Word: trujillos
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...began what in official Dominican chronology is called Year One of the Era of Trujillo. Today, in Year 21, the Dominican Republic probably has more policemen and stool pigeons per capita than the Soviet Union. Trujillo shows no more mercy for his countrymen than he showed for the Haitians in 1937. There is no record of the number of Dominicans his bullyboys have shot and beaten to death, but exiles charge that the toll runs into thousands. Political prisoners who come back alive tell of Gestapo-model cells so constructed that the inmate can neither stand up nor lie down...
Behind Closed Doors. The only party is Trujillo's Partido Dominicano, to which all Dominicans who want to get anywhere must belong; government employees pay 10% of their salaries into the party treasury. Behind closed doors, Dominicans curse the Era of Trujillo. But no one dares murmur in public: Dominicans have gone to jail for complaining about the weather...
...cowing his countrymen, Trujillo has not escaped the occupational disease of dictators-morbid insecurity. He carries a pistol, frequently wears a bulletproof vest, is usually surrounded by bodyguards, employs a food taster. When he wants a drink, he calls for expensive Spanish brandy (Carlos I), has it sampled by others before he takes...
...Trujillo maintains upwards of 20 residences, provides with a lavish hand for his relatives, his children, legitimate and illegitimate, his many mistresses. He gets most of his income from his business enterprises at home and abroad, taking advantage of the monopolies he grants himself. A lover of farms and cattle, he is the nation's No. 1 landowner. Dominicans explain how Trujillo got his lands: "If the farmer did not sell, his widow did." His holdings cannot even be guessed at, since there is no clear-cut line between what belongs to Trujillo and what belongs to the state...
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...