<< The 20th Century || The Post-Trujillo Era >>
An avowed admirer of fascist Spanish Generalissimo Francisco Franco, Trujillo (left) proved to be one of the 20th century’s most repressive dictators, unleashing a reign of torture, spies, intimidation, and assassination that eliminated his opponents and created a climate of fear in the general population. Confiscating most of the country’s chief industries and a good deal of its land, he enriched himself and his cronies with the proceeds. In a monumental show of ego, he even changed the name of the historic capital from Santo Domingo to Cuidad Trujillo: Trujillo City.
Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.
Rumored to be part-Haitian himself, but expressing disdain for the black republic, Trujillo inflicted some of his greatest atrocities on his island neighbors. In 1937, Trujillo ordered his secret police to massacre all Haitians found on the Dominican side of the traditionally porous border. With thousands of Haitians living and working in the DR, the bloodbath was immense – an estimated 20,000 Haitians were slaughtered.
Having courted American business investment with favorable economic terms, and serving as an anti-Communist bulwark in the region, Trujillo received support from the US government for much of his reign. (As President Franklin Roosevelt once famously remarked, “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”) But Trujillo was so unpopular in his own country that in the late 1950s, the Eisenhower Administration feared the Dominican Republic might be ripe for a Castro-style Communist takeover. After Trujillo unsuccessfully tried to have the president of Venezuela assassinated, the Organization of American States (OAS) imposed diplomatic sanctions on the DR. On May 30, 1961, Trujillo met his own violent death, ambushed and assassinated in his automobile on a country road; the CIA was suspected of engineering it. When he died, Trujillo was one of the richest men in the world, with a personal fortune of at least US $500 million, built by turning much of the country’s economic sector into his own personal fiefdom.
<< The 20th Century || The Post-Trujillo Era >>
