The Dominican Republic, a colony of Spain until the early nineteenth century, shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the republic of Haiti, with which it has had a long rivalry. The two principal U.S. military incursions into the Dominican Republic were the occupation of 1916–24 and the invasion of 1965. The first was integral to the increasing U.S. involvement in the Caribbean, resulting from economic expansion and strategic concerns. The Dominican Republic figured centrally in this process, with its near annexation by the United States in 1871, the announcement of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1904) as a foil to the European influence in Dominican affairs and the gradual imposition of U.S. control over the republic's internal political and economic affairs. U.S. corporations had taken over much of the republic's large sugar industry and increasingly dominated its trade. When U.S. efforts at direct control over Dominican internal affairs were thwarted, Washington responded with military threats and actual intervention. Brief armed incursions occurred in 1904, 1905, 1912, and 1914, under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.
The occupation of 1916–24, initiated by Wilson and his secretary of the navy, Josephus Daniels, was inspired both by previous policy and by growing U.S. fears of Germany's influence in the Caribbean. A military government headed by U.S. Navy and Marine officers, backed by several thousand Marines, displaced the constitutional Dominican government in 1916. Although there was limited resistance initially, opposition became important later in two distinct forms. The first involved a political struggle waged by nationalist elements of the elite and middle class. The second was a five‐year guerilla war (1917–22) fought by peasants in the country's eastern region. The event bought the first use of U.S. military aircraft in a guerrilla conflict. Both types of resistance, plus the general unpopularity of U.S. interventionist policy in Latin America and elsewhere, helped cause Washington to negotiate a withdrawal in 1924.
The U.S. occupation government, pursuing goals of stability and development, had implemented various reforms. The principal efforts involved education, public health, public works, and improvement of the weak and highly politicized military. Though serious problems affected all these endeavors, the two most successful were the creation of a modern road network and of a more effective but still politicized military. Both of these accomplishments became crucial to the creation of a dictatorship in 1930, by Gen. Rafael Trujillo, who had risen to power in the mid–1920s within the U.S.‐created Dominican military, the National Guard.
There were differences within the U.S. government over Trujillo. Some members of the Congress and elements of the Marine Corps were enthusiastic supporters, with several ex–Marine officers actually holding influential positions in his government. However, the State Department frequently opposed Trujillo, at least until the 1950s when his unconditional support for U.S. positions during the Cold War led Washington to ignore the abuses and megalomania characteristic of his regime. About 1960, following the Cuban revolution, the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, and the formation of internal Dominican forces of resistance, the U.S.–Trujillo relationship shifted. In 1961, Trujillo was assassinated by Dominicans aided by the Central Intelligence Agency.
In April 1965, a rebellion meant to restore the short‐lived (1963) constitutional government of President Juan Bosch was suppressed by the intervention of nearly 23,000 U.S. Marine and Army troops. President Lyndon B. Johnson's decision to intervene, like Wilson's in 1916, had strategic and economic roots, with the difference that the anti–Communist fears of U.S. national security policymakers led Johnson to exaggerate the possibility of the Dominican Republic becoming a “second Cuba.” The intervention was unilateral, although Washington soon pressured the Organization of American States to create an Inter‐American Defense Force, to which six Latin American countries contributed token forces.
The U.S. role in the events of 1965 remains disputed. The State Department claimed to act as a neutral broker by separating the warring factions and arranging for elections; yet most scholars conclude that U.S. actions distinctly favored more conservative elements. Their triumph in the 1966 elections, followed by the withdrawal of foreign troops, led to stable but repressive civilian rule. A U.S. Military Advisory and Assistance Group (MAAG) has maintained close ties with the Dominican military since the early 1960s. This relationship has proved important in recent decades as Washington has used its influence to pressure the Dominican military, and its civilian allies, to accept a policy of stability, gradual democratization, and strengthened ties to the U.S. economy.
[See also: Cuba, U.S. Military Involvement in; Haiti, U.S. Military Involvement in.]
Bibliography
- Abraham F. Lowenthal, The Dominican Intervention, 1972.
- Piero Gleijeses, The Dominican Crisis: the 1965 Constitutionalist Revolt and American Intervention, 1978.
- Bruce J. Calder, The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic During the U.S. Occupation of 1916–1924, 1984.
- Eric Paul Roorda, The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930–1945, 1998
