Word: trujillos
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Before 2,000 delegates of his obedient Dominican Party, Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina announced last week that he would not seek a fifth term in next year's presidential election. But, he added, "my presence shall not be lacking in the solution of any fundamental problem." Dominicans knew what that meant: Generalissimo Trujillo, self-styled Benefactor of the Fatherland, would still be watching...
...Trujillo, giving up the presidency does not necessarily mean giving up power. His countrymen learned that much in 1938. The year 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...
...motives for last week's announcement are not clear. Hemisphere pressure against him has relaxed. Possibly Trujillo was testing his ability to pass on his power to his family. Perhaps he merely wanted a rest; at 59, he is tired, and maybe ill. Whatever the reason, his "retirement" was a milestone on as brutal and bloody a road as any dictator in the Americas has trod in this generation...
Whispers & Whips. The records of Rafael Trujillo's early years have disappeared-the dictator has seen to that. But tales are whispered. Dominicans say that young Rafael was a cattle rustler and a pimp, that at one time or another he was arrested for theft, forgery, rape. Intelligent and ambitious, he joined the constabulary set up by the occupying U.S. Marines, quickly rose to major. After the Marines departed (1924), he became head of the army. In 1930, he proclaimed himself a presidential candidate, used his soldiers to break up the opposition. He won handily...
Since Haiti and the Dominican Republic have long been two of the world's worst neighbors, it seemed a surprising reconciliation. Back in 1937 the Trujillo soldiery massacred 20,000 migratory Haitian workers; afterwards Trujillo quietly paid the Haitian government $750,000 damages and signed a peace pact. Eleven years later, he was allowing nightly broadcasts by an exiled Haitian calling on his countrymen to revolt. Barely a year ago, after a Haitian appeal, the Organization of American States found Trujillo guilty of fomenting another plot against Haiti...