Word: benefactor
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Benefactor...
...before, Trujillo's soldiers butchered thousands of Haitians who had settled on Dominican land near the Haitian border. The massacre made the regime so unpopular with other American governments that Trujillo decided to "retire" for a while, installed a puppet President for the 1938-42 term. * But the Benefactor's dictatorial grip remained as tight as ever...
...some ways, the Benefactor has taken good care of his personal estate, a country of 2,212,000 people. He has boosted farm production, introduced some industry (e.g., cement, textiles), built roads, piers, hotels. The results, however, are by no means as splendid as the Dominican Information Service's full-page ads in U.S. newspapers and magazines make them out to be. The average Dominican farmer remains wretchedly poor...
Monument Builder. Trujillo has put up hospitals and schools, but above all he has put up monuments to himself. Every hamlet has a statue, or at least a bust, of El Benefactor, every public building an inscription proclaiming his beneficence. "Only Trujillo cures you," says the inscription on a hospital. Hundreds of towns, streets, buildings have been renamed after Trujillo, his father, his mother, and his patron saint, Rafael. In an unequalled burst of impudence, he renamed the oldest city in the New World (founded by Bartholomeo Columbus, brother of Christopher, in 1496): Ciudad Santo Domingo became Ciudad Trujillo...
...President. Unless Rafael changes his mind, Hector will inevitably be elected. But Big Brother will be watching him. Sooner or later, Rafael Trujillo will probably try to put his pampered oldest son "Ramfis," now 22, in the presidency. Dominicans do not even have the consolation of knowing that the Benefactor's death will end the Era of Trujillo...