Trujillo Molina, Rafael Leónidas (1891–1961)

Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina (b. 24 October 1891; d. 30 May 1961), military officer and ruler of the Dominican Republic (1930–1961). In 1918 Trujillo, a native of San Cristóbal who had been a telegraph operator and security guard, joined the National Guard that had been established by the U.S. occupation forces in the Dominican Republic. His obedience, discipline, and organizational talents, as well as his enthusiastic participation in the suppression of a guerrilla movement in the eastern part of the country, endeared himto the occupiers, who promoted him rapidly. In 1924, when the National Guard was transformed into the Dominican National Police, Trujillo became its chief officer. When the National Police became the National Armed Forces in 1928, Trujillo emerged as its commander in chief. By using his power as military chief in the maneuverings of Dominican politics, Trujillo became president by 1930.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SUPREME POWER (1930–1940)

During the next decade, Trujillo established the most totalitarian control over his people that any Latin American country had theretofore experienced. All political parties, newspapers, radio stations, trade unions, and private associations that did not agree with him ceased to exist. Persistent opponents were bribed, jailed, murdered, or driven into exile. In order to "whiten" (blanquear) his country, Trujillo ordered the massacre of all Haitians in the Dominican Republic. In October 1937, an estimated 25,000 Haitians were slain by his agents. After the completion of this slaughter, the Dominican ruler encouraged the immigration of European Jews and refugees from the Spanish Civil War, as well as Japanese and Hungarians after 1956.

During the first decade of his rule, Trujillo converted much of the Dominican Republic into his private fief by acquiring immense landholdings and monopolies over the export-import trade. Primarily in order to increase his personal fortune (estimated by 1960 to have been U.S.$800 million), Trujillo modernized his country by the introduction of agricultural machinery, new industrial plants, and a paved road system. Impressed by the modernity, cleanliness, and stability of his country, foreign journalists and politicians heaped praise on the Dominican dictator, who launched a campaign of self-glorification. Santo Domingo became Ciudad Trujillo, and Pico Duarte, the highest mountain in the Caribbean (10,500 feet) was renamed Monte Trujillo. The province in which he had been born was named for his father, José Trujillo Valdez, and a western province became known as El Benefactor, a title the dictator had bestowed on himself.

After having himself fraudulently reelected in 1934 for another four years, Trujillo began in 1938 the practice of installing puppet presidents whom he could control from behind the scenes. The first of these presidents was a professor of law, Jacinto B. Peynardo, one of whose first actions was to appoint Trujillo's nine-year-old son, Rafael Trujillo Martínez (Ramfis), brigadier general. Upon Peynado's death in 1940, Manuel de Jesús Troncoso De La Concha became president of the Dominican Republic.

By means of various austerity measures, Trujillo succeeded in making regular payments on the Dominican Republic's debt to the United States, which pleased U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt so much that he invited Trujillo and his family for a White House visit in 1939. One year later, the Trujillo-Hull Treaty went into effect, ending the collection of Dominican customs duties by the United States. Trujillo hailed the closing of this humiliating chapter in Dominican history as his personal triumph and erected a monument commemorating the treaty along Santo Domingo's waterfront, where it still stands.

WORLD WAR II AND THE COLD WAR (1940–1955)

When the United States became involved in World War II, the Dominican Republic was one of the first Latin American countries to declare war on the Axis. The conflict proved to be a great boon for the export of Dominican coffee, cocoa, tobacco, and sugar. When it became clear by 1944 that the democracies would triumph over the fascist powers, Trujillo thought it wise to create a "political opening" by permitting the organization of a number of opposition parties. The Dominican ruler used the start of the cold war in 1947 to put an end to this experiment by arresting, torturing, and killing the leaders of the opposition that he had allowed to emerge only three years before. Trujillo portrayed himself as the staunchest anticommunist leader of Latin America and in 1955 convoked a Fair of Peace and Brotherhood of the Free World that cost the then astronomical sum of U.S.$50 million. The fair, which was only sparsely attended by foreign dignitaries, represented the apogee of Trujillo's power.

SANCTIONS, DECLINE, AND DEATH (1956–1961)

After the twenty-fifth anniversary of his rule in 1955, Trujillo was beset by both external and internal challenges. The era of dictators in Latin America seemed to draw to a close. In 1955, Juan Perón was toppled in Argentina. Two years later, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla fled Colombia, and in 1958 Marcos Pérez Jiménez was overthrown in Venezuela. By 1959 Trujillo was the unwilling host to Fulgencio Batista, who had fled to Santo Domingo when the triumphant guerrillas of Fidel Castro entered the Cuban capital on 1 January of that year. Venezuela's new president, Rómulo Betancourt, and Fidel Castro of Cuba assisted in the launching of an anti-Trujillo expedition by Dominican exiles on 14 June 1959. The revolutionaries, who returned to their native land by both air drops and coastal landings, were either killed or captured. Although this expedition met with disaster, it inspired some domestic enemies of Trujillo's to form a secret Castroite organization called the Fourteenth of June Movement, which was led by the charismatic lawyer, Manolo Tavarez.

When Trujillo retaliated by bombing Rómulo Betancourt's car, injuring the Venezuelan president and killing a number of his advisers, the Organization of American States imposed severe economic sanctions in 1960 on the Dominican Republic. The administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower, already displeased over Trujillo's 1956 kidnapping and murder of Columbia University instructor Jesús de Galíndez, dealt a crippling blow to the dictator by imposing a special excise tax on Dominican sugar. Domestically, Trujillo aroused a wave of opposition from all segments of society, including the Roman Catholic hierarchy, when it was learned that his secret police had waylaid, raped, and then murdered the three young daughters (Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa Mirabel) of a prominent merchant. When a desperate Trujillo dispatched agents to Communist Eastern Europe to seek help against the United States, the CIA sent arms to opposition elements in Santo Domingo; they attacked and killed Trujillo on the night of 30 May 1961. Thus the aging dictator was removed after an iron rule of thirty-one years, but the legacy of his reign loomed over his nation for decades to come.

See alsoFascism; Perón, Juan Domingo; Tronscoso de la Concha, Manuel de Jesús; World War II.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arturo R. Espaillat, Trujillo: The Last Caesar (1963).

Robert D. Crassweller, Trujillo: The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator (1966).

G. Pope Atkins and Larman C. Wilson, The United States and the Trujillo Regime (1972).

Jesús De Galíndez, The Era of Trujillo: Dominican Dictator (1973).

Bernard Diederich, Trujillo: The Death of the Goat (1978).

José Rafael Vargas, Trujillo: El final de una tiranía (1985).

Bernardo Vega, Unos desafectos y otros en desgracia: Sufrimientos bajo la dictadura de Trujillo (1986), La vida cotidiana dominicana a través del archivo particular del generalísimo (1986), Los Trujillo se escriben (1987), Trujillo y Haiti (1988), Nazismo, fascismo, y falangismo en la República Dominicana, 2nd ed. (1989), and Eisenhower y Trujillo (1991).

Additional Bibliography

Alvarez López, Luis. Estado y sociedad durante la dictadura de Trujillo. Santo Domingo: Editora Cole, 2001.

Capdevila, Lauro. La dictadura de Trujillo: República Dominicana, 1930–1961. Trans. Denise Armitano. Santo Domingo: Sociedad Dominicana de Bibliófilos, 2000.

Céspedes, Diógenes, and Juan Bosch. Los orígenes de la ideología trujillista. Santo Domingo: Biblioteca Nacional, 2002.

Herrera Rodríguez, and Rafael Darío. Revueltas y caudillismo: Desiderio Arias frente a Trujillo. Santo Domingo: Impresos Paulinos, 2002.

Rodríguez de León, Francisco. Trujillo y Balaguer: Entre la espada y la palabra, 1930–1962. Santo Domingo: Nostrum; Letra Gráfica, 2004.

Turits, Richard Lee. Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

                                        Kai P. Schoenhals