Word: dominicans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Rapidly, fear of expropriation spread through the ruling elite. Despite government guarantees, the major Dominican newspaper feared seizure; it turned against the president. Military leaders sincerely began to consider themselves the only protector of constitutional liberties...
Bosch alienated another segment of the Dominican elite when he tried to allow the poor to buy basic commodities at government stores. Merchants who controlled distribution of basic basic items immediately joined the military in calling Bosch "Communist." There thus formed an upper-class-military alliance, each vested interest with its own definition of the "Communist threat." Shortly, "Communist" came to mean any popular threat to elitism...
Some efforts to deal with Dominican problems led to more general charges. The Bosch administration tried to cut unemployment by hiring as many government employees as could fit into office space, and by swelling the payrolls of government controlled industries. Bosch then was charged with inefficiency and over-bureaucratization. Yet his alternative was still more unemployment...
Attacks on the Dominican government were by no means limited to conservatives. There was also considerable discontent among those who had elected Bosch. He had, they felt, failed to live up to his campaign promises of economic equality...
...power. But his administration suffered from a momentous strategic flaw: the president's inflexibility. During his years of exile, Bosch's political sense was developed from textbook democracy and the model of United States politics. As a result, Bosch tried to rule from theory, not from pragmatic understanding of Dominican needs...