Santo Domingo (which also served as the seat of government for the entire Spanish Indies), to orient itself toward the continental Americas, which provided gold for the crown, and toward Spain, which provided administrators, supplies, and immigrants for the colonies. Local government was doomed to ineffectiveness because there was little contact between the capital and the hinterland; for practical purposes, the countryside fell under the sway of the large landowners. Throughout Dominican history, this sociopolitical order was a major factor in the development of some of the distinctive characteristics of the nation's political culture such as paternalism, personalism, and the tendency toward strong, even authoritarian, leadership.
As early as the 1490s, the landowners demonstrated their power by successfully conspiring against Columbus. His successor, Francisco de Bobadilla, was appointed chief justice and royal commissioner by the Spanish crown in 1499. Bobadilla sent Columbus back to Spain in irons, but Queen Isabella soon ordered him released. Bobadilla proved an inept administrator, and he was replaced in 1503 by the more efficient Nicolás de Ovando, who assumed the titles of governor and supreme justice. Because of his success in initiating reforms desired by the crown--the encomienda system among them--de Ovando received the title of Founder of Spain's Empire in the Indies.
In 1509 Columbus's son, Diego Columbus, was appointed governor of the colony of Santo Domingo. Diego's ambition and the splendid surroundings he provided for himself aroused the suspicions of the crown. As a resulted, in 1511 of the crown established the audiencia, a new political institution intended to check the power of the governor. The first audiencia was simply a tribunal composed of three judges whose jurisdiction extended over all the West Indies. In this region, it formed the highest court of appeal. Employment of the audiencia eventually spread throughout Spanish America.
The tribunal's influence grew, and in 1524 it was designated the Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo, with jurisdiction in the Caribbean, the Atlantic coast of Central America and Mexico, and the northern coast of South America, including all of what is now Venezuela and part of present-day Colombia. As a court representing the crown, the audiencia was given expanded powers that encompassed administrative, legislative, and consultative functions; the number of judges increased correspondingly. In criminal cases the audiencia's decisions were final, but important civil suits could be appealed to the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies (Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias) in Spain.
The Council of the Indies, created by Charles V in 1524, was the Spanish crown's main agency for directing colonial affairs. During most of its existence, the council exercised almost absolute power in making laws, administering justice, controlling finance and trade, supervising the church, and directing armies.
The arm of the Council of the Indies that dealt with all matters concerning commerce between Spain and its colonies in the Americas was the House of Trade (Casa de Contratación), organized in 1503. Control of commerce in general, and of tax collection in particular, was facilitated by the designation of monopoly seaports on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. During most of the colonial period, overseas trade consisted largely of annual convoys between monopoly ports. Trade between the colonies and countries other than Spain was prohibited. The crown also restricted trade among the colonies. These restrictions hampered economic activity in the New World and encouraged contraband traffic.
The Roman Catholic Church became the primary agent in spreading Spanish culture in the Americas. The ecclesiastical organization developed for Santo Domingo and later extended throughout Spanish America reflected a union of church and state actually closer than that prevailing in Spain itself. The Royal Patronage of the Indies (Real Patronato de las Indias, or, as it was called later, the Patronato Real) served as the organizational agent of this affiliation of the church and the Spanish crown.
Santo Domingo's prestige began to decline in the first part of the sixteenth century with the conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés in 1521 and the discovery there, and later in Peru, of great wealth in gold and silver. These events coincided with the exhaustion of the alluvial deposits of gold and the dying off of the Indian labor force in Santo Domingo. Large numbers of colonists left for Mexico and Peru; new immigrants from Spain largely bypassed Santo Domingo for the greater wealth to be found in lands to the west. The population of Santo Domingo dwindled, agriculture languished, and Spain soon became preoccupied with its richer and vaster mainland colonies.
The stagnation that prevailed in Santo Domingo for the next 250 years was interrupted on several occasions by armed engagements, as the French and the English attempted to weaken Spain's economic and political dominance in the New World. In 1586 the English admiral, Sir Francis Drake, captured the city of Santo Domingo and collected a ransom for its return to Spanish control. In 1655 Oliver Cromwell dispatched an English fleet, commanded by Sir William Penn, to take Santo Domingo. After meeting heavy resistance, the English sailed farther west and took Jamaica instead.
The withdrawal of the colonial government from the northern coastal region opened the way for French buccaneers, who had a base on Tortuga Island (Ile de la Tortue), off the northwest coast of present-day Haiti, to settle on Hispaniola in the mid- seventeenth century. Although the Spanish destroyed the buccaneers' settlements several times, the determined French would not be deterred or expelled. The creation of the French West India Company in 1664 signalled France's intention to colonize western Hispaniola. Intermittent warfare went on between French and Spanish settlers over the next three decades; however, Spain, hard-pressed by warfare in Europe, could not maintain a garrison in Santo Domingo sufficient to secure the entire island against encroachment. In 1697, under the Treaty of Ryswick, Spain ceded the western third of the island to France. The exact boundary of this territory (Saint-Domingue--now Haiti) was not established at the time of cession and remained in question until 1929.
During the first years of the eighteenth century, landowners in the Spanish colony did little with their huge holdings, and the sugar plantations along the southern coast were abandoned because of harassment by pirates. Foreign trade all but ceased, and almost all domestic commerce took place in the capital city.
The Bourbon dynasty replaced the Habsburgs in Spain in 1700. The new regime introduced innovations--especially economic reforms--that gradually began to revive trade in Santo Domingo. The crown progressively relaxed the rigid controls and restrictions on commerce between the mother country and the colonies and among the colonies. The last convoys sailed in 1737; the monopoly port system was abolished shortly thereafter. By the middle of the century, both immigration and the importation of slaves had increased.
In 1765 the Caribbean islands received authorization for almost unlimited trade with Spanish ports; permission for the Spanish colonies in the Americas to trade among themselves followed in 1774. Duties on many commodities were greatly reduced or were removed altogether. By 1790 traders from any port in Spain could buy and sell anywhere in Spanish America, and by 1800 Spain had opened colonial trade to all neutral vessels.
As a result of the stimulus provided by the trade reforms, the population of the colony of Santo Domingo increased from about 6,000 in 1737 to approximately 125,000 in 1790. Of this number, about 40,000 were white landowners, about 25,000 were black or mulatto freedmen, and some 60,000 were slaves. The composition of Santo Domingo's population contrasted sharply with that of the neighboring French colony of Saint-Domingue, where some 30,000 whites and 27,000 freedmen extracted labor from at least 500,000 black slaves. To the Spanish colonists, Saint- Domingue represented a powder keg, the eventual explosion of which would echo throughout the island.
Although they shared the island of Hispaniola, the colonies of Saint-Domingue and Santo Domingo followed disparate paths. Cultural differences explained the contrast to some extent, but the primary divergence was economic. Saint-Domingue was the most productive agricultural colony in the Western Hemisphere, and its output contributed heavily to the economy of France. By contrast, Santo Domingo was a small colony with little impact on the economy of Spain. Prosperous French plantation owners sought to maximize their gain through increased production for a growing world market. Thus, they imported great numbers of slaves from Africa and drove this captive work force ruthlessly.
Although by the end of the eighteenth century economic conditions were improving, landowners in Santo Domingo did not enjoy the same level of wealth attained by their French counterparts in Saint-Domingue. The absence of market-driven pressure to increase production enabled the domestic labor force to practice subsistence agriculture and to export at low levels. For this reason, Santo Domingo imported far fewer slaves than did Saint-Domingue. Spanish law also allowed a slave to purchase his freedom and that of his family for a relatively small sum. This contributed to the higher proportion of freedmen in the Spanish colony; by the turn of the century, freedmen actually constituted the majority of the population. Also in contrast to conditions in the French colony, this population profile contributed to a somewhat more egalitarian society, plagued much less by the schisms of race.
Stimulated to some degree by a revolution against the monarchy that was well underway in France, the inevitable explosion took place in Saint-Domingue in August 1791. The initial reaction of many Spanish colonists to news of the slaughter of Frenchmen by armies of rebellious black slaves was to flee Hispaniola entirely. Spain, however, saw in the unrest an opportunity to seize all, or part, of the western third of the island through an alliance of convenience with the British. These intentions, however, did not survive encounters in the field with forces led by the former slave, François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture. In recognition of his leadership against the Spanish (under whose banner he had begun his military career), the British, and rebellious royalists and mulattoes, Toussaint was named governor general of Saint-Domingue by the French Republic in 1796. By the next year, Spain had surrendered the entire island to his rule. This action reflected not only Spain's growing disengagement from its colony, but also its setbacks in Europe and its relative decline as a world power.
Although France nominally enjoyed sovereignty over the entire island of Hispaniola, it was prevented from establishing an effective presence or administration in the east by continuing conflict between the indigenous forces led by Toussaint--and later by Jean-Jacques Dessalines--and an expeditionary force dispatched to Hispaniola by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1802 in an effort to bring the island more firmly under French control. Upon defeating the French, Dessalines and his followers established the independent nation of Haiti in January 1804. A small French presence, however, remained in the former Spanish colony. Dessalines attempted to take the city of Santo Domingo in March 1805, but he turned back after receiving reports of the approach of a French naval squadron.
By 1808 a number of émigré Spanish landowners had returned to Santo Domingo. These royalists had no intention of living under French rule, however, and they sought foreign assistance for a rebellion that would restore Spanish sovereignty. Help came from the Haitians, who provided arms, and from the British, who occupied Samaná and blockaded the port of Santo Domingo. The remaining French representatives fled the island in July 1809.
The 1809 restoration of Spanish rule ushered in an era referred to by some historians as España Boba (Foolish Spain). Under the despotic rule of Ferdinand VII, the colony's economy deteriorated severely. Some Dominicans began to wonder if their interests would not best be served by the sort of independence movement that was sweeping the South American colonies. In keeping with this sentiment, Spanish lieutenant governor José Núñez de Cáceres announced the colony's independence as the state of Spanish Haiti on November 30, 1821. Cáceres requested admission to the Republic of Gran Colombia (consisting of what later became Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela), recently proclaimed established by Simón Bolívar and his followers. While the request was in transit, however, the president of Haiti, Jean-Pierre Boyer, decided to invade Santo Domingo and to reunite the island under the Haitian flag.
The twenty-two years of Haitian occupation witnessed a steady economic decline and a growing resentment of Haiti among Dominicans. The agricultural pattern in the former Spanish colony came to resemble the one prevailing in all of Haiti at the time-- that is, mainly subsistence cultivation with little or no production of export crops. Boyer attempted to enforce in the new territory the Rural Code (Code Rural) he had decreed in an effort to improve productivity among the Haitian yeomanry, but the Dominicans proved no more willing to adhere to its provisions than the Haitians had been. Increasing numbers of Dominican landowners chose to flee the island rather than to live under Haitian rule; in many cases, Haitian administrators encouraged such emigration, confiscated the holdings of the émigrés, and redistributed them to Haitian officials. Aside from such bureaucratic machinations, most of the Dominicans' resentment of Haitian rule developed because Boyer, the ruler of an impoverished country, did not (or could not) provision his army. The occupying Haitian forces lived off the land in Santo Domingo, commandeering or confiscating what they needed to perform their duties or to fill their stomachs. Dominicans saw this as tribute demanded by petty conquerors, or as simple theft. Racial animosities also affected attitudes on both sides; black Haitian troops reacted with reflexive resentment against lighter-skinned Dominicans, while Dominicans came to associate the Haitians' dark skin with the oppression and the abuses of occupation.
Religious and cultural life also suffered under the Haitian occupation. The Haitians, who associated the Roman Catholic Church with the French colonists who had so cruelly exploited and abused them before independence, confiscated all church property in the east, deported all foreign clergy, and severed the ties of the remaining clergy to the Vatican. For Dominicans, who were much more strongly Roman Catholic and less oriented toward folk religion than the Haitians, such actions seemed insulting and nihilistic. In addition, upper-class Haitians considered French culture superior to Spanish culture, while Haitian soldiers and others from the lower class simply disregarded Hispanic mores and customs.
The emigration of upper-class Dominicans served to forestall rebellion and to prolong the period of Haitian occupation because most Dominicans reflexively looked to the upper class for leadership. Scattered unrest and isolated confrontations between Haitians and Dominicans undoubtedly occurred; it was not until 1838, however, that any significant organized movement against Haitian domination began. Crucial to these stirrings was a twenty-year-old Dominican, of a prominent Santo Domingo family, who had returned home five years earlier after seven years of study in Europe. The young student's name was Juan Pablo Duarte.
Dominican history can in many ways be encompassed by a series of biographies. The personality and attributes of Duarte, however, ran counter to those of most of the country's caudillos. Duarte was an idealist, an ascetic, a genuine nationalist, a man of principle, and a romantic in a romantic age. Although he played no significant part in its rule, he is considered the father of his country. He certainly provided the inspiration and impetus for the achievement of independence from Haiti. Shocked, when he returned from Europe, by the deteriorated condition of Santo Domingo, the young student resolved to establish a resistance movement that would eventually throw off the Haitian yoke. He dubbed his movement La Trinitaria (The Trinity) because its original nine members had organized themselves into cells of three; the cells went on to recruit as separate organizations, maintaining strict secrecy, with little or no direct contact among themselves in order to minimize the possibility of detection or betrayal to the Haitian authorities. Young recruits flocked to Duarte's banner (almost literally, for it was Duarte who designed the modern Dominican flag) as a result of the pent- up resentment under Haitian rule. Despite its elaborate codes and clandestine procedures, La Trinitaria was eventually betrayed to the Haitians. It survived largely intact, however, emerging under the new designation, La Filantrópica, to continue its work of anti-Haitian agitation.
Despite their numbers and their base of popular support, the Trinitarios (as the rebels still referred to themselves) required a political disruption in Haiti proper to boost their movement toward its ultimate success. The overthrow of Boyer in the Revolution of 1843 provided a catalyst for the Dominican rebels. Charles Rivière-Hérard replaced Boyer as president of Haiti. Like most Haitian leaders, he required a transition period in which to deal with competitors and to solidify his rule. Rivière-Herard apparently identified one disaffected Haitian faction in the administration of the eastern territory; his crackdown on this group extended to the Trinitarios as well, because apparently there had been some fruitless contacts between the Dominicans and some liberal Haitians. The increased pressure induced Duarte to leave the country temporarily in search of support in other Latin American states, mainly Colombia and Venezuela. In December 1843, a group of Duarte's followers urged him to return to Santo Domingo. They feared that their plans for an insurrection might be betrayed to the Haitians and had therefore resolved to carry them through quickly. Duarte sailed as far north from Caracas as the island of Curaçao, where he fell victim to a violent illness. When he had not arrived home by February 1844, the rebels, under the leadership of Francisco del Rosario Sánchez and Ramón Mella, agreed to launch their uprising without him.
On February 27, 1844--thereafter celebrated as Dominican Independence Day--the rebels seized the Ozama fortress in the capital. The Haitian garrison, taken by surprise and apparently betrayed by at least one of its sentries, retired in disarray. Within two days, all Haitian officials had left Santo Domingo. Mella headed the provisional governing junta of the new Dominican Republic. Duarte, finally recovered, returned to his country on March 14. The following day he entered the capital amidst great adulation and celebration. As is so often the case in such circumstances, the optimism generated by revolutionary triumph would eventually give way to the disillusion caused by the struggle for power.
Two leaders dominated the period between 1844 and 1864: General Pedro Santana Familias and Buenaventura Báez Méndez. Dissimilar in appearance and temperament, the two alternated in power by means of force, factionalism, and repeated efforts to secure their country's protection or annexation by a foreign power. Their unprincipled, self-serving dominance did much to entrench the tradition of caudillo rule in the Dominican Republic.
The Infant RepublicSantana's power base lay in the military forces mustered to defend the infant republic against Haitian retaliation. Duarte, briefly a member of the governing junta, for a time commanded an armed force as well. He was temperamentally unsuited to generalship, however, and the junta eventually replaced him with General José María Imbert. Duarte assumed the post of governor of the Cibao, the northern farming region administered from the city of Santiago de los Caballeros, commonly known as Santiago. In July 1844, Mella and a throng of other Duarte supporters in Santiago urged him to take the title of president of the republic. Duarte agreed to do so, but only if free elections could be arranged. Santana, who felt that only the protection of a great power could assure Dominican safety against the Haitian threat, did not share Duarte's enthusiasm for the electoral process. His forces took Santo Domingo on July 12, 1844, and they proclaimed Santana ruler of the Dominican Republic. Mella, who attempted to mediate a compromise government including both Duarte and Santana, found himself imprisoned by the new dictator. Duarte and Sánchez followed Mella into prison and subsequently into exile.
Although in 1844 a constituent assembly drafted a constitution, based on the Haitian and the United States models, which established separation of powers and legislative checks on the executive, Santana proceeded to emasculate the document that same year by demanding the inclusion of Article 210, which granted him untrammeled power "during the current war" against Haiti.
As it turned out, the Dominicans repelled the Haitian forces, on both land and sea, by December 1845. Santana's dictatorial powers, however, continued throughout his first term (1844-48). He consolidated his power by executing anti-Santana conspirators, by rewarding his close associates with lucrative positions in government, and by printing paper money to cover the expenses of a large standing army, a policy that severely devalued the new nation's currency. Throughout his term, Santana also continued to explore the possibility of an association with a foreign power. The governments of the United States, France, and Spain all declined the offer.
Santana responded to general discontent, prompted mainly by the deteriorating currency and economy, by resigning from the presidency in February 1848 and retiring to his ranch in the province of El Seibo. The Council of Secretaries of State, made up of former cabinet members, selected minister of war Manuel Jiménez to replace Santana in August 1848. Jiménez displayed little enthusiasm and no aptitude as a ruler. His tenure, which would probably have been brief in any case, ended in May 1849. The violent sequence of events that culminated in Jiménez's departure began with a new invasion from Haiti, this time led by self-styled emperor Faustin Soulouque. Santana returned to prominence at the head of the army that checked the Haitian advance at Las Carreras in April 1849. As the Haitians retired, Santana pressed his advantage against Jiménez. After some brief skirmishes between his forces and those loyal to the president, Santana took control of Santo Domingo and the government on May 30, 1849.
Although Santana once again held the reins of power, he declined to formalize the situation by standing for office. Instead, he renounced the temporary mandate granted him by the legislature and called for an election--carried out under an electoral college system with limited suffrage--to select a new president. Santana favored Santiago Espaillat, who won a ballot in the Congress on July 5, 1849; Espaillat declined to accept the presidency, however, knowing that he would have to serve as a puppet so long as Santana controlled the army. This cleared the way for Báez, president of the legislature, to win a second ballot, which was held on August 18, 1849.
Báez made even more vigorous overtures to foreign powers to establish a Dominican protectorate. Both France (Báez's personal preference) and the United States, although still unwilling to annex the entire country, expressed interest in acquiring the bay and peninsula of Samaná as a naval or commercial port. Consequently, in order to preserve its lucrative trade with the island nation and to deny a strategic asset to its rivals, Britain became more actively involved in Dominican affairs. In 1850 the British signed a commercial and maritime treaty with the Dominicans. The following year, Britain mediated a peace treaty between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Báez's first term established the personal rivalry with Santana that dominated Dominican politics until the latter's death in 1864. President Báez purged Santana's followers (santanistas) from the government and installed his own sycophants (baecistas) in their place, pardoned a number of Santana's political opponents, reorganized the military in an effort to dilute Santana's power base, and apparently conceived a plan to create a militia that would serve as a counterforce to the army.
Seeing his influence clearly threatened, Santana returned to the political arena in February 1853, when he was elected to succeed Báez. The general moved quickly to deal with Báez, who had once been a colonel under his command. In a public address on July 3, 1853, Santana denounced Báez as a collaborator under the Haitian occupation (which was true) and a paid agent of influence for the Haitians after independence (which may have been true, although not to the extent that Santana declared). Publicly characterizing Báez's presence in the nation a threat to security, Santana exercised his authority under Article 210 of the constitution and expelled the former president from the Dominican Republic.
Although he enjoyed considerable popularity, Santana confronted several crises during his second term. In February 1854, a constituent assembly promulgated a new, liberal constitution that eliminated the dictatorial powers granted by Article 210. With his control over the army restored, however, Santana readily forced the adoption of a new constitution restoring most of the excised prerogatives of the executive. On the international front, renewed annexation talks between the Dominican and the United States governments aroused the concern of Haitian emperor Soulouque. Motivated, at least in part, by a desire to prevent the acquisition of any portion of Hispaniola by the slaveholding United States, Soulouque launched a new invasion in November 1855. However, Dominican forces decisively defeated the Haitians in a number of engagements and forced them back across the border by January 1856.
The final crisis of Santana's second term also originated in the foreign policy sphere. Shortly after the Haitian campaign, the Dominican and the United States governments signed a commercial treaty that provided for the lease of a small tract in Samaná for use as a coaling station. Although Santana delayed implementation of the lease, its negotiation provided his opponents--including baecistas and the government of Spain--with an opportunity to decry Yankee imperialism and to demand the president's ouster. Pressure built to such an extent that Santana felt compelled to resign on May 26, 1856, in favor of his vice president, Manuel de la Regla Mota.
Regla Mota's rule lasted almost five months. An empty treasury forced the new president to discharge most of the army. Thus deprived of the Dominican rulers' traditional source of power, his government all but invited the return of Báez. With the support of the Spanish, Báez was named vice president by Regla Mota, who then resigned in Báez's favor. Not a forgiving man by nature, Báez lost little time before denouncing ex- president Santana and expelling him from the country. Once again, Báez purged santanistas from the government and replaced them with his own men.
Báez had little time in which to savor his triumph over his rival, however. Reverting to the policies of his first term, the government flooded the country with what rapidly became all but worthless paper money. Farmers in the Cibao, who objected strongly to the purchase of their crops with this devalued currency, rose against Báez in what came to be known as the Revolution of 1857. Their standard-bearer, not surprisingly, was Santana.
Pardoned by a provisional government established at Santiago de los Caballeros, Santana returned in August 1857 to join the revolution. He raised his own personal army and soon dominated the movement. A year of bloody conflict between the governments of Santiago and Santo Domingo took a heavy toll in lives and money. Under the terms of a June 1857 armistice, Báez once again fled to Curaçao with all the government funds that he could carry. Santana proceeded to betray the aspirations of some of his liberal revolutionary followers by restoring the dictatorial constitution of 1854. Santanismo again replaced baecismo; only a small group of loyalists realized any benefit from the exchange, however. Politically, the country continued to walk a treadmill. Economically, conditions had become almost unbearable for many Dominicans. The general climate of despair ensured the inevitable success of Santana's renewed efforts to secure a protector for his country.
On March 17, 1861, Santana announced the annexation of the Dominican Republic by Spain. A number of conditions had combined to bring about this reversion to colonialism. The Civil War in the United States had lessened the Spanish fear of retaliation from the north. In Spain itself, the ruling Liberal Union of General Leopoldo O'Donnell had been advocating renewed imperial expansion. And in the Dominican Republic, both the ruler and a portion of the ruled were sufficiently concerned about the possibility either of a renewed attack from Haiti or of domestic economic collapse to find the prospect of annexation attractive.
Support for annexation did not run as deep as Santana and his clique had represented to the Spanish, however. The first rebellion against Spanish rule broke out in May 1861, but it was quashed in short order. A better organized revolt, under the leadership of the baecista, General Sánchez, sprang up only a month later. Santana, now bearing the title of captain general of the Province of Santo Domingo, was forced to take to the field against his own countrymen as the representative of a foreign power. The wily Santana lured Sánchez into an ambush, where he was captured and executed. Despite this service, Santana found his personal power and his ability to dole out patronage to his followers greatly restricted under Spanish rule. In a fit of pique, he resigned the captaincy general in January 1862.
Resentment and rebellion continued, fed by racial tension, excessive taxation, the failure to stabilize the currency, the uncompensated requisition of supplies by the Spanish army, heavyhanded reform of local religious customs by an inflexible Spanish archbishop, and the restriction of trade to the benefit of the Spanish empire. The Spaniards quelled more uprisings in 1863, but guerrilla actions continued. In response to the continuing unrest, a state of siege was declared in February 1863.
Rebellious Dominicans set up a provisional government in Santiago, headed by General José Antonio Salcedo Ramírez, on September 14, 1863. Their proclamation of an Act of Independence launched what is known as the War of Restoration. For their part, the Spanish once again turned to Santana, who received command of a force made up largely of mercenaries; however, this campaign was the last for the old caudillo. By this time, his popularity had all but disappeared. Indeed, the provisional government had denounced Santana and had condemned him to death for his actions against his countrymen. On June 14, 1864, a broken and despondent Santana saved the rebels the trouble of carrying out their sentence. The timing of his death lent credence to speculation that he had committed suicide, although this belief was never proven.
Meanwhile, the guerrilla war against the Spanish ground on. The rebels further formalized their provisional rule by replacing Salcedo (who had advocated the return of Báez to rule a restored republic) and by then holding a national convention on February 27, 1865, which enacted a new constitution and elected Pedro Antonio Pimentel Chamorro president.
Circumstances began to favor a Spanish withdrawal. The conclusion of its Civil War promised that the United States would make new efforts to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, which barred European powers from the Western Hemisphere. Spanish military forces, unable to contain the spread of the insurrection, lost even greater numbers of troops to disease than they did to the guerrillas. The O'Donnell government had fallen, taking with it any dreams of a renewed Spanish empire. On March 3, 1865, the Queen of Spain approved a decree repealing the annexation of Santo Domingo.
The Spanish left political chaos in their wake. A power struggle began between the conservative, cacique-dominated south and the more liberal Cibao, where the prevalence of medium-sized landholdings contributed to a more egalitarian social structure. The two camps eventually coalesced under the banners of separate political parties. The Cibaeños (residents of the Cibao) adhered to the National Liberal Party (Partido Nacional Liberal), which became known as the Blue Party (Partido Azul). The southerners rallied to the Red Party (Partido Rojo).
The conservative Reds effectively employed their numerical superiority in the capital to force the restoration of Báez, who returned triumphantly from exile and assumed the presidency on December 8, 1865. Never again, however, would he exercise the sort of dictatorial control over the republic that he and Santana had once alternately enjoyed. The country's institutions had changed. Regional forces mustered during the War of Restoration had replaced the national army that previously had done battle with the Haitians. Political power had likewise been diffused, particularly between the opposing poles of the Cibao and the south. Under these conditions, it was difficult, if not impossible, for one man to dominate the entire nation.
After a successful uprising that forced Báez to flee the country in May 1866, a triumvirate of Cibaeño military leaders, the most prominent of whom was Gregorio Luperón, assumed provisional power. General José María Cabral Luna, who had served briefly as president in 1865, was reelected to that post on September 29, 1866. The baecistas, however, were still a potent force in the republic; they forced Cabral out and reinstalled Báez on May 2, 1868. Once again, his rule was marked by peculation and efforts to sell or to lease portions of the country to foreign interests. These included an intermittent campaign to have the entire country annexed by the United States. He was once again overthrown by rebellious Blues in January 1874.
After a period of infighting among the Blues, backing from Luperón helped Ulises Francisco Espaillat Quiñones to win election as president on March 24, 1876. Espaillat, a political and economic liberal, apparently intended to broaden personal freedoms and to set the nation's economy on a firmer footing. He never had the opportunity to do either, however. Rebellions in the south and the east forced Espaillat to resign on December 20, 1876. Ever the opportunist, Báez returned once more to power. The most effective opposition to his rule came from guerrilla forces led by a politically active priest, Fernando Arturo de Meriño Ramírez. In February 1878, the unpopular Báez left his country for the last time; he died in exile in 1882.
Both Santana and Báez had now passed from the scene. They had helped to create a nation where violence prevailed in the quest for power, where economic growth and financial stability fell victim to a seemingly endless political contest, and where foreign interests still perceived parts of the national territory as available to the highest bidder. This divisive, chaotic situation invited the emergence of a Machiavellian figure who would "unite" the republic.
Ulises Heureaux, Luperón's lieutenant, stood out among his fellow Dominicans both physically and temperamentally. The illegitimate son of a Haitian father and a mother who was originally from the island of St. Thomas, he was distinguished by his blackness from most other contenders for power, with the exception of Luperón. As events were to demonstrate, he also possessed a singular thirst for power and a willingness to take any measures necessary to attain and to hold it.
During the four years between Báez's final withdrawal and Heureaux's ascension to the presidency, seven individuals held or claimed national, regional, or interim leadership. Among them were Ignacio María González Santin, who held the presidency from June to September 1878; Luperón, who governed from Puerto Plata as provisional president from October 1879 to August 1880; and Meriño, who assumed office in September 1880 after apparently fraudulent general elections. Heureaux served as interior minister under Meriño; his behind-the-scenes influence on the rest of the cabinet apparently exceeded that of the president. Although Meriño briefly suspended constitutional procedures in response to unrest fomented by some remaining baecistas, he abided by the two-year term established under Luperón and turned the reins of government over to Heureaux on September 1, 1882.
Heureaux's first term as president was not particularly noteworthy. The administrations of Luperón and Meriño had achieved some financial stability for the country; political conditions had settled down to the point that Heureaux needed to suppress only one major uprising during his two-year tenure. By 1884, however, no single potential successor, among the various caciques who constituted the republic's ruling group, enjoyed widespread support. Luperón, still the leader of the ruling Blue Party, supported General Segundo Imbert for the post, while Heureaux backed the candidacy of General Francisco Gregorio Billini. A consummate dissembler, Heureaux assured Luperón that he would support Imbert should he win the election, but Heureaux also had ballot boxes in critical precincts stuffed in order to assure Billini's election.
Inaugurated president on September 1, 1884, Billini resisted Heureaux's efforts to manipulate him. Thus denied de facto rule, Heureaux undermined Billini by spreading rumors to the effect that the president had decreed a political amnesty so that he could conspire with ex-president Cesareo Guillermo Bastardo (February 27-December 6, 1879) against Luperón's leadership of the Blues. This precipitated a governmental crisis that resulted in Billini's resignation on May 16, 1885. Vice President Alejandro Woss y Gil succeeded Billini. Heureaux assumed a more prominent role under the new government; a number of his adherents were included in the cabinet, and the general himself assumed command of the national army in order to stem a rebellion led by Guillermo, whose suicide when he was faced with capture, removed another potential rival for power and further endeared Heureaux to Luperón, a longtime enemy of Guillermo.
Luperón accordingly supported Heureaux in the 1886 presidential elections. Opposed by Casimiro de Moya, Heureaux relied on his considerable popularity and his demonstrated skill at electoral manipulation to carry the balloting. The blatancy of the fraud in some areas, particularly the capital, inspired Moya's followers to launch an armed rebellion. Heureaux again benefited from Luperón's support in this struggle; it delayed his inauguration by four months, but it further narrowed the field of political contenders. Having again achieved power, Heureaux maintained his grip on it for the rest of his life.
Several moves served to lay the groundwork for Heureaux's dictatorship. Constitutional amendments requested by the president and effected by the Congress extended the presidential term from two to four years and eliminated direct elections in favor of the formerly employed electoral college system. To expand his informal power base, Heureaux (who became popularly known as General Lilís, thanks to a common mispronunciation of his first name) incorporated both Reds and Blues into his government. The president also established an extensive network of secret police and informants in order to avert incipient rebellions. The press, previously unhampered, came under new restrictions.
In the face of impending dictatorship, concerned Dominican liberals turned to the only remaining figure of stature, Luperón. The elections of 1888 therefore pitted Heureaux against his political mentor. If the dictator felt any respect for his former commander, he did not demonstrate it during the campaign. Heureaux's agents attacked Luperón's campaigners and supporters, arresting and incarcerating considerable numbers of them. Recognizing the impossibility of a free election under such circumstances, Luperón withdrew his candidacy, declined the entreaties of those of his followers who urged armed rebellion, and fled into exile in Puerto Rico.
Although plots, intrigue, and abortive insurrections continued under his rule, Heureaux faced no serious challenges until his assassination in 1899. He continued to govern in mockconstitutional fashion, achieving reelection through institutionalized fraud. Despite his relatively secure position, his repression of dissent became more severe, and the number of political prisoners expanded along with the dictator's paranoia. Like Santana and Báez before him, Heureaux sought the protection of a foreign power, principally the United States. Although annexation was no longer an option, the dictator did offer to lease the Samaná Peninsula to the United States. The deal was never consummated, however, because of opposition from the liberal wing of the Blue Party and a number of concerned European powers. In 1891 Washington and Santo Domingo did conclude a reciprocity treaty that allowed twenty-six United States products free entry into the Dominican market in exchange for similar duty-free access for certain Dominican goods. The governments of Germany, Britain, and France all filed official protests over the treaty, which they saw as detrimental to their most-favored- nation trading status.
Under Heureaux, the Dominican government considerably expanded its external debt. Although some improvements to infrastructure resulted, much of the money went to support the dictator's personal extravagances and the financial requirements of his police state. The failure to apply the funds productively exacerbated both domestic budget deficits and shortfalls in the external balance of payments. In an effort to head off complete bankruptcy, the government turned to the familiar expedient of printing paper money. The huge issuance of 1897, however, debased the currency to such an extent that even Dominicans refused to accept it.
Despite the dictator's comprehensive efforts to repress opposition--his network of spies and agents extended even to foreign countries--a revolutionary organization eventually emerged. Established in Puerto Rico by Horacio Vásquez Lajara, a young adherent of Luperón, the group called itself the Young Revolutionary Junta (Junta Revolucionaria de Jóvenes). Other prominent members of the group included Federico Velásquez and Ramón Cáceres Vásquez. The three returned to their plantations in the Cibao and began to lay the groundwork for a coordinated rebellion against the widely detested Heureaux. The impetuous Cáceres, however, opted for a revolution at a single stroke when the dictator passed through the town of Moca on July 26, 1899. He shot Heureaux several times and left the longtime ruler fatally wounded amid a startled crowd. Cáceres escaped unharmed.
After a brief period of armed conflict, the revolutionaries prevailed. Vásquez headed a provisional government established in September 1899. Free, direct elections brought to the presidency Juan Isidro Jiménez Pereyra on November 15. The Jiménez administration faced a fiscal crisis when European creditors, led by the French, began to call in loans that had been contracted by Heureaux. Customs fees represented the only significant source of government revenue at that time. When the Jiménez government pledged 40 percent of its customs revenue to repay its foreign debt, it provoked the ire of the San Domingo Improvement Company. A United States-based firm, the Improvement Company had lent large sums to the Heureaux regime. As a result, it had not only received a considerable percentage of customs revenue, but also had been granted the right to administer Dominican customs in order to ensure regular repayment. Stung by the Jiménez government's resumption of control over its customs receipts, the directors of the Improvement Company protested to the United States Department of State. The review of the case prompted a renewed interest in Washington in Dominican affairs.
The death of Heureaux, however, had by no means ushered in an era of political tranquility. Jiménez's various financial negotiations with foreign powers had aroused opposition among nationalists, particularly in the Cibao, who suspected the president of bargaining away Dominican sovereignty in return for financial settlements. Government forces led by Vásquez put down some early uprisings. Eventually, however, personal and political competition between Jiménez and Vásquez brought them into more serious conflict. Vásquez's forces proclaimed a revolution on April 26, 1902; with no real base of support, Jiménez fled his office and his country a few days later. Although highly principled, Vásquez was not a strong leader. Squabbles among his followers and opposition to his government from local caciques grew into general unrest that culminated in the seizure of power by ex-president Woss y Gil in April 1903.
Dominican politics had once again polarized into two largely nonideological camps. Where once the Blues and the Reds had contended for power, now the jimenistas (supporters of Jiménez; sing., jimenista) and the horacistas (supporters of Vásquez and Cáceres; sing., horacista) vied for control. Woss y Gil, a jimenista, made the mistake of seeking supporters among the horacista camp and he was overthrown by the jimenista general, Carlos F. Morales Languasco, in December 1903. Rather than restore the country's leadership to Jiménez, however, Morales set up a provisional government and announced his own candidacy for the presidency-- with Cáceres as his running mate. The renewed fraternization with the horacistas incited another jimenista rebellion. This uprising proved unsuccessful, and Morales and Cáceres were inaugurated on June 19, 1904.
Conflict within the Morales administration between supporters of the president and those of the vice president debilitated the government. By late 1905, it became clear that Morales had lost effective control to Cáceres and the cabinet. Morales resolved to lead a coup against his own government; his plan was discovered by the horacistas, however, and he was captured and dispatched into exile. Cáceres assumed the presidency on December 29, 1905.
The influence of the United States had increased considerably during the first few years of the twentieth century. United States military forces had intervened in a minor way to ensure the safety of United States citizens and to prevent the deployment of warships by European governments seeking immediate repayment of debt. By 1904 Washington had begun to take a greater interest in the stability of Caribbean nations, particularly those--like the Dominican Republic--situated along the approaches to the forthcoming Panama Canal. The administration of Theodore Roosevelt took a particular interest in resolving the republic's economic situation. It negotiated an agreement in June 1904 whereby the Dominican government bought out the holdings of the San Domingo Improvement Company. The Morales government also agreed to accept the appointment by the United States government of a financial agent to oversee the repayment of the outstanding debt to the Improvement Company from customs duties. This agreement was subsequently superseded by a financial accord signed between the two governments on February 7, 1905; under the provisions of this accord, the United States government assumed responsibility for all Dominican debt as well as for the collection of customs duties and the allocation of those revenues to the Dominican government and to the repayment of its domestic and foreign debt. Although parts of this agreement were rejected by the United States Senate, it formed the basis for the establishment in April 1905 of the General Customs Receivership, the office through which the United States government administered the finances of the Dominican Republic.
The Cáceres government became the financial beneficiary of this arrangement. Freed from the burden of dealing with creditors, Cáceres attempted to reform the political system. Constitutional reforms placed local ayuntamientos (town councils) under the power of the central government, extended the presidential term to six years, and eliminated the office of vice president. Cáceres also nationalized public utilities and established a bureau of public works to administer them. All of these actions engendered both opposition and support. The curtailment of local authority particularly irked those caciques who preferred to rule through compliant ayuntamientos. The continued financial sovereignty of the Yankees also outweighed the economic benefits of the receivership in the minds of many nationalistic Dominicans. Intrigues fomented in exile by Morales, Jiménez, and others beset Cáceres. On November 19, 1911, a small group headed by Luis Tejera assassinated Cáceres as he took his evening drive through the streets of Santo Domingo.
The assassination of Cáceres turned out to be but the first act of a frenzied drama that culminated in the republic's occupation by the United States. The fiscal stability that had resulted from the 1905 receivership eroded under Cáceres's successor, Eladio Victoria y Victoria; most of the increased outlays went to support military campaigns against rebellious partisans, mainly in the Cibao. The continued violence and instability prompted the administration of President William H. Taft to dispatch a commission to Santo Domingo on September 24, 1912, to mediate among the warring factions. The presence of a 750-member force of United States Marines apparently convinced the Dominicans of the seriousness of Washington's threats to intervene directly in the conflict; Victoria agreed to step down in favor of a neutral figure, Roman Catholic archbishop Adolfo Alejandro Nouel Bobadilla. The archbishop assumed office as provisional president on November 30.
Nouel proved unequal to the burden of national leadership. Unable to mediate successfully between the ambitions of rival horacistas and jimenistas, he stepped down on March 31, 1913. His successor, José Bordas Valdés, was equally unable to restrain the renewed outbreak of hostilities. Once again, Washington took a direct hand and mediated a resolution. The rebellious horacistas agreed to a cease-fire based on a pledge of United States oversight of elections for members of local ayuntamientos and a constituent assembly that would draft the procedures for presidential balloting. The process, however, was flagrantly manipulated and resulted in Bordas's reelection on June 15, 1914. Both horacistas and jimenistas took offense at this blatant maneuver and rose up against Bordas.
The United States government, this time under President Woodrow Wilson, again intervened. Where Taft had cajoled the combatants with a clear intimation of military action, Wilson delivered an ultimatum: elect a president or the United States will impose one. The Dominicans accordingly selected Ramón Báez Machado as provisional president on August 27, 1914. Comparatively fair presidential elections held on October 25 returned Jiménez to the presidency. Despite his victory, however, Jiménez felt impelled to appoint leaders and prominent members of the various political factions to positions in his government in an effort to broaden its support. The internecine conflicts that resulted had quite the opposite effect, weakening the government and the president and emboldening Secretary of War Desiderio Arias to take control of both the armed forces and the Congress, which he compelled to impeach Jiménez for violation of the constitution and the laws. Although the United States ambassador offered military support to his government, Jiménez opted to step down on May 7, 1916.
Arias never formally assumed the presidency. The United States government had apparently tired of its recurring role as mediator and had decided to take more direct action. United States forces had already occupied Haiti by this time. The initial military administrator of Haiti, Rear Admiral William Caperton, had actually forced Arias to retreat from Santo Domingo by threatening the city with naval bombardment on May 13. The first Marines landed three days later. Although they established effective control of the country within two months, the United States forces did not proclaim a military government until November. Most Dominican laws and institutions remained intact under military rule, although the shortage of Dominicans willing to serve in the cabinet forced the military governor, Rear Admiral Harry S. Knapp, to fill a number of portfolios with United States naval officers. The press and radio were censored for most of the occupation, and public speech was limited.
The surface effects of the occupation were largely positive. The Marines restored order throughout most of the republic (with the exception of the eastern region); the country's budget was balanced, its debt was diminished, and economic growth resumed; infrastructure projects produced new roads that linked all the country's regions for the first time in its history; a professional military organization, the Dominican Constabulary Guard, replaced the partisan forces that had waged a seemingly endless struggle for power. Most Dominicans, however, greatly resented the loss of their sovereignty to foreigners, few of whom spoke Spanish or displayed much real concern for the welfare of the republic.
The most intense opposition to the occupation arose in the eastern provinces of El Seibo and San Pedro de Macorís. From 1917 to 1921, the United States forces battled a guerrilla movement in that area known as the gavilleros. The guerrillas enjoyed considerable support among the population, and they benefited from a superior knowledge of the terrain. The movement survived the capture and the execution of its leader, Vicente Evangelista, and some initially fierce encounters with the Marines. However, the gavilleros eventually yielded to the occupying forces' superior firepower, air power (a squadron of six Curtis Jennies), and determined (often brutal) counterinsurgent methods.
After World War I, public opinion in the United States began to run against the occupation. Warren G. Harding, who succeeded Wilson in March 1921, had campaigned against the occupations of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In June 1921, United States representatives presented a withdrawal proposal, known as the Harding Plan, which called for Dominican ratification of all acts of the military government, approval of a loan of US$2.5 million for public works and other expenses, the acceptance of United States officers for the constabulary--now known as the National Guard (Guardia Nacional)--and the holding of elections under United States supervision. Popular reaction to the plan was overwhelmingly negative. Moderate Dominican leaders, however, used the plan as the basis for further negotiations that resulted in an agreement allowing for the selection of a provisional president to rule until elections could be organized. Under the supervision of High Commissioner Sumner Welles, Juan Bautista Vicini Burgos assumed the provisional presidency on October 21, 1922. In the presidential election of March 15, 1924, Horacio Vásquez Lajara handily defeated Francisco J. Peynado. Vásquez's Alliance Party (Partido Alianza) also won a comfortable majority in both houses of Congress. With his inauguration on July 13, control of the republic returned to Dominican hands.
The Vásquez administration shines in Dominican history like a star amid a gathering storm. After the country's eight years of subjugation, Vásquez took care to respect the political and civil rights of the population. An upswing in the price of export commodities, combined with increased government borrowing, buoyed the economy. Public works projects proliferated. Santo Domingo expanded and modernized. This brief period of progress, however, ended in the resurgent maelstrom of Dominican political instability. The man who would come to occupy the eye of this political cyclone was Rafael Trujillo.
Although a principled man by Dominican standards, Vásquez was also a product of long years of political infighting. In an effort to undercut his primary rival, Federico Velásquez, and to preserve power for his own followers, the president agreed in 1927 to a prolongation of his term from four to six years. There was some debatable legal basis for the move, which was approved by the Congress, but its enactment effectively invalidated the constitution of 1924 that Vásquez had previously sworn to uphold. Once the president had demonstrated his willingness to disregard constitutional procedures in the pursuit of power, some ambitious opponents decided that those procedures were no longer binding. Dominican politics returned to their pre-occupation status; the struggle among competing caudillos resumed.
Trujillo occupied a strong position in this contest. The commander of the National Army (Ejército Nacional, the new designation of the armed force created under the occupation), Trujillo came from a humble background. He had enlisted in the National Police in 1918, a time when the upper-class Dominicans, who had formerly filled the officer corps, largely refused to collaborate with the occupying forces. Trujillo harbored no such scruples. He rose quickly in the officer corps, while at the same time he built a network of allies and supporters. Unlike the more idealistic North American sponsors of the constabulary, Trujillo saw the armed force not for what it should have been--an apolitical domestic security force--but for what it was: the main source of concentrated power in the republic.
Having established his power base behind the scenes, Trujillo was ready by 1930 to assume control of the country. Although elections were scheduled for May, Vásquez's extension in office cast doubt on their potential fairness. (Vásquez had also eliminated from the constitution the prohibition against presidential reelection.) This uncertainty prompted Rafael Estrella Ureña, a political leader from Santiago, to proclaim a revolution in February. Having already struck a deal with Trujillo, Estrella marched on the capital; army forces remained in their barracks as Trujillo declared his "neutrality" in the situation. The ailing Vásquez, a victim of duplicity and betrayal, fled the capital. Estrella assumed the provisional presidency.
Part of the arrangement between Estrella and Trujillo apparently involved the army commander's candidacy for president in the May elections. As events unfolded, it became clear that Trujillo would be the only candidate that the army would permit to participate; army personnel harassed and intimidated electoral officials and eliminated potential opponents. A dazed nation stood by as the new dictator announced his election with 95 percent of the vote. After his inauguration in August, and at his express request, the Congress issued an official proclamation announcing the commencement of "the Era of Trujillo."
The dictator proceeded to rule the country like a feudal lord for thirty-one years. He held the office of president from 1930 to 1938 and from 1942 to 1952. During the interim periods, he exercised absolute power, while leaving the ceremonial affairs of state to puppet presidents such as his brother, Héctor Bienvenido Trujillo Molina, who occupied the National Palace from 1952 to 1960, and Joaquín Balaguer Ricardo, an intellectual and scholar who served from 1960 to 1961. Although cast in the mold of old- time caudillos such as Santana and Heureaux, Trujillo surpassed them in efficiency, rapacity, and utter ruthlessness. Like Heureaux, he maintained a highly effective secret police force that monitored (and eliminated, in some instances) opponents both at home and abroad. Like Santana, he relied on the military as his primary support. Armed forces personnel received generous pay and perquisites under his rule, and their ranks and equipment inventories expanded. Trujillo maintained control over the officer corps through fear, patronage, and the frequent rotation of assignments, which inhibited the development of strong personal followings. The other leading beneficiaries of the dictatorship--aside from Trujillo himself and his family--were those who associated themselves with the regime both politically and economically. The establishment of state monopolies over all major enterprises in the country brought riches to the Trujillos and their cronies through the manipulation of prices and inventories as well as the outright embezzlement of funds.
Generally speaking, the quality of life improved for the average Dominican under Trujillo. Poverty persisted, but the economy expanded, the foreign debt disappeared, the currency remained stable, and the middle class expanded. Public works projects enhanced the road system and improved port facilities; airports and public buildings were constructed, the public education system grew, and illiteracy declined. These advances might well have been achieved in even greater measure under a responsive democratic government, but to Dominicans, who had no experience with such a government, the results under Trujillo were impressive. Although he never tested his personal popularity in a free election, some observers feel that Trujillo could have won a majority of the popular vote up until the final years of his dictatorship.
Ideologically, Trujillo leaned toward fascism. The trappings of his personality cult (Santo Domingo was renamed Ciudad Trujillo under his rule), the size and architectural mediocrity of his building projects, and the level of repressive control exercised by the state all invited comparison with the style of his contemporaries, Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy. Basically, however, Trujillo was not an ideologue, but a Dominican caudillo expanded to monstrous proportions by his absolute control of the nation's resources. His attitude toward communism tended toward peaceful coexistence until 1947, when the Cold War winds from Washington persuaded him to crack down and to outlaw the Dominican Communist Party (Partido Comunista Dominicano--PCD). As always, self-interest and the need to maintain his personal power guided Trujillo's actions.
Although conspiracies--both real and imagined--against his rule preoccupied Trujillo throughout his reign, it was his adventurous foreign policy that drew the ire of other governments and led directly to his downfall. Paradoxically, his most heinous action in this arena cost him the least in terms of influence and support. In October 1937, Trujillo ordered the massacre of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic in retaliation for the discovery and execution by the Haitian government of his most valued covert agents in that country. The Dominican army slaughtered as many as 20,000 largely unarmed men, women, and children, mostly in border areas, but also in the western Cibao. News of the atrocity filtered out of the country slowly; when it reached the previously supportive administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, Secretary of State Cordell Hull demanded internationally mediated negotiations for a settlement and indemnity. Trujillo finally agreed. The negotiations, however, fixed a ludicrously low indemnity of US$750,000, which was later reduced to US$525,000 by agreement between the two governments. Although the affair damaged Trujillo's international image, it did not result in any direct efforts by the United States or by other countries to force him from power.
In later years, the Trujillo regime became increasingly isolated from the governments of other nations. This isolation compounded the dictator's paranoia, prompting him to increase his foreign interventionism. To be sure, Trujillo did have cause to resent the leaders of certain foreign nations, such as Cuba's Fidel Castro Ruz, who aided a small, abortive invasion attempt by dissident Dominicans in 1959. Trujillo, however, expressed greater concern over Venezuela's President Rómulo Betancourt (1959-64). An established and outspoken opponent of Trujillo, Betancourt had been associated with some individual Dominicans who had plotted against the dictator. Trujillo developed an obsessive personal hatred of Betancourt and supported numerous plots of Venezuelan exiles to overthrow him. This pattern of intervention led the Venezuelan government to take its case against Trujillo to the Organization of American States (OAS). This development infuriated Trujillo, who ordered his foreign agents to assassinate Betancourt. The attempt, on June 24, 1960, injured, but did not kill, the Venezuelan president. The incident inflamed world opinion against Trujillo. The members of the OAS, expressing this outrage, voted unanimously to sever diplomatic relations and to impose economic sanctions on the Dominican Republic.
The firestorm surrounding the Betancourt incident provoked a review of United States policy toward the Dominican Republic by the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The United States had long tolerated Trujillo as a bulwark of stability in the Caribbean; some in Washington still saw him as a desirable counterforce to the Castro regime. Others, however, saw in Trujillo another Fulgencio Batista--the dictator Castro deposed in 1959--ripe for overthrow by radical, potentially communist, forces. Public opinion in the United States also began to run strongly against the Dominican dictatorship. In August 1960, the United States embassy in Santo Domingo was downgraded to consular level. According to journalist Bernard Diederich, Eisenhower also asked the National Security Council's Special Group (the organization responsible for approving covert operations) to consider the initiation of operations aimed at Trujillo's ouster. On May 30, 1961, Trujillo was assassinated. According to Diederich, the United States Central Intelligence Agency supplied the weapons used by the assassins.
At the time of his assassination, Trujillo was seventy years old. He had left no designated successor. It soon became clear that the conspirators had planned his assassination more thoroughly than the subsequent seizure of government, which never took place. Puppet President Balaguer remained in office, allowing the late dictator's son, Rafael Trujillo Lovatón (also called Rafael, Jr., or Ramfis), to return from Paris and assume de facto control. Ramfis lacked the dynamism of his father, however, and he eventually fell into a dispute with his two uncles over potential liberalization of the regime. The "wicked uncles"--Héctor and José Arismendi Trujillo Molina--returned to the republic from exile in November 1961. Ramfis, having little enthusiasm for a power struggle, fled the country.
Opposition from Washington, made very plain by the deployment of United States warships off the Dominican coast, blunted the ambitions of the uncles and forced them to resume their exile only days later. Balaguer retained the presidency. As a protégé of the fallen dictator, however, he had neither a power base nor a popular following. Popular unrest, punctuated by a general strike, forced Balaguer to share power with a seven-member Council of State, established on January 1, 1962. The council included Balaguer and the two surviving assassins of Trujillo, Antonio Imbert Barrera and Luis Amiama Tío (the others having been slain by Trujillo's security service). The council lasted only sixteen days, however, before air force general Pedro Rodríguez Echavarría overthrew it in a coup d'état. Rodríguez's attempt at rule also foundered on the rocks of popular protest and opposition from the United States. Less senior officers seized the general, deported him, and restored the council minus Balaguer, who had also been exiled.
The restored Council of State guided the country until elections could be organized. The leading candidates were Juan Bosch Gaviño, a scholar and poet, who had organized the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Dominicano--PRD) in exile, and Viriato Fiallo of the National Civic Union (Unión Cívica Nacional--UCN). In the balloting of December 20, 1963, the conservative image of the UCN and its association with the country's economic elite benefited Bosch, whose support came mainly from the urban lower class. Bosch won the election with 64 percent of the vote; the PRD also captured two-thirds majorities in both houses of the legislature.
The Bosch administration was very much an oddity in Dominican history up to that point: a freely elected, liberal, democratic government that expressed concern for the welfare of all Dominicans, particularly those of modest circumstances, those whose voices had never really been heard before in the National Palace. The 1963 constitution separated church and state, guaranteed civil and individual rights, and endorsed civilian control of the military. These and other changes, such as land reform, struck conservative landholders and military officers as radical and threatening, particularly when juxtaposed against three decades of somnolent authoritarianism under Trujillo. The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church also resented the secular nature of the new constitution, in particular its provision for legalized divorce. The hierarchy, along with the military leadership and the economic elite, also feared communist influence in the republic, and they warned of the potential for "another Cuba." The result of this concern and opposition was a military coup on September 25, 1963.
The coup effectively negated the 1962 elections by installing a civilian junta, known as the Triumvirate, dominated by the UCN. The initial head of the Triumvirate, Emilio de los Santos, resigned on December 23 and was replaced by Donald Reid Cabral. The Triumvirate never succeeded in establishing its authority over competing conservative factions both inside and outside the military; it also never convinced the majority of the population of its legitimacy. The widespread dissatisfaction with Reid and his government, coupled with lingering loyalties to Bosch, produced a revolution in April 1965.
The vanguard of the 1965 revolution, the perredeistas (members of the PRD) and other supporters of Bosch, called themselves Constitutionalists (a reference to their support for the 1963 constitution). The movement counted some junior military officers among its ranks. A combination of reformist military and aroused civilian combatants took to the streets on April 24, seized the National Palace, and installed Rafael Molina Ureña as provisional president. The revolution took on the dimensions of a civil war when conservative military forces, led by army general Elías Wessín y Wessín, struck back against the Constitutionalists on April 25. These conservative forces called themselves Loyalists. Despite tank assaults and bombing runs by Loyalist forces, however, the Constitutionalists held their positions in the capital; they appeared poised to branch out and to secure control of the entire country.
On April 28, the United States intervened in the civil war. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered in forces that eventually totaled 20,000, to secure Santo Domingo and to restore order. Johnson had acted in the stated belief that the Constitutionalists were dominated by communists and that they therefore could not be allowed to come to power. The intervention was subsequently granted some measure of hemispheric approval by the creation of an OAS-sponsored peace force, which supplemented the United States military presence in the republic. An initial interim government was headed by Trujillo assassin Imbert; Héctor García Godoy assumed a provisional presidency on September 3, 1965. Violent skirmishes between Loyalists and Constitutionalists went on sporadically as, once again, elections were organized.
A fractious campaign ensued between the country's two leading political figures: Bosch and Balaguer. Bosch's appeal was tempered by fear; many Dominicans felt that his reelection would rekindle the violence of April 1965. This trepidation aided Balaguer, who also appealed to conservative voting sectors such as peasants, women (considered to be more religious than men), and businesspeople. Balaguer thus won handily, garnering 57 percent of the vote in balloting held July 1, 1966. His Reformist Party (Partido Reformista--PR) also captured majorities in the Congress.
Balaguer went on to serve as president for twelve years. A relative nonentity under Trujillo, he demonstrated, once in power, the astuteness with which he had studied the techniques of the late dictator. Even though as a conservative he theoretically was more secure against military machinations, he actively sought to head off opposition from the armed forces by rewarding officers loyal to him, purging those he suspected, and rotating everyone's assignments on a regular and frequent basis. He curtailed nonmilitary opposition through selective (compared to the Trujillo years) repression by the National Police. His reelection in 1970 and in 1974 was accomplished largely through intimidation. The PRD, the only viable, broad-based opposition party, boycotted both elections to safeguard the well-being of those who would have been their candidates.
The Dominican economy expanded at a record rate under Balaguer. Favorable international prices for sugar provided the basis for this so-called Dominican miracle. Foreign investment, foreign borrowing, foreign aid, the growth of tourism, and extensive public works programs also contributed to high levels of growth. By the late 1970s, however, the expansion had slowed considerably as sugar prices dipped and oil prices rose. Rising inflation and unemployment diminished support for the government, particularly among the middle class.
The PRD, feeling the mood of the population and sensing support from the administration of United States president Jimmy Carter, nominated Silvestre Antonio Guzmán Fernández to oppose Balaguer in the elections of May 16, 1978. A relatively heavy 70 percent turnout seemed to favor the PRD; early returns confirmed this as Guzmán built a sizable lead. Early in the morning of May 17, however, military units occupied the Central Electoral Board and impounded the ballots. Clearly, Balaguer was attempting to nullify the balloting or to falsify the results in his favor. Only forceful remonstrances by the Carter administration, backed up by a naval deployment, moved Balaguer to allow the resumption of the vote count. Two weeks later, Guzmán's victory was officially announced.
Guzmán's assumption of office on August 16, 1978, presented many political challenges to both him and the republic. Mindful of the fate of Juan Bosch sixteen years before, Guzmán determined to move slowly in the area of social and economic reforms and to deal as directly as possible with the threat of political pressure from the armed forces. He attacked the latter problem first with a program of military depoliticization that included the removal or the reassignment of general officers of questionable loyalty or professionalism, the promotion of younger and more apolitical officers than those who had held sway under Balaguer, and the institution of a formal training course for officers and enlisted personnel that stressed the nonpolitical role of the armed forces in a democratic society. This campaign was largely successful, and it constituted the major legacy left by Guzmán to his successor, Salvador Jorge Blanco.
Politically, Guzmán was restrained to some extent by the unusual outcome of the 1978 elections. Although the Central Electoral Board acknowledged the PRD's victories in the races for the presidency and the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of Congress), it managed through some creative counting--apparently taking the number of ballots not used in some provinces and dividing them among the top two vote-getters--to give Balaguer's PR a sixteen to eleven majority in the Senate. This essentially granted the PR a legislative veto over any initiatives Guzmán might wish to launch, and it also became a factor in the president's cautious approach to reform.
Some observers felt that Guzmán's economic and social background--he was a wealthy cattle rancher from the Santiago area--influenced his economic policies as well. Despite his nationalization of public transportation and an increase in the minimum wage, more reform-minded politicians, even within his own party, criticized the president for his inadequate response to continued economic decline. Jorge was one of Guzmán's leading critics in this area; ironically, he too, would be confronted with the stark realities of the economy and the lack of acceptable options available to the president after his own election in 1982. Faced with the continually rising oil prices and declining sugar prices, Guzmán opted for politically unpopular austerity policies, including a steep increase in the retail price of gasoline. Compounding to the general woes of a slowed economy was the extensive damage wreaked on the country by Hurricane David in August 1979.
In retrospect, the Guzmán administration represented a bridge between lingering post-Trujillo authoritarianism and a more liberal, democratic style of politics and government. Guzmán's professionalization of the military was a significant contribution to this process. Although the Dominican economic situation plagued him, Guzmán handled matters with sufficient competence to allow for the election of Jorge on the PRD ticket on May 16, 1982. (Guzmán had pledged not to seek reelection.) Jorge's leading opponents had been PR candidate Balaguer and Bosch, who had split from the PRD and had formed his own party, the Dominican Liberation Party (Partido de la Liberación Dominicana--PLD). For reasons never fully explained, Guzmán committed suicide in July 1982; he was said to have been depressed by allegations of corruption and nepotism in his administration. His vice president, Jacobo Majluta Azar, served out the remainder of the term. Guzmán's suicide prevented what would have been a historic event--the peaceful transfer of power from one freely and fairly elected president to another. Jorge's administration also fell victim to corruption and the effects of economic austerity. With the election and peaceful return to power of Balaguer in 1986, a tradition of fair electoral competition appeared to be developing; democracy seemed to be taking root in the Dominican Republic.