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Rafael Leónidas Trujillo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about Rafael L. Trujillo, former dictator of the Dominican Republic. For other persons see Rafael Trujillo (disambiguation).
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo

Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina (October 24, 1891May 30, 1961) was dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until 1961, occupying the office of President of the Republic from 1930–38 and again from 1942–52. At the end of his final term, he engineered his continued rule of the country as de facto head of state, or dictator. Trujillo was commonly nicknamed, by the country's citizens, "El Chivo" ("the Goat") an allusion to his unabashed promiscuity.

Contents

[edit] Rise to power

Trujillo was born on October 24, 1891 in San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic to José Trujillo Valdez and Altagracia Julia Molina Chavalier. His siblings were Rosa María Julieta, José "Petán" Arismendy, Amable "Pipi" Romero, Aníbal Julio, Nieve Luisa, Pedro Vetilio, Ofelia Japonesa and Hector "Negro" Bienvenido. Early in life, he worked as a telegrapher, a postal clerk and on sugar cane plantations first as a field hand and then as a watchman.

During the United States occupation (1916–1924), Trujillo joined the National Guard, was trained by the United States Marines and followed a military career, mainly advocated to maintain order after the occupation. Quickly rising to high rank, Trujillo overthrew President Horacio Vásquez in 1930. Shortly after this, a hurricane destroyed much of the capital city and Trujillo used this as a chance to begin cultivating a cult of personality that would persist until his death. He rebuilt the city, renaming it after himself (Ciudad Trujillo), and then continued to rename things in his own honor, among them the highest peak in the island, Pico Duarte. He would continue to feed his ego by erecting statues of himself in every public square in every town in the country and indoctrinating children to give their allegiance first to God, then to the country and third to him.

During his rule, there was only one political party, the Partido Dominicano (Dominican Party), to which all adult citizens must have belonged. He was supreme ruler in all aspects of life and belonged to every single club (even if it was just honorary) and had to have a share in all business matters, public and private. To do this, and at the same time crush opposition, he used his secret police SIM (Military Intelligence Service), who would jail, torture and kill for their leader.

Despite his authoritarian personality and his lack of real democratic ideals, he was supported by the US for his strong criticism of Communism, being known as the second biggest anti-Communist after the US president.

[edit] Family life

Trujillo with his second wife Bienvenida in 1934.
Trujillo with his second wife Bienvenida in 1934.

Trujillo's first wife was Aminta Ledesma, whom he married in 1913. She was from a peasant family in San Cristóbal. They had two children; one died early and the other was a daughter named Flor de Oro. Due to his greed and his urge to become a member of the upper class, he divorced Aminta to marry a more socially acceptable woman, Bienvenida Ricardo, of a provincial aristocratic family. In 1937 he divorced her (who was then pregnant with a girl, who would be named Odette) and married his third wife, María Martínez, daughter of Spanish immigrants.

María bore him three children: sons Ramfis and Rhadamés, named after characters in Aida, and daughter Angelita. Throughout all his marriages, his adulterous escapades were well-known and documented and he made no efforts to hide them from anyone. Power is a great aphrodisiac and he used it in this area as he had used it in all other areas of his life, to convey the unlimited and unrestricted reach of his grasp. An example of this is his love affair with Lina Lovatón Pittaluga, an upper-class debutant, shortly after marrying Martínez.[1]

[edit] Constitutionality of rule

Trujillo legitimized his absolute power over the country by passing new constitutions and by winning elections in which only he and members of his party, Partido Dominicano, ran. Eventually, due to political pressure from the U.S. and the Organization of American States, in that the Dominican Republic was following non-democratic outlines (which was true), he decided to conceal his dictatorship under a cheap mascarade of democracy, placing a President that actually received orders from him; Trujillo then placed himself in an alleged second place, an "out of office" position. For the President job, he chose a non-violent, educated member of the Partido Dominicano: Joaquín Balaguer, who proved himself as an endured politician in the Trujillo era, and who eventually outlasted the dictator.

[edit] International policies

In the 1930s, Trujillo became known from his open door policies toward Jewish refugees (in a time where they were being turned away from the wealthier countries) and then toward exiles from the Spanish Civil War. This is viewed by historians as public relations ploys and as attempts to "whiten" the predominantly mixed-race nation, a policy called blanquismo. The latter consisted of immigration conditions that favored the arrival of white or Caucasian people over the rest, in a methodical attempt to increase the white population until it became the main racial group of the country.

Trujillo sided with the Allies during World War II, and his anti-Communist policies initially gained the favor of the United States. During this period he also welcomed Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany. He also ended all foreign debt.

His demise was partially brought about by his poorly concealed, almost clumsy involvement in an attempt on the life of Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt (publicly announced on Dominican radio half an hour before it actually took place), which led to economic sanctions from the United States and other Latin American countries. By 1960, the Organization of American States had unanimously approved attempts to destabilize the Trujillo regime by enforcing harsh sanctions and ending diplomatic ties.[2]

[edit] The Parsley Massacre

In pursuing blanquismo, he allegedly ordered Dominican troops to massacre 50,000 dark-skinned Haitian sugar cane workers in 1937, an action that he claimed was a sovereign response to the Haitian government's support of exiled Dominicans who were working to overthrow him. Another problem was that to consolidate his authority on the ill-defined border between the two countries, Trujillo was in need of vacating the foreign squatters who in many cases were illegaly occupying the land. The US demanded that Trujillo should pay reparations, which Trujillo bargained down to $500,000. The Haitian workers were identified as immigrants, and then murdered by the truckload, if they could not pronounce the letter r in "perejil", the Spanish word for parsley; this, as a clear identification of origin empirically based on the native tongue, for Dominicans speak Spanish and Haitians speak French and Haitian Creole. This action firmly established the Haitian-Dominican border at Río Massacre, or Massacre River (a river that was named after the slaughter of French pirates in the 17th century). He then settled the border region with Haiti, relocating Dominican families to new agricultural developments there.

US Poet Laureate Rita Dove wrote of the massacre in her poem, Parsley:

There is a parrot imitating Spring
in the palae, its feathers parsley green.
Out of the swamp the cane appears ...

El General has found his word: perejil.
Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth appearing
out of the swamp. The cane appears

in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming.
And we lie down. For every drop of blood
there is a parrot imitating spring.
Out of the swamp the cane appears.

[edit] Domestic policies

Trujillo oversaw the modernization of the Dominican Republic. Under his reign, a middle class of professionals and technocrats was created, along with scores of other public services such as a school system and a health system. He expanded and maintained the telecommunications and transportation infrastructure that had been created under the US occupation earlier in the century.

Trujillo undertook many public works projects and openly encouraged foreign investment, and the country prospered. During his regime, the country saw growth in key agricultural sectors, especially sugar; steadily declining infant mortality rates; rapid population growth, and, by many measures increasing quality of life. Since Trujillo owned many of the profitable businesses, either directly or through proxies, development of the country meant his personal enrichment. Jared Diamond's Collapse mentions Trujillo's protection of the Dominican environment, much enlarged later by Joaquín Balaguer, as one of the reasons for the better state of Dominican nature over the Haitian one. Dominican historians such as Bernardo Vega argue that most of the economic boom of the era was a result of external causes. After World War II many developing nations profitted from a surge in agricultural sales. Supporters of Trujillo constantly point out that during his reign the national debt was paid in full, but Vega points out that Haiti achieved the same feat during the time.

Trujillo strongly supported the merengue form of music, which was largely a music of the rural barrios. Under Trujillo's patronage, merengue became the national music, and the talented Luis Alberti was made to form the Orquesta Presidente Trujillo, providing dance music in the ballrooms of the capital, much to the chagrin of city elites. Merengue was given a European coloration (conforming to blanquismo) by highlighting the thin veneer of jazz and European influence. It is said that Trujillo himself was a good dancer. His brother Petán Trujillo also supported a number of merengue bands at his radio station.[3]

[edit] Scandals

Adding to the resentment of Trujillo was the murder of the Mirabal sisters, which he ordered. The Mirabal sisters were political activists and revolutionaries who were trying to overthrow the government. They were driving home unarmed after seeing their imprisoned husbands when they were picked up by their killers. They were led into a sugar cane patch, and beaten and strangled to death.

Another famous scandal was the disappearance of Jesús de Galíndez in 1960. Galíndez was a Basque exile who initially served the regime and worked as a CIA agent. In the US, he later wrote his PhD thesis, "The Age of Trujillo", which revealed the mechanics of the dictatorship. Days before its scheduled publication, Galíndez was kidnapped in New York City, never to be found again. There had been strong suspicions that he was flown to the Republic to be tortured and executed.

[edit] Death

With the rug pulled from under his regime, Trujillo was shot dead by members of his own armed forces (including Amado Garcia Guerrero) on May 30, 1961 while traveling in an automobile. It has been said that his killers uttered the words "This is the end, Bottlecaps" just before the assassination. (Bottlecap in English stands for Chapitas, another nickname for Trujillo, this one based on his indiscriminate use of medals, referring to the use of bottlecaps as toy medals by Dominican children.)[citation needed]

He was shot five times at point-blank range, then his body was thrown into the trunk of the killer's car and taken from the scene. The CIA had provided weapons, which were kept by Simon Thomas Stocker, an American citizen, code named "Hector" by the CIA, and resident of the Dominican Republic since 1942, who declined CIA monetary compensation for his efforts. The weapons were hidden for more than two months, at his own risk, inside a small closet in his personal study at his private residence (recently demolished), previously located on the south side of Independencia Avenue, near the crossing with General Máximo Gómez Avenue.

It is suggested that the CIA promoted the formation of a less reactionary government, fearing that Trujillo's repressive tactics could lead to another "revolutionary situation" as had occurred in nearby Cuba.

Trujillo was buried in the famous Parisian cemetery, Cimetière du Père Lachaise, at the request of his many relatives who had fled into exile in Canada, France, and Spain. [1]

[edit] Dominican Republic after his death

His son Ramfis Trujillo took power, brutally repressing any elements believed to be connected with his father's death. Former Trujillistas kept much of their power within the country until the early 1990s within the many terms served by the former Trujillo protégé Joaquín Balaguer

[edit] Legacy

Because of the general economic downturn since the 1960s, some rural Dominicans feel nostalgia for the Trujillato (the Trujillo era) and the reign of Balaguer. Among Dominicans, there is still discussion as to the merits of his rule. He modernized the country, and oversaw the creation of basic services that Dominicans enjoy today, but in doing so, brutally tortured or silenced all opposition. In his efforts to gain complete control over the country, not only did he kill many Dominicans, he also destroyed churches and other sites of religious significance to the populace. The repressive tactics of the modern Dominican police are considered a big problem in the country, and it is often said that these tactics are part of Trujillo's legacy.

[edit] In popular culture

  • Mario Vargas Llosa wrote a historical novel, The Feast of the Goat, published in 1996, about Trujillo and his hold over the country. Luis Llosa directed a movie of the same name, based on the novel and released in 2005.
  • In 2003 a Spanish film about Jesús Galíndez, El misterio Galíndez, was released. The movie is based on a novel by Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and focuses in the abduction, torture and death of Galíndez. Trujillo appears in several scenes and is played by Cuban actor Enrique Almirante.
  • Edwidge Danticat wrote a historical novel about the massacre of Haitians, The Farming of Bones.
  • In the 2001 motion picture In the Time of the Butterflies, based on the novel by Julia Álvarez of the same name. Trujillo is played by Edward James Olmos. The story is about the Mirabal sisters. The book, on a few occasions, refers to Trujillo as 'El Jefe'.
  • Álvarez also depicted the last years of Trujillo's rule in her work of juvenile fiction, Before We Were Free.
  • In the film The Day of the Jackal, it is portrayed that the Jackal is the same assassin who killed Patrice Lumumba and Rafael Leónidas Trujillo before attempting to murder Charles de Gaulle.
  • Trujillo himself had a cameo in the 1942 film Casablanca. He can be seen in the background of the famous airport tarmac scene starting a silver-colored airplane's propeller on the right-hand side of the screen.[4]
  • Eric Ambler's classic suspense novel, Doctor Frigo (1974), is set in a tropical-island dictatorship very much inspired by Trujillo's Santo Domingo.
  • In the American TV show The X-Files, the episode "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man" suggests that the episode's namesake was involved in Trujillo's assassination.

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The Dictator's Seduction: Gender and State Spectacle during the Trujillo Regime", by Lauren Derby, Callaloo, v. 23 n. 3 (2000), pp. 1112-1146.
  2. ^ http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35639.htm
  3. ^ Paul Austerlitz (1997). Merengue, Dominican Music and Dominican Identity. Temple University Press. 
  4. ^ Trujillo's entry on IMDb

[edit] Bibliography

Preceded by
Rafael Estrella Ureña
(acting)
President of the Dominican Republic
1930–1938
Succeeded by
Jacinto Bienvenido Peynado
Preceded by
Manuel de Jesús Troncoso de la Concha
President of the Dominican Republic
1942–1952
Succeeded by
Héctor Trujillo
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