Juan Emilio Bosch Gaviño (30 June 1909, La Vega – 1 November 2001, Santo Domingo) was a politician, historian, short story writer, essayist, educator, and the first democratically elected
president of the Dominican Republic after the assassination of dictator
Rafael Trujillo in 1961. As founder of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) in 1939, he became the leader of Dominican exiles
during Trujillo's regime. To this day he is remembered as an honest politician and regarded as one of the most prominent writers
in Dominican literature.
Early years
Juan Bosch was born in the town of La Vega, Dominican Republic. His parents were Spanish
Catalan Juan Bosch and Puerto Rican Angela Gaviño.
He lived the first years of his childhood in a small rural community called Río Verde, where he began his primary studies; he
attended high school in La Vega. In his youth he went to Santo Domingo and worked in commercial stores. Later he traveled to
Spain, Venezuela and some of the Caribbean islands.
He returned in 1931, and published his first short stories book,"Camino Real", the essay "Indios" and the short novel"La
Mañosa," about the civil wars in the nineteenth century, which was acclaimed by critics. He created and edited the literary
section in the newspaper Listín Diario, becoming a critic and essayist.
In 1934 he married Isabel García, and had two children with her: Leon and Carolina. As Trujillo's dictatorship was getting
stronger and meaner, Bosch was jailed for his political ideas, being released after several months. In 1938, knowing that the
tyrant wanted to buy him with a position in the Congress, Bosch managed to leave the country, settling in Puerto Rico.
A Long Exile
By 1939 Bosch had gone to Cuba, where he directed an edition of the completed works of Eugenio María de Hostos, something that
defined his patriotic and humanist ideals. In July, with other Dominican expatriates, he founded the Partido Revolucionario
Dominicano (PRD), which stood out as the most active front against Trujillo outside the Dominican Republic.
Bosch heavily sympathised with leftist ideas, but he always denied any communist affiliation. He collaborated with the Cuban
Revolutionary Party and had an outstanding role in the making of the Constitution that was promulgated in 1940.
Married for the second time with Cuban lady Carmen Quidiello, he had two more offsprings,
Patricio and Barbara. At the same time, his literary career was ascending, gaining important acknowledgments like the Hernandez
Catá Prize in Havana for short stories written by a Latin American author. His works had a deep social content, among them "La
Noche Buena de Encarnación Mendoza", "Luis Pié", "The Masters" and "The Indian Manuel Sicuri", all of them described by critics
as masterpieces of the sort.
Bosch was one of the main organizers of the 1949 military conspiracy that landed in Cayo Confites in the Dominican
Republic, to overthrow the dictatorship of Trujillo. However, the expedition failed, and Bosch fled to Venezuela, continuing his
anti-Trujillo campaign. In Cuba, where he returned by requirement of his friends in the Authentic Revolutionary Party, he played
a notorious part in the political life of Havana, being recognized as a promoter of social legislation and author of the speech
pronounced by President Carlos Prío Socarrás when the body of José Martí was transferred to Santiago of Cuba.
When Fulgencio Batista led a coup d'etat
against Prío and took over the presidency in 1952, Bosch was jailed by Batista's forces. After being liberated, he left Cuba and
headed to Costa Rica, where he dedicated his time to pedagogical tasks, and to his activities as leader of the PRD.
In 1959 took place the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, who motorized a political,
economic, and social upheaval in the Caribbean island. Bosch accurately perceived the process that had begun from those events,
and wrote a letter to Trujillo, dated February 27, 1961. He
told Trujillo that his political role, in historical terms, had concluded in the Dominican Republic.
Presidency and Opposition
After 23 years in exile, Juan Bosch returned to his homeland when Trujillo was assassinated on May
30, 1961. His presence in the national political life, as the Dominican Revolutionary Party presidential candidate, was a fresh change for the
Dominicans. His manner of speaking, direct and simple, specially when addressing the lowest classes, appealed the farmers as much
as the people from the cities. Immediately he was accused by the Church and by the conservatives of communist, but in the
electoral match of December 20, 1962 Bosch obtained a sweeping
triumph over his main oppositor Viriato Fiallo of the National Civic Union. On February 27,
1963, Juan Bosch and Armando González Tamayo took possession as the new President and Vicepresident
of the Dominican Republic, in a ceremony that was attended by important democratic leaders and personalities, like
Luis Muñoz and José Figueres.
During his Presidency, Bosch concentrated in a deep, political, economic and social restructuring of the State. He was of unquestionable administrative honesty and highly progressive ideas, maybe too much for a nation
that just had come out from a brutal tyranny of 31 years. On April 29, he promulgated a new
Constitution, extremely advanced even for Latin America, which for the first time declared specific labour rights, and mentioned
unions, pregnant women, homeless people, the family, rights for the child and the young, for the farmers, and for illegitimate
children.
The dirty campaign that had begun earlier, was increased by the military and stimulated by the U. S., and Bosch was overthrown
in a coup led by the infamous Colonel Elías Wessin, on September 25, 1963. The military-imposed government was a Triumvirate conformed by Emilio de
los Santos, Ramon Tapia and Manuel Tavares. The Constitution was declared "non-existent" and Bosch went back to exile in Puerto
Rico.
Less than two years later, the dissatisfaction generated another military rise on April 24,
1965, that demanded the restore of the constitutionally elected Bosch. The insurgents, commanded by
Colonel Francisco Caamaño, removed the Triumvirate from power but on April 28, the United States intervened in the civil war and dispatched
42,000 troops to the island in Operation Powerpack, just as Caamaño (the leader of
the Constitutionalists) said "war would be already over if the U.S. had not intervened." President Lyndon B. Johnson justified the invasion based on his belief that the PRD was filled with
communists. An interim government was imposed, and elections were fixed for July 1, 1966. Bosch was defeated by Joaquín
Balaguer of the Reformist Party (now PRSC), who garnered 57% of the vote. Balaguer's
candidacy was bolstered by fear of resurgent violence should Bosch win, as well as support from the powerful remains of the
dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (of which Balaguer was former member), conservative
sectors including peasants, religious women, and businessmen.
Some people speculate that Bosch really didn't want the Presidency, and he preferred to stay in Puerto Rico, even when his
supporters insisted on his return. Certainly, during this period he was very productive and published some of his most important
historical works and essays: "Dominican Social Composition", "Brief History of the Oligarchy in Santo Domingo", "From Christopher
Columbus to Fidel Castro", and numerous articles of different sorts.
Besides, he didn't return to the Dominican Republic but until April of 1970. He had the intention of reorganizing the PRD, and
turning its members into active, studious militants of the historical and social reality of the country. His project was not
accepted by most of the PRD. The differences and contradictions between Bosch and an important sector of that party, as well as
the corruption that had started to grow within the PRD, made him leave the organization in 1973, and thus he founded the
Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) on December 15 of that same year.
Later he ran unsuccessfully for president as the PLD candidate in 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, and 1994, although it should be
noted that in 1990 there were serious allegations of fraud against then President and candidate Joaquín Balaguer, who would
continue in power for six more years.
After placing third in the 1994 election, the 83 years-old Bosch retired from politics. Already he was suffering of
Alzheimer's, and in 1996 he was practically carried to the consolidation of the Patriotic Front, an alliance between the PLD and
his lifelong opponent Balaguer, as part of the latter's plan to defeat the PRD in the next presidential election.
Death and Legacy
Juan Bosch -Don Juan, as he is affectionately remembered by many- passed away on November 1st, 2001, in Santo Domingo. As a
former President, he received the corresponding honors at the National Palace, and was buried in his hometown of La Vega.
To this day, he is remembered as an honest man of principle. Over the years, as his luck rose and fell, his political
direction oscillated wildly. He described himself as a "non-Communist" and a friend of Fidel Castro, and he told an interviewer
in 1988 that he had never been Marxist.
His legacy in politics is more than relevant: his ideals, while mostly forgotten or betrayed by his followers, remain powerful
principles in public administration. Many believe the Dominican Republic would have flourished both economically and politically
without foreign assistance (namely, the U.S.) had Bosch's government been able to fend off the Johnson administration's overt and
covert pressures, and to carry out all of his proposed reforms.
The contributions of Professor Bosch to literature through his narratives, novels and essays made him a role model for several
generations of writers, short-story writers, novelists, journalists and historians. At one point, Gabriel García Márquez once said that Bosch had been one of his greatest influences.
Bibliography
Short stories:
- Camino Real
- Cuentos escritos antes del exilio
- Cuentos escritos en el exilio
- Más cuentos escritos en el exilio
Novels:
- La mañosa
- El oro y la paz
Essays:
- Hostos, el sembrador
- Cuba, la isla fascinante
- Judas Iscariote, el calumniado
- Apuntes sobre el arte de escribir cuentos
- Trujillo: causas de una tiranía sin ejemplo
- Simón Bolívar: biografía para escolares
- David, biografía de un Rey
- Crisis de la democracia de América
- Bolívar y la guerra social
- Pentagonismo, sustituto del imperialismo
- Dictadura con respaldo popular
- De Cristóbal Colón a Fidel Castro
- Breve historia de la oligarquía en Santo Domingo
- Composición social dominicana
- La revolución haitiana
- De México a Kampuchea
- La guerra de la Restauración en Santo Domingo
- Capitalismo, democracia y liberación nacional
- La fortuna de Trujillo
- La pequeña burguesía en la historia de la Repúblia Dominicana
- Capitalismo tardío en la República Dominicana
- El Estado, sus orígenes y desarrollo
- Pócker de espanto en el Caribe
- El PLD, un nuevo partido en América
- Breve historia de los pueblos árabes
External links
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