Turn-of-the-century financial crises lead to U.S. Occupation--Despite the years of war and the raping of its treasury by a series of caudillo presidents eager for personal gain, the rich, fertile lands of the Dominican Republic attracted investments by the powerful new agro-industrial capitalists of the 20th century. Tobacco, cacao, coffee and sugar cane created dizzying levels of land and money speculation, and spurred the laying of railroads and highways across the country--and spurred new immigration, too (this is when the "cocolos," free Blacks from the Protestant Caribbean, began to arrive). Developed nations like the U.S., France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and England were eager to loan the Dominican Republic money that was backed by government bonds, as was the private, U.S.-owned "Improvement Company." 

By 1900, the Dominican government officially owed the Improvement Company and foreign governments more than US$34 million, yet governmental income was only US$2 million annually! It was a recipe for disaster. President Juan Isidro Jiménez tried to negotiate a compromise, a reduced payoff, but the Improvement Company refused to accept. For the next 15 years, he, Horacio Vásquez, Alejandro Woss y Gil, Carlos F. Morales Languasco, and Ramón Cáceres vied among themselves for the presidency. All tried to please the foreign lenders, while pocketing as much wealth for themselves and their followers as they could. President Morales allowed the U.S. "to help" with the collection of customs taxes and negotiation of the country's external debts in exchange for economic and political support. The resulting Laudo Arbitral was not popular, not with Dominicans nor with the foreign lenders. Renegotiated arbitration agreements were equally unpopular and it was feared that any one of the foreign lenders might attempt to recoup their money by force. 

  Following the mandates of the Monroe Doctrine to prevent any European power from seizing control in the Americas at any cost, the U.S. set up a "protectorate" in the Dominican Republic in 1905. President Cáceres, who had cooperated with the U.S., was assassinated in 1911. The Dominican Congress appointed Eladio Victoria to the presidency in February of 1912, but it didn't prevent a bloody civil war. As if that weren't enough, Haiti took advantage of the situation to encroach upon recognized Dominican territory. The U.S. sent in a "pacification commission" to try to resolve all the problems. The commission was accompanied by more than 750 U.S. Marines. Meanwhile, Archbishop Alejandro Adolfo Nouel was named to the presidency that Victoria renounced, and then José Bordas Valdez, which caused more flurries of revolts. In July 1914, the U.S. government stepped in to control the fighting, provisionally appointing Dr. Ramón Báez (Buenaventura's son) to the presidency on August 27, 1914. Finally, democratic elections were held in October. Juan Isidro Jimenez won another term, but it was short-lived because he refused to capitulate to all the terms demanded by the U.S. government. Impeachment was threatened and the delicate political situation was unbalanced yet again. Like an early storm warning, Dominicans should have heeded the events of July 28, 1915, when the U.S. Marines occupied Haiti in order to stabilize the political and economic chaos there.

On May 16, 1916, U.S. Marines moved in to occupy the capital of Santo Domingo, occupying the rest of the country over the course of the next three months. The First U.S. Occupation would last until 1924. During that 8-year-long period, Dominican affairs were directed by Captain Harry S. Knapp, then by General B.H. Fuller, and finally by Rear Admiral Thomas Snowden. Among the many, many changes implemented during this time--highway construction, improved mail service, expansion of the public school system, institution of a public health and sanitation division, changes to the judicial and penal systems, among others--no doubt the most influential on the country's future history was the establishment of the U.S.-Marine-trained Dominican National Guard, whose name was changed to the Dominican National Police in 1921 (and to the National Army in 1928). Among the recruits was a young Dominican from San Cristóbal, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina.

The U.S. Occupation was slowly phased out under the Hughes-Peynado Plan, negotiated between U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and the Dominican diplomat "Pancho" Peynado. U.S. diplomat Sumner Welles was sent back to the Dominican Republic to oversee the plan's implementation under the provisional presidency of Juan Bautista Vicini Burgos, who was sworn in on October 1, 1922. The first free elections were held on March 15, 1924, when Horacio Vásquez was elected to another term. The Occupation was officially ended on July 12, 1924. 

Interim, 1924-1930--Many Dominican historians say that the presidency of Horacio Vásquez from 1924 to 1930 was nothing more than a disguised continuation of the U.S. Occupation. True, he did continue many of the U.S.-implemented policies, but he also sought to promote both agricultural and industrial development, as well as international trade, overseeing the improvement of the port facilities at Santo Domingo, Puerto Plata and San Pedro de Macorís. His hand-picked successor was his Vice President Dr. José Dolores Alfonseca. But Alfonseca had a dangerous enemy, a man who had only recently become rich through military concessions and, with the proceeds from these gains, through investments in land and urban properties. His enemy was Trujillo, who had risen to the position of Chief of the National Army. 

The Trujillo Era, 1930-1961--On February 23, 1930, Trujillo and his "private army," in league with a powerful politician from Santiago named Rafael Estrella Ureña, began a successful coup d'tat to oust the president and vice president. Early the following month, Vásquez and Alfonseca resigned and left for exile in Puerto Rico. In the ensuing elections, Ureña won the provisional presidency, but he was a "puppet" for Trujillo, the first of many. The elections proper were held in May, with Trujillo running for president and Ureña as his vice president. There was no opposition. They were sworn into office on August 16, 1930. 

Trujillo, "El Jefe," ran the country for the next 31 years, until his assassination in 1961. In the process, he amassed a fortune, for he ruled supreme throughout the economic "boom" that followed World War II, and there was no industry in the country, no matter how small, in which he or a member of his family did not own the majority share--all of his economic operations were granted special tax exemptions, not to mention that they were protected not only from foreign competition, but from internal trade union and labor demands. Envisioning himself as "Father of the New Fatherland," he had the capital renamed Ciudad Trujillo in 1936, stomping out any antagonists to any of his plans through liberal use of his private squad of assassins, La 42--among those killed were the now famous Mirabal Sisters (it is, perhaps, ironic justice that a gigantic mural depicting them as heroines for their country now adorns the monument that Trujillo erected to honor the change of the Capital's name to Ciudad Trujillo). No doubt the most horrifying and outrageous of his many horrifying and outrageous acts, however, was the massacre conducted under his orders of more than 18,000 Haitians on the Dominican side of the border in October of 1937. 

As with other tyrants, Trujillo accomplished some good along with the bad for which he is so roundly denounced today. He implemented many programs to promote national patriotism and international recognition, and of national reconstruction and modernization aimed at unifying the Dominican Republic's fragmented political system and at bringing the country into the modern, developed era. He dramatically improved the nation's agricultural production facilities and industries, as well as the national educational, health and sanitation programs; he supported the founding and operation of a national symphony, radio and TV stations; built monuments, cultural plazas and striking government buildings; and sponsored an international world's fair. He offered asylum, land and a home to displaced Jews in the region that today is Sosua and encouraged other immigrants and investors to come to the Dominican Republic as well--as long as they were white. 

In the end, however, Trujillo's thirst for power, his excessive greed and egotism were too much even for his friends. And he lost U.S. support. The era had ended when a Latin American dictator could get away with anything as long as he was staunchly anti-communist. The U.S.'s CIA was strongly implemented in the plot led by one of Trujillo's old childhood buddies, General Juan Tomás Díaz, that successfully got rid of El Jefe in what must have been a movie-like scene of car chase and carnage: They machine gunned him down along the Sánchez Highway while he was driving off to visit one of his mistresses on the evening of May 30, 1961. Trujillo's second-in-charge, Dr. Joaquín Balaguer, took over the government. 


Bosch, Balaguer and the 1965-66 U.S. Occupation--Like flowers in a spring rain after a long drought, political parties blossomed in the Dominican Republic after Trujillo's assassination. They included the Movimiento Popular Dominicano (MPD), the Unión Cívica Nacional (UCN), Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), Vanguardia Revolucionario Dominicana (VRD), and the Movimiento Revolucionario 14 de Junio (MR-1J4). Together, they worked to expel the Trujillo family and Trujillo supporters from the country, to regain control. But Balaguer was not so easy to dislodge.

Balaguer's strongest competitor was the writer and social-democrat , Juan Bosch, leader of the PRD, who had recently returned after having been exiled throughout Trujillo's regime. On December 20, 1962, Bosch won the presidential election "by a landslide." But he had many enemies, not just the wiley Balaguer, for it was the Cold War Era, when to be a socialist of any degree was equated with an open invitation to communism. Bosch was deposed on September 25, 1963 by frightened Dominican industrialists and businessmen, backed by the U.S. 

  The early sixties was an era filled with conspiracies and denouncements, revolts and rebellions, overthrows and takeovers, demonstrations and strikes. In an effort, supposedly, to prevent all-out civil war and takeover of the Dominican Republic by communists, the U.S. Marines landed in force on April 28, 1965--it was the second occupation of the century. There were tanks stationed at the entrances to the Mella and Duarte bridges over the Río Ozama, and bloody battles in the streets of Santo Domingo. Four long, violence-filled months later, a provisional government was installed on September 3, headed by Héctor García Godoy, with free elections scheduled for June 1966. The U.S. occupation troops remained in the country to make certain that the elections were peaceful and non-fraudulent. It didn't work. The political campaigns between the two leading candidates, Bosch and Balaguer, were violent and bloody. The U.S. supported Balaguer, who "freely won" the election--but Bosch was confined to house arrest throughout the campaign! 

The Balaguer Regime--Balaguer ran almost unopposed in the following presidential elections of 1970. New political parties formed to compete in the next one, including the Partido de la Liberación (PLD), the new leftist party founded by Bosch, and the Partido Quisqueyano Demócrata (PQD), a radical right party founded by General Wessin y Wessin. But the bloody confrontations between the two radical groups left Balaguer virtually unopposed yet again in 1974. Despite the multitude of allegations that he supervised death squads and ran the country as heavy-handedly as Trujillo had, Balaguer managed to sidestep most of the bad press... until May 16, 1978. That's when Balaguer's military officers and soldiers were televised live as they destroyed the ballot boxes bearing the votes proving that Antonio Guzmán of the PRD had won the election, and beat up witnesses. Balaguer resigned in favor of Guzmán three months later. 

Guzmán's (short) term--in the depths of the world-wide oil crisis--was wracked by financial mismanagement and accusations of corruption; he suicided by shooting himself in the head on July 3, 1982. Meanwhile, Balaguer set his propaganda machine to work at repairing his damaged reputation, and Salvador Jorge Blanco of the PRD, promising the people "an economic democracy," won the 1982 election. But he didn't follow through. Balaguer won yet again in 1986, defeating Bosch and other contenders (who included the indefatigable José Francisco Peña Gómez), and he won again in 1990 through 1996 (he was in office for six years that time). 

In 1996, a compromise candidate, the young U.S.-educated lawyer Dr. Leonel Fernández, was elected to the presidency in a flurry of hope that he would eradicate corruption and introduce an era of economic prosperity. What began with such high hopes ended with the same old charges of corruption as before, especially after the new president, Hipólito Mejía, the "peoples'" president, took office in August of 2000.... Balaguer ran for president again in that campaign and came close to winning!  He says he'll run again in 2004 if the people need him to do so.