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Dominican Republic The Armed Forces
The armed forces (army, navy, air force, and National
Police)
were among the best organized and the most powerful groups
in
Dominican national life. The military was more than a
simple
interest group, however. Stemming historically from the
medieval
Spanish system, the military constituted an integral part
of the
political regime, but one only nominally subordinate to
civilian
authority.
The modern Dominican armed forces were a product of the
Trujillo era and of the often corrupt and brutal practices
of
that regime. Trujillo built up the armed forces enormously
and
gave them modern equipment, but he also encouraged graft,
rakeoffs , and political interference
(see Dominican Republic - History and Development of the Armed Forces
, ch. 5).
Since Trujillo, various efforts had been made to
reform, to
modernize, and to professionalize the armed forces. These
efforts
had been only partially successful. In the late 1980s, the
armed
forces undoubtedly were better trained, better educated,
and
better equipped than before, but military personnel also
tended
to use their positions to augment their salaries, to
acquire
wealth and land, and to exercise political as well as
military
power, sometimes on a grand scale. At the same time,
civilian
political interference in the military (promotions,
commands,
favoritism, etc.) occurred at least as often as military
interference in political affairs.
Since the mid-1970s, the pressures to reform the armed
forces
and to make them definitively apolitical and subordinate
to
civilian authority had intensified. Evidence of the
success of
this subordination is that, in various crises (for
example, the
electoral crises of 1978 and 1986 and the riots of 1985),
the
military behaved quite professionally and made no effort
to seize
the government. Nevertheless, no one is really certain how
the
armed forces would react in the face of endemic unrest, a
popular
guerrilla movement, economic collapse, or the possibility
of a
leftist electoral victory.
Data as of December 1989
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