Rafael Trujillo

Dictatorial head of the Dominican Republic (1930-1961)

• Born: October 24, 1891
• Birthplace: San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic
• Died: May 30, 1961
• Place of death: Ciudad Trujillo (now Santo Domingo), Dominican Republic

Cause of notoriety: By developing a cult of personality and using brutality against his opponents, Trujillo ruled the Dominican Republic with absolute political control for more than thirty years.

Active: 1930-1961

Locale: Dominican Republic

Early Life

Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina (rah-fah-ehl lay-aw-NEE-dahs troo-HEE-yoh moh-LEE-nah) was born to José Trujillo Valdez and Altagracia Julia Molina. When he was five years old, he contracted diphtheria and came close to dying. His teachers considered him a normal student who was attentive and whose main concern was to appear clean and sharp. At age sixteen, Trujillo worked at the Santo Domingo telegraph office, where he was employed for three years. After this period, Trujillo became involved with a gang, La 44, and was arrested for forging checks.

Political Career

Trujillo was trained by U.S. Marines during the United States’ occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916-1924) at the Escuela Militar de Haina. The U.S. military trained the Policía Nacional (National Police) to maintain order after its departure. In 1919, Trujillo was promoted to lieutenant. When the U.S. troops left the Dominican Republic in 1924, they left Horacio Vásquez as president and Trujillo as lieutenant colonel. In 1927, Trujillo became brigadier general and commander in chief of the Dominican Republic army. Vásquez was overthrown in a coup in 1930, and on May 16, 1930, Trujillo was elected president of the Dominican Republic. He had persecuted, blackmailed, or murdered any opposition to gain his position.

His terror continued directly after he took office. On June 1, 1930, Trujillo ordered the murder of Virgilio Martínez Reyna and his wife. Martínez had suggested to Vásquez’s vice president, José Dolores Alfonseca, that he do away with Trujillo. In vengeance, Martínez was shot, stabbed, and mutilated with machetes. His pregnant wife received two gunshots to her stomach. Trujillo also established a secret police force, the Military Intelligence Service (SIM). This force was in charge of gathering information, torturing enemies, and carrying out murders as Trujillo saw fit.

Trujillo quickly created a personality cult and insisted that people support and praise him. He believed himself to be a messiah to his people and called himself “El Benefactor” (The Benefactor). He changed the name of the capital from Santo Domingo to Ciudad Trujillo. He controlled the radio, newspapers, and television; in schools, he made children pray for “God, country, and Trujillo.” He made his rule legitimate by altering the constitution so that he would win all elections (his party was the only participant). Through these various acts, he succeeded in being the president from 1930 to 1938 and 1942 to 1952; he was then foreign minister—a position that still afforded him rule of the country—from 1953 to 1961.

Trujillo brought a level of stability and prosperity to the Dominican Republic. In 1930, after a devastating hurricane, Trujillo promised to rebuild the country. To this end, he appropriated and monopolized all industries and commerce, strengthening the economy and encouraging foreign investment in the Dominican sugar, cocoa, and banana industries. Because of Trujillo’s absolute political control, the United States felt secure in investing in the island nation. During a period of war and strife in Europe, Trujillo also allowed Jewish refugees and Spanish Republican exiles to immigrate to the Dominican Republic. Trujillo established a federal school and health system and also built roads. By expanding government services, he created a middle class of professional workers. The Dominican economy prospered, the quality of life improved, and mortality rates lowered during his dictatorship.

However, the president also pursued a policy of blanquismo, or the whitening of the race. In October, 1937, he ordered the massacre of fifteen to twenty thousand dark-skinned Haitians who lived and worked in the not-yet-defined border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Haitian farmers were killed for, among other reasons, not being able to pronounce the “r” in perejil, the Spanish word for parsley. According to Trujillo, this massacre was his response to Haiti for supporting exiled Dominicans who were presumably planning to overthrow him. The massacre established the Haitian-Dominican border at Rio Masacre. However, the United States forced Trujillo to pay $750,000 in reparations to Haiti.

During World War II, Trujillo sided with the Allied Forces and gained American support for being anticommunist. Trujillo leveraged his anticommunist position to persecute any political opposition. His regime subsequently became known for its brutality against anyone who opposed it, whether a suspected communist or not. In one of Trujillo’s more notorious acts, Jesús de Galíndez—a Columbia University instructor and exiled Basque who also worked as an informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—was tortured and killed in 1956. Galíndez was kidnapped from were chosen on March 12, one day before his doctoral dissertation defense. His dissertation, titled “The Age of Trujillo,” disclosed the criminal acts of Trujillo’s dictatorship. In 1960, Trujillo allegedly attempted the murder of Venezuelan president Rómulo Betancourt. On November 25 of the same year, Trujillo ordered the murder of the Mirabal sisters (Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa), who were political activists. They were driving home from seeing their imprisoned husbands (the men had been arrested for opposing Trujillo’s regime) when they were kidnapped, taken to a field, beaten, and strangled. Trujillo established torture chambers throughout the Dominican Republic during the last years of his regime.

After the failed attempt on the life of President Betancourt, the United States, along with the Organization of American States (OAS), established harsh economic sanctions and ended diplomatic ties in an effort to destabilize Trujillo’s power. The United States provided arms and support to Trujillo’s opposition. Trujillo was assassinated May 30, 1961, while driving his car. He was succeeded by his son Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, Jr. (Ramfis), who rounded up his father’s assassins, tortured and shot them, and cut up their bodies and fed them to sharks. Five months after taking power, he died from injuries in a car accident.

Impact

During his reign, Rafael Trujillo established a healthy economy, paid off external debt, and built a national bank. He also supported urban development and in 1940 opened the Universidad de Santo Domingo. However beneficial these public works were, they were made possible only by complete tyrannical oppression.

Bibliography

Roorda, Eric Paul. The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930-1945. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998. This book examines the American Good Neighbor Policy and questions whether the United States should have intervened during Trujillo’s dictatorship.

Scheina, Robert L. Latin America’s Wars: Age of the Professional Soldier, 1900-2001. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2003. A very comprehensive and thorough historical account of Latin America’s wars and military governments.

Wiarda, Howard J. Dictatorship and Development: The Methods of Control in Trujillo’s Dominican Republic. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1968. Wiarda analyzes the Trujillo dictatorship through political science theories and thus provides the theoretical background to understand Trujillo’s system of control.