history

The History of the Dominican Republic, According to Ralph

Copyright 2001, R.I.P.

The management does not guarantee the validity of any of the facts stated herein.

No student is to quote the following information on tests without the express written pardon of Ralph and the management from all responsibility.

Ralph guarantees only the folklore. Quote "facts" at your own risk.

Adapted from a "lecture" delivered by Ralph to a small (captive) audience of mostly unsuspecting North American eye project personnel (who thought they were being given a tourist briefing) on July 12, 1977. Ralph readily admits he had this audience only because no other entertainment was scheduled for the evening...

(Ralph speaking)

This is going to be a brief, inspiring monologue on the history of the Dominican Republic. First of all, the history of this island didn't start when Columbus came... rather, it was originally inhabited by Indian tribes called Tainos. They ran around mostly naked, had their own delightful alcoholic concoctions (the best part of their legacy to us), their own innovative culinary methods of fattening, roasting and eating captive enemies, and their own monotheistic religion.

Actually, what little is known about the Tainos was written about them by their (often prejudiced) Spanish conquerors, but there have survived a few archaeological artifacts as well. On the way to the airport you will see little booths with little stone artifacts. Those are not the actual (original) Taino artifacts I was talking about, but they're great imitations, and will really impress your neighbors as long as you don't let them look too close and see the "Made in HAITI" inscriptions underneath them.

The Tainos were physically small people. Their soon-to-be Spanish slave lords accused them of having a cultural bias against work. Not surprisingly, either, most of the Tainos died out within a single generation, mostly as a direct result of the unaccustomed benefits of Spanish occupation, such as enslavement, Pre-reformation Roman Catholicism, and all those strange European diseases. The Tainos were replaced quickly with African slaves, who proved to be more rugged, and the ancestry of modern day Dominicans is predominantly African.

Columbus made his first voyage in 1492, and the first island that he landed on was San Salvador, but he also landed on this island, around Puerto Plata. He wrecked his biggest ship, the Santa Maria up there. He had to leave a considerable number of his men to start a settlement with whatever timbers they could salvage while he went back to Spain to show off to Queen Isabella what he had found. He took some Tainos with him for proof.

You all know how the Spanish colonial instincts were, for they have been well documented. They generally had two interests in their minds, one was gold, the other was debauchery. Columbus did not have women on his voyages, so it was all stag up there in Puerto Plata, and the settlers started abusing the Tainos. The Spanish were known to be brutal at times, and before long they managed to perpetrate a few atrocities. The Tainos ganged up and obliterated them, so when Columbus came back the next year, he didn't find anything but ashes and broken wine bottles. Undaunted, he laid claim to the island anyway, in the name of the King of Spain. He named it Hispaniola, which has its root in the Latin name for Spain, which was Hispania.

John Shannon interjects: "On the second voyage he had 20 ships and over 2,000 men, a whole army, priests, everything he needed to establish a colony. This army marched across the island while the ships sailed around."

There's a story of Columbus seeing the Cibao valley and, startled with its beauty, calling it La Vega Real, which means the Valley of the King. The town of La Vega, in the middle of the Cibao region, got its name in this manner.

Columbus didn't have great luck from here on. In fact, the Colon family (Spanish name for the Italian Colombo family) did not have much good luck here either. Columbus was an Italian, worse, a Genoese, (spoke the Queen's Castillian Spanish with a funny accent...). He was a career pirate most of his life. He also became an excellent swimmer... several times before 1492 he pickled his pelt in brine when his ship was sunk from under him by navies of indignant countries he'd been plundering. Sometimes he sailed under "letters of Marque," as a privateer, in other words, a "Rent-a-Pirate."

The biggest thing that distinguishes Columbus from most other mariners of his day was his realization that the world was round, and his desire to reinvent the art of navigation around that innovative principle. He was also a devout Pre-reformation Catholic. Columbus managed to convince Queen Isabella the world was round, and that he could find India and China short path method, just by sailing west (India an China were where all the "cool, stylish" things like gold, jewels, and spices came from.).

Implicit in the deal was also the right to plunder what ever he found, make Catholics out of whoever he didn't kill outright (A God given mandate, according to the Pre-reformation Catholic Church), and make Isabella (and perhaps himself) rich beyond her wildest dreams in the process. This would provide her with more money to kill more godless Moslems in Spain and North Africa, advance the Pre-reformation Catholic Church, kingdom of God/Spain, etc., in those realms. He was unacquainted with Viking literature on the subject of world wide westward navigation, thus no idea that there was another continent between Europe and Asia.

This is the best way to characterize Spanish colonization... You left home to go find gold, come back home rich, impress all of your neighbors who had stayed home, and advance your social status (but the goal was go back home!). Anything that got built was an afterthought, temporary accommodations for the pillagers and plunderers who hadn't pillaged and plundered enough to go home yet. Columbus's motivation was a hope of finding gold. There's a little gold on this island, but not much, and most of that gold was discovered after he was dead.

Columbus established a city here, Santo Domingo de Guzman. Originally it was on the east side of the river. In the earlier years they'd built a church there... but it missed being called the first cathedral in the new world, because before it could attain any size, an invasion of fire ants drove the colonists across the river. (Most of the ants stayed over on the other side except for the ancestors of the little stinging rascals you folks were introduced to the first night you got here). They set the city up in its present location for that reason, although it would have been closer to the airport if it had stayed where it was.

Columbus didn't last long as a viceroy. In fact, he wasn't really a ruler at all. The Spanish were always suspicious of him (must have been that funny Italian accent). His son and his brother also had their chance to rule, and had similar luck. Columbus ended up being sent back to Spain in chains, and he died in disgrace, never knowing that he'd discovered a new hemisphere... nor that the capital city of South Carolina was named after him!

His family built this house in the capital which is known as the Colon house (at this point Ralph passes around a picture postcard), an ugly square arrangement. It wasn't restored until the 1900s. After the Colon family left it, nobody lived there much but the rats. I saw a photograph of it which dates back to 1905 when it was overgrown with weeds and without a roof or windows. It's kind of like the Colon family... they stayed for awhile, but others superseded them. This house has been restored and is pretty nice now.

There were some other sections of Santo Domingo too John wanted me to mention. The Cathedral is the first cathedral in the new world, (though not the first church, which is still on the other side of the river). It's got a monument in it with a big old box in the middle of it, which, they say, has Columbus's bones. (Ralph passes around another postcard.) There's a monument in Genoa, Italy, and they say they have Columbus's bones too! There's another monument somewhere in Spain whose proprietors say is Columbus's final resting place.

John Shannon interjects: "Fraud, fraud!"

I figured it out this way: The box in the cathedral in Santo Domingo doesn't look big enough to have all of the bones of a big fellow like Columbus. They open it every October 12th, and you can look in there and see some bones, but I didn't see what could amount to a full skeleton. Some of his bones are probably in Genoa or Spain so all of these places can really truthfully lay claim to being the burial site of Columbus's mortal remains... at least a few of them...

John Shannon interjects: "Fraud! Lies! They're in Santo Domingo!"

La Casa de los Reyes is where viceroys and other VIPs of that era stayed. It's just recently been restored. La Casa de los Reyes is down by the post office - it's a museum. It has a guided tour that takes about an hour and a half. It's the most interesting and educational of the museums. This is a big place that has all kinds of tapestries. It's got a little primitive sugar mill in it, made out of wood, horse driven (fake horse), grinder, boiler, everything; set up right in the house. Of course it doesn't work, but they show you the origins of the sugar industry. There's lots of paintings on the wall, some old cannon, other artifacts, swords, little suits of armor that I don't see how anybody could have ever fit into, let alone worn to fight in.

The Parque de Independencia is an exhibit of an old section of the wall of the old city. This wall is something -- the whole city was surrounded with this fortification. Coming into the airport you can still see a section of the old fort with the holes for shooting at the English through.

I don't think it is possible to overemphasize the fact that the main Spanish impetus for colonization was gold. They didn't find much gold on Hispaniola, and they didn't find any amber either, that was found later. So, though they set up quite a city, and for about 60 years it was the center of things in the Spanish new world, gradually it declined as gold and other things the Spanish lusted for were found in abundance elsewhere, and the center of New Spain moved to Mexico City and other places in South America. Santo Domingo went into a gradual decline. Even Spanish interest in the island declined slowly and we see, in 1699, the Treaty of Riswick, the Spanish ceded about a third of the island over to France, which became known as Haiti (which was the old Taino word for the whole island), one of the outcomes of the War of the Austrian Succession. The Austrian descendants of the Spanish monarchy had inbred so much that they had become imbeciles that couldn't beget heirs anymore and wars were fought over things like that in those days. In the US they're known as the French and Indian Wars.

Spain kept the part known now as the Dominican Republic. You don't hear too much of Santo Domingo during the 1600s and 1700s. From about 1790 on however, the history of this island had a lot to do with what went on in Europe. In France, beginning in the late 1780s, they had the French Revolution, and France entered a period of turmoil, and much of her old colonial empire disintegrated during those years. She was impotent and unable to do anything about it. The situation in Hispaniola, the French part being Haiti, (Port au Prince being the main colony) was a ratio of about one in ten of white to slave. There was quite a vital slave trade coming from Africa. It was a very lopsided thing. When French power could not maintain itself there, the slaves revolted under the leadership of a gentlemen named Toussaint L'Ouverture. This man, by many students of Black history in the United States, is made out to be quite a hero but he was also an opportunist just like Columbus was. He was able to drive the French out. In fact, they only made one attempt to bring back French rule, and that didn't work at all.

Toussaint drives the French out of Haiti, and then there's a number of years while he's trying to consolidate his power there. Meanwhile, Napoleon comes to power in France. Now, Napoleon's consolidating his power in France too, and is too busy to worry about certain distant parts of what should have been his far flung empire. He leaves Haiti alone until later, but he conquers Spain and installs brother Joseph in Madrid as ruler, and, at this point, decides he has a right to expect that all of the Spanish colonies are his too, and decides he's going to try and take Haiti back to be French also. Napoleon sends a fleet which comes in two waves. The first wave lands in Santo Domingo, and they were able to take that. The second wave tries to land in Port au Prince, and are driven back by Toussaint. La Clerk was the name of the French general. He was a decent general, and his problem wasn't the Haitians so much as malaria and yellow fever, and most of his army died right on his ships or on the shore. It was quite an epidemic. Toussaint is encouraged by this so he begins a march through the southern part of the island to drive the French out of Santo Domingo. A skirmish was fought near here called the battle of Nisau. Toussaint made his headquarters in Boca de Nigua. You are standing on historic ground, the place where Toussaint put his muddy feet. There's some old Spanish fortifications over in there (Ralph points out the window into the distance), nothing but the corner of it left, but the Haitians camped there for a while.

He used Boca de Nigua (here near La Posada) as a brief stopping point. He marched into Santo Domingo from there, drove all the white folks out except for the women that he liked and set himself up quite a harem. He never really did have himself properly installed in Haiti, and when he wasn't there, you know, when the fox is away, the chickens come out to play, and cause trouble. It ended up with him having to go back to Haiti to see things set up a little better, at which time the French were able to enter into Santo Domingo, and they ruled until 1809. There's a town down on the coast known as Juan Baron, named after a Spanish fellow named Colonel Juan Baron, who, after Toussaint had to go back to Haiti, raised an army and ran the rest of the Haitians back out. The French came back in and ruled fairly decently, and what was Spanish remained Spanish. None of this foolishness of trying to impose a foreign and basically unintelligible language on people who were speaking a decent language already, like Spanish.

When Napoleon falls, a fellow named Pedro Santana (later becomes General Santana) raised a revolt and drove the French out. By this time, in Haiti, there's a new ruler. Toussaint has been killed, replaced by another fellow named DeSalienes, a genuine African born hero. DeSalienes was about 18 years old when slave traders snatched him away from Africa. He had been a prisoner in a tribal war, sold into slavery, and brought to Haiti as a plantation slave. He joined struggles against French rule, then served as lieutenant to Toussaint L'Ouverture until L'Ouverture's capture in 1802. DeSalienes then inherited the Black leadership of the colony. In 1804, after the French had been driven out, DeSalienes proclaimed Haiti independent, making it the first free nation in Latin America, and had himself appointed president. DeSalienes ruled dictatorially. He forced the Black lower class either to enter the military or to work as field hands. He was assassinated on Oct. 17, 1806, during a revolt led by Petion. He's got a town named after him, Petionville. Petion was overthrown by a fellow named Boyer, and he manages to stay in power for a little while. Boyer had ambitions which were best summarized as: "Now the French are gone, and Santana won't amount to much."

So Boyer sends an army in, which with remarkable ease, chases Santana into the woods. This is 1822, and begins the second Haitian occupation, which lasts until 1844, and is the darkest period in the history of the Dominican Republic. Everything stopped. The Haitians didn't know how to run things, and inaugurated a period of misrule that has been remembered with rancor ever since. Most of the bad feeling in this country for Haitians dates from this period of Haitian occupation. It is hard to imagine the Haitians mistreating any one else worse than they do themselves, but this period was proof. Most people here have some Haitian ancestry, because their favorite activity was adding to the gene pool, as well as taking whatever else they wanted.

In 1842, Juan Pablo Duarte, a young Dominican whose family had fled when the French left the first time, comes back to this country. He's the true hero of the Second War of Independence. The other two guys who were in on it with him were scoundrels which came out later, but I won't betray that yet.

Duarte's father had left for Europe when the Haitians came through in 1801. Duarte was born in 1800, so was one year old when his daddy took him to Europe. He studied in Paris, had a good education, and was past 40 years old when he came back. Even though he was basically Spanish, educated in Europe, thus, not a real Dominican - for some reason, he came back and saw the condition the country had descended into, and had stirrings in his heart of patriotism. Now he should have felt patriotic to Spain, but they weren't worth it, so he came here. He belongs in the ranks of the Bolivars and San Martins.

Duarte had ideals. For about two years, he and a fellow named Francisco del Rosario Sanchez, and Ramon Matiez Maya, got together a revolt, and sent the Haitians packing. I'll give you an idea just how low the country had descended. It didn't take much to send the Haitians out. Just somebody with a little bit of nerve. Hardly any blood - they just packed up and left, except for a few isolated cases of some fighting. Occasionally they tried to come back, but never after this time were the Haitians able to gain any kind of foothold.

Duarte is the main hero of these actions. Sanchez later on sides with our friend Santana -- and he ends up getting killed leading a revolt, and yet still kept his place on what the Dominicans call their triumvirate... he is still cast as a liberator. General Meya, the other member of the triumvirate, eventually decides it's all a big mistake, the Dominican Republic can't make it on their own after all, and we see him in 1858 negotiating in Spain to get back into their empire, which shows you how much faith he had in Dominican independence. The date of the declaration of independence is important, a lot of streets in the country are named after it - it's the 27th of February, 1844. There's a big avenue in the capital that ya'll came in on and ya'll had supper on Sunday - that's the 27th of February - that big monument there with that flag - that flag's big enough to cover the roof of La Posada.

Duarte, being the only decent one of the three, is thrown in jail within six months of the Declaration of Independence. The man who is known as the father of this country finds himself in chains, and three months after that in exile. They never let him come back except once when, as an old man, he was allowed to stay two months. Just his presence threatened them and they sent him out again. He died penniless in Venezuela.

The second epoch of the history of the Dominican Republic was basically dominated by two figures: Pedro Santana, who by now is a general; and a fellow named Buenaventura Baez. Baez was from Azua. Santana was from San Cristobal. The Baez family used to own quite a bit of Azua, and there's still a lot of them out there, and it's still a good name to have. This period is dominated by this idea that the Dominican Republic could not make it by itself, thus should be a protectorate under a larger, more powerful (and prosperous) country. These characters were determined to unite the country with somebody. You had various forces, various lines of thought in this country. Some of them wanted to align themselves with the United States. Part of the trouble right before the Civil War was the jingoism (expansionism) of the Southern States, some of whom saw Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola as great possibilities as new slave states. The United States had conquered Mexico and stripped her of what is now Texas and the southwest, had "manifest-destinyed" their way to California. Now what does manifest destiny mean? It means it's our manifest destiny to spread as far as we can -- we can't go no farther than California, can't go no farther north because there's Canada and who wants that?

John Shannon, Canadian, interjects: "It's good to know your limitations."

Well we can still go south, but who wants Mexico? Spain wants to keep Cuba and Puerto Rico, so basically what remained was the Dominican Republic. There were several bills entered in Congress and defeated by the Northern States saying 'Why not. Let's listen to the invitations these Dominicans keep sending us...' These folks down here had a political party here which drew all its steam from inviting the US to come over.

John Shannon adds: "That plan lost out in the US Congress by only six votes. It was defeated by the Northern States, then known as the Solid North. 15 northern states, 14 southern states, something like that."

There were two other schools of thought. One wanted to align with France, and another one wanted to go back with Spain. Baez wanted to ally with France at first, and Santana wanted to become a protectorate of Spain. It depended on who was in power at that time, as far as whose plan was being pushed. First it was Baez, then Santana while Baez was in power would raise up a revolution and drive him out, and power see-sawed back and forth between the two... Sometimes three and four times a year, but this period up till about 1870 was dominated by these two men. Whenever Baez was in power, he was sending envoys to France saying "Gee, wouldn't you like to come add us to the French empire." And, whenever Santana was in power, he was sending Ramon Matias Meya to Madrid saying "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if you came and took us back in?" That's what finally did happen... Spain took the bait.

In 1860, Santana succeeds in bringing Spanish rule back in, and in blatant, flagrant violation of the Monroe doctrine, which Lincoln was powerless to do anything about, Spain anchors in Santo Domingo. Pedro Santana meets the new viceroy on the wharf, shakes his hand, kisses his boots and says "How happy I am to see you, and we will work so nicely together, won't we?" And the viceroy says something to the effect of "Yes, you may start by shining my boots." This is basically known as Santana's pipe dream, because as soon as the Spanish were here again, he knew that he'd done the wrong thing.

As early as the 1830s, there had been various American Protestant missionaries in the Dominican Republic, beginning with the Methodists. The Spanish, with their religious fanaticism, began to really cause trouble for the Protestants. If there's one thing that this half of this island has been, it's tolerant toward various religions. The Spanish intolerance got on a lot of people's nerves. Not only that, but Spain wanted people to pay taxes, I mean, if Spain's going to be protecting them, why shouldn't the Dominicans pick up a little of the tab for the protection? But that didn't make too many people happy.

Plus Ol' Santana, who is a megalomaniac, sees himself shunted aside, and promptly starts a revolution. He gets stomped flat by the much more professional Spanish Army, and ends up committing suicide, but by 1865 the Spanish have their belly full anyway.

The American Civil War is now just over and Lincoln is dropping hints to the Spanish Ambassador about how some sort of joint venture would be just the thing for his troops. Europe is aghast at the fact that their armies and navies are now obsolete against a new Union Iron Navy, and the Union Army, which is now the largest, best trained, best equipped and led army the world had ever seen, an army which is just now emerging victorious against another smaller, starved and poorly equipped, but equally well trained and led adversary (the Confederacy). In the meantime certain European countries have taken advantage of Lincoln's preoccupation with his own Civil War to launch some of their own ventures in the western hemisphere, one being Maximillian in Mexico, and another being the Spanish occupation of Santo Domingo. One idea put forth on the matter, originally suggested by General Grant as a means of pulling the Confederacy and Union back together, since it would make comrades-in-arms of former antagonists, was to merge the Union and Confederate Armies, and head for Mexico to flush out Maximillian, and then take care of other business in the Carribean. If Lincoln let word get around he was looking for something proper for such a big army to do... If the Spanish were cooperative, he would just sic them on Maximillian instead... Spain takes the hint, and just picks up and leaves.

From 1860 until 1876 or so, Baez dominates most everything with a few people overthrowing him and throwing him out, then him coming back and overthrowing them and throwing them out, cyclically. Every once or twice a year there would be a revolution. Baez is frustrated in his attempts to ally with France so what's left? You still have the United States.

The United States is converting its fleet of ships from wooden sailing ships to iron steam ships. Steam power is lots better than sail, but when you're using steam, you need somewhere to store coal. So you have the US looking around for coaling stations.

One of the Haitian peninsulas had been sought after by various countries to use for coal storage. The Haitians were alternately too greedy about a price, or too xenophobic (you can look that one up when you get home) to accept the country who came up with the asking price, so attention focused on the Samana Peninsula in the Dominican Republic. This area was also one of the last stops on the "underground railroad" during the 1830s up to the Civil War, because the fugitive slave law didn't apply there (and it's a lot nicer climate there than Canada). A lot of people there still speak English today, descendants of American slaves who were brought down by the Quakers and other abolitionists. This location was thought of as a nice, congenial place to store coal. Using this as bait, Baez begins to negotiate for, if not a protectorate, at least some form of territorial status. (Even if the DR is not on paper as a legitimate territory, as is Puerto Rico, the US still keeps control of things in any area in this hemisphere where there might be undue foreign influence, or it has some other compelling interest. The US keeps depts paid up, and provides stability wherever it has influence. A good example is Panama. Basically the US controls Panamanian politics [Operation Just Cause, for example] even though Panama is still considered a separate sovereign state... Pax Americana...)

Baez was fairly sure there would be a good deal of benefit if the US would lease this peninsula for a coaling station. He was probably right. Thing is, there was also the problem of corruption. Baez never was able to make his government solvent. In order to hold himself in power, he had to keep paying money out right and left to his troops, and lots of other people so they wouldn't overthrow him. The US tended to be leery of governments which were unstable and insolvent.

Add to that all the debts that had been accrued ahead of time by Santana and all the others, this country was never really solvent until 1941 under another dictator. One of their main tactics, the manana ethic (never pay off today what you can float another loan for tomorrow), was "Let's take out a loan -- let's go to Holland or Germany and negotiate a loan. Then we can pay off all our debts, and have a little bit of money to run the government on." So, Baez would take out a loan, run the government down into the hole again, then get another loan to pay off the previous loan, and he'd be able to run his country again. Not much of a fiscal system... no thought of it. The only reliable way to got any revenue was through customs.

They don't do things the way we do at home, with taxes. Of course people with no money can't pay taxes. So, you can get money only if you put a choke hold on the commerce coming in and out of the country. But even then, that's never been a good way of doing things; never did earn them any money. At the most, it just about got them by along side of the loan. This was the state of things all the way up into the 1930's and 40's. It took Trujillo to get them out of debt.

Baez finally, in the 1870s, is thrown out for the last time, and there's a brief period of relatively stable government. This is only the calm before the storm, when Trujillo's main mentor and predecessor came into power, in 1882.

Ulysses Heureaux, (nick named "Lilis") who was of Haitian ancestry though he insisted he came from Puerto Plata (but nobody would ever believe that to look at his pictures!) was a thorough scoundrel. He liked to play practical jokes but his idea of a joke was pretty grim and often involved some hideous tortures. He set up an extensive spy system on the side. He had a mistress in every town that he would go to, and she had two jobs: meeting his carnal needs at night, and spying on her friends and neighbors in the daytime. To rule this country properly, a man has to keep everything in his own head. This is the one thing that set these two men off -- Trujillo and Heureaux -- their prodigious memories. Neither Heureaux nor Trujillo ever forgot a face. That's what kept them in power. Lilis was a thorough tyrant, but he also had his spy system. These women were his secret police, and kept him in power along with all the foreign loans he got from Holland and Germany.

Things got so bad that some men, chief among them Horacio Vasquez, got together and in 1899, they ambushed Heureaux in a little town called Moca near Salcedo. I went and saw the church that they shot him in front of. There's nothing there that says that was it but I asked around, and that's where he was shot, shot right in the mouth. Blood all over the ground, everywhere.

Thus begins another period of chaos. In 1905, Teddy Roosevelt catches the Kaiser negotiating for coal storage rights on the Samana Peninsula. Holland and Portugal are looking around for coaling stations, thinking, "Gee, the US now has Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Why do they want Samana? Wouldn't it be nice if we had Samana?" Again, we were friends with France, so why would we want Germany to have a coaling station on Samana? Well, Germany's main lever into a coaling station on Samana was all the money that Heureaux and Baez owed in debts, and they were threatening to come and take over everything and extract all that money and concessions, and whatever else was extractable, as payment. So the "quiet soft spoken little man" shakes his big stick and whispers a resounding "No." What he does, he forces his way in and takes over the customs office which is, as I said, the main source of revenue, other than foreign loans. He says "Kaiser, stay over there, you don't want to deal with these Dominicans, I know them better than you... Just be patient, I'll get your money for you." That wasn't what Kaiser Bill had in mind, but nobody argued with Teddy Roosevelt. Now Roosevelt sets up a customs receivership, run by the Americans. There's a good deal of money to be made in customs.

Teddy Roosevelt made the Dominican customs system a going concern, and in a short time they were able to begin paying off these loans and even have a little money to run the country with. Well, then you come to the time of World War I. Teddy Roosevelt has gone on to greener pastures, so Germany begins to rattle its sabre a little bit, and says "Gee, if we get in a war with you, we're going to take either Samana or Puerto Rico for a coaling station and what are you going to do about it?" President Wilson sends the Marines, this is in 1916. The first Marine invasion in this country built a whole lot of roads and everything. The road that goes between Santo Domingo and Puerto Plata -- the Marines built that. Under the Marines, a fellow named "Uncle Rafael" (I've been advised to call him, so that nobody will recognize the name Trujillo -- there might be some of his friends out there.) Uncle Rafael got his training under the Marines, and when the Marines left in 1924, he was the general they left behind in command of the little army they trained to take over their jobs. The President is the man who shot Lilis in the mouth -- Horacio Vasquez. He's an old man by now -- he was a young man then, and he's not quite what he was. In 1930, Trujillo stages a coup d'etat, a glorious revolution as he called it, and he displaces Vasquez, and installs himself as "Generalissimo."

Probably the most useful thing Trujillo did was get this island out of debt, and truly independent again, albeit through extortion and murder. He paid off the rest of the foreign debts. In 1941, the US packed up and handed the customs back over to the Dominicans, and now it's in the state that it's in, but it wasn't that way during the time of Trujillo. He made customs work... for him. He made a habit of appropriating ostensibly for the Dominican Government (his own method of nationalization...) any industry that appeared to be making a profit, and became immensely rich. He installed his family and all his friends in all the good jobs. He developed a spy system similar but more extensive than that of Lilis, since his involved not just mistresses (which he had plenty of) but other people in every walk of life including the church.

Trujillo settled the Haitian problem once and for all. He drove all the Haitians out of the country. Those that didn't want to leave quietly got their throats cut. It was very messy. Trujillo's estimates were 25,000 dead, bodies floating down the Massacre River -- massacred by persons unknown. What else did you expect? That's the name of that river now. Dajabon, where we have some of our projects, is planted right there, on the Massacre River.

Roosevelt II caught wind of it, and got the League of Nations to send an investigating team (among the few times they did anything useful) and they decided the correct figure was closer to 100,000 dead. Naturally, Trujillo was deeply insulted. That was the last act that the League of Nations did before they disbanded, prior to the Second World War, settling this dispute between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Because of the Massacre, the DR had to pay reparations to Haiti, what amounts to about $1.50 for every Haitian killed. This was in 1937 or 1938.

John adds: "Many of these Haitians had been born in the Dominican Republic. It was just like the "Shibboleth" story in the Bible (Judges 12:6). Any suspected Haitian was interrogated by Dominican soldiers and ordered to pronounce the name of a certain type of grass, and a true Haitian cannot pronounce it properly. If they said it the wrong way they were shot immediately."

Everybody here has Haitian ancestry. It's really complicated. Trujillo's mother was part Haitian (a fact that he endeavored all his life to cover up). A lot of Haitians married Dominicans -- so what are the children? Well to Trujillo, if you had any Haitian blood in you, you were Haitian. Maids, trusted family servants, were all shot. The soldiers, most of whom had Haitian ancestry themselves, had no choice in the matter. They had to do it. Every day, these people would come across that bridge up there to sell stuff. As soon as they got across the bridge, they'd be taken away and shot. The only ones who were permitted to survive were the ones who were able to run to the American sugar estates. Trujillo didn't want too much word up there getting to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

World War II was good to Trujillo. To clean up his reputation, he offered to take in Jewish refugees. The Dominican Republic was one of the few countries that would accept exiled Jews, and though most of them have gone on to greener pastures, Puerto Plata was home for several thousand for a while.

Trujillo was wildly megalomanic, and for a while held the Guinness world record for number of statues he had erected to honor himself. He also renamed Santo Domingo "Ciudad Trujillo." His paranoia knew no bounds either, and his secret police operated where ever there were Dominicans... inside the Dominican Republic as well as abroad. He engaged in certain covert acts of kidnapping, sabotage and assassination which got him in considerable trouble in the world community.

Anyway, in 1961, right out there in front of where you see the waves shooting a bunch of steamy looking water into the air on the road to the airport, the George Washington Freeway, in Santo Domingo, Trujillo got himself perforated. His problem was the women. He always wanted to go out and see a mistress. He had a jealous wife. He kept a car, a '57 Chevy, nondescript looking thing, painted blue -- didn't look like his other limousines. He was just riding there -- him and a chauffeur. There were 11 or 12 Generals and Colonels who didn't have a big enough piece of the pie and they weren't happy with their share, so they followed him out on one of his nightly visits (its rumored he was headed out here to La Posada, known as Hacienda Maria at that time). One car passed him and slowed down. The other car came up behind, and both cars commenced firing. He never had a chance. I've seen pictures of the car. Why he didn't get it earlier, for he was in power over 30 years... He had quite an instinct for survival.

In 1961, begins another period of turmoil for the DR. Trujillo's sons are not able to hold onto things, and they left -- they kept their ship parked out here in front of La Posada, and they loaded all their shoe boxes full of money on it and sailed off to Spain. Balaguer, the gentleman who's President now, was puppet president then. He tried to keep control of things but eventually he had to leave too. They set up another constitution and Juan Bosch, who had been out of the country for 30 years, comes back, gets himself elected President in 1962, is overthrown by the military and has to leave.

Johnson succeeds Kennedy, and almost immediately recognizes Wesson y Wesson, the new dictator. He's an air force general, one of the minions of Barahona, he owns most of the province. He's a scoundrel. He gets thrown out in 1965 by the Bosch forces. Johnson gets scared. It is rumored that the American Ambassador down here stayed under his desk for three days on the telephone to Washington, wouldn't even leave his hiding place to go to the bathroom. He was so scared of the Bosch forces, thinking the communists were gonna get him. The rumor was that a Castro style revolution was going to take place in the DR. Johnson sent the Marines again -- the second Marine invasion.

There was a settlement after this. There's an election, and Balaguer takes power. Wesson y Wesson plans to overthrow Balaguer, and makes a tape to go over all the radio stations to announce his takeover. Somehow this finds its way into Balaguer's hands. Balaguer calls a big press conference -- everybody has to be there -- all the generals, colonels, government officials, Secretary of State -- everybody's there and it's on national television. But the TV camera is focused on Wesson y Wesson. He doesn't even know what's about to happen. Balaguer's standing up there with his tape recorder. He starts playing this announcement of a takeover. They say Wesson y Wesson just shriveled up. They couldn't shoot him because he has too many supporters here, but sent him into exile. Balaguer has been in power ever since.

(Balaguer was in power off and on until 1996.)