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Dominican Republic THE POST-TRUJILLO ERA
Transition to Elected Government
At the time of his assassination, Trujillo was seventy
years
old. He had left no designated successor. It soon became
clear
that the conspirators had planned his assassination more
thoroughly than the subsequent seizure of government,
which never
took place. Puppet President Balaguer remained in office,
allowing the late dictator's son, Rafael Trujillo Lovatón
(also
called Rafael, Jr., or Ramfis), to return from Paris and
assume
de facto control. Ramfis lacked the dynamism of his
father,
however, and he eventually fell into a dispute with his
two
uncles over potential liberalization of the regime. The
"wicked
uncles"--Héctor and José Arismendi Trujillo
Molina--returned to
the republic from exile in November 1961. Ramfis, having
little
enthusiasm for a power struggle, fled the country.
Opposition from Washington, made very plain by the
deployment
of United States warships off the Dominican coast, blunted
the
ambitions of the uncles and forced them to resume their
exile
only days later. Balaguer retained the presidency. As a
protégé
of the fallen dictator, however, he had neither a power
base nor
a popular following. Popular unrest, punctuated by a
general
strike, forced Balaguer to share power with a seven-member
Council of State, established on January 1, 1962. The
council
included Balaguer and the two surviving assassins of
Trujillo,
Antonio Imbert Barrera and Luis Amiama Tío (the others
having
been slain by Trujillo's security service). The council
lasted
only sixteen days, however, before air force general Pedro
Rodríguez Echavarría overthrew it in a coup d'état.
Rodríguez's
attempt at rule also foundered on the rocks of popular
protest
and opposition from the United States. Less senior
officers
seized the general, deported him, and restored the council
minus
Balaguer, who had also been exiled.
The restored Council of State guided the country until
elections could be organized. The leading candidates were
Juan
Bosch Gaviño, a scholar and poet, who had organized the
opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party (Partido
Revolucionario
Dominicano--PRD) in exile, and Viriato Fiallo of the
National
Civic Union (Unión Cívica Nacional--UCN). In the balloting
of
December 20, 1963, the conservative image of the UCN and
its
association with the country's economic elite benefited
Bosch,
whose support came mainly from the urban lower class.
Bosch won
the election with 64 percent of the vote; the PRD also
captured
two-thirds majorities in both houses of the legislature.
The Bosch administration was very much an oddity in
Dominican
history up to that point: a freely elected, liberal,
democratic
government that expressed concern for the welfare of all
Dominicans, particularly those of modest circumstances,
those
whose voices had never really been heard before in the
National
Palace. The 1963 constitution separated church and state,
guaranteed civil and individual rights, and endorsed
civilian
control of the military. These and other changes, such as
land
reform, struck conservative landholders and military
officers as
radical and threatening, particularly when juxtaposed
against
three decades of somnolent authoritarianism under
Trujillo. The
hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church also resented the
secular
nature of the new constitution, in particular its
provision for
legalized divorce. The hierarchy, along with the military
leadership and the economic elite, also feared communist
influence in the republic, and they warned of the
potential for
"another Cuba." The result of this concern and opposition
was a
military coup on September 25, 1963.
Data as of December 1989
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