Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Rise of the Caudillo
Like the calm before the storm, the years from 1924 to 1930 were in many ways positive,
led by a progressive president, Horacio Vásquez, whose administration built major roads
and schools and initiated irrigation and sanitation programs. Vásquez extended his four-
year term to six, a constitutionally questionable move that was nevertheless approved by
the Congress. When a revolution was proclaimed in Santiago, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo,
chief of the former Dominican National Police (renamed the National Army in 1928),
ordered his troops to remain in their barracks, effectively forcing Vásquez and his vice
president from office. After a sham election in which he was the sole candidate, Trujillo as-
sumed the presidency. Within weeks he organized a terrorist band, La 42, which roamed the
country, killing everyone who posed any threat to him. An egomaniac of the first degree, he
changed the names of various cities - Santo Domingo became Ciudad Trujillo, for example
- and lavished support on San Cristobal, the small city west of the capital where he was
born; a never-used palace Trujillo had built there can still be visited.
Trujillo ruled the Dominican Republic with an iron fist from 1930 to 1961, lavishing
over 21% of the national budget on the ever-expanding Guardia Nacional and creating a
handful of intelligence agencies dedicated to suppressing any dissent. The torture and
murder of political prisoners was a daily event in Trujillo's DR. Two of the more infamous
incidents were the kidnapping and murder of a Spanish professor teaching in New York
City, who had criticized his regime, and plotting to assassinate the Venezuelan president
Rómulo Betancourt. Trujillo, in spite of being part black, was deeply racist and xeno-
phobic; he sought to 'whiten' the Dominican population by increasing European immigra-
tion and placing quotas on the number of Haitians allowed in the country.
Central Romana Corporation, which accounts for 74% of the DR's total sugar production, is
owned by the Fanjuls who also own Casa de Campo resort
.
During these years, Trujillo used his government to amass a personal fortune by estab-
lishing monopolies that he and his wife controlled. By 1934 he was the richest man on the
island. Today there are many Dominicans who remember Trujillo's rule with a certain
amount of fondness and nostalgia, in part because Trujillo did develop the economy. Fact-
ories were opened, a number of grandiose infrastructure and public works projects were
carried out, bridges and highways were built, and peasants were given state land to cultiv-
ate.
