Think of the characteristics that modern society hates the most: racism, sexism, and rabid capitalism. Now imagine one person embodying all of them.
Meet Rafael “Rara” Leonidas Trujillo, the longtime President of the Dominican Republic. Known as the "Little Caesar of the Caribbean," he is one of the most brutal dictators in Latin America's history.
The country The Dominican Republic is located in the Caribbean and is known for its beautiful beaches, stunning resorts and the crippling poverty of its citizens. Named after Saint Dominic, the island state was colonised by Spain before becoming independent in 1821.
The big red pin shows the Dominican Republic. Image courtesy of University of Texas Southwestern.
Fun fact: two months after declaring independence from Spain, the Dominican Republic was invaded and taken over by Haiti, its poorer neighbour. It wasn’t until 1844 that the cownthry truly became free.
Rara: the working man Trujillo was born more than half a century later into a lower middle class family of 11 kids. Apparently that was perfectly normal family planning at the time.
At the tender age of 16, Trujillo got a job as a telegraph operator. Hey kids, a telegraph was a device used to transmit messages in morse code. Although this was a stable gig (after all this was decades before the masses had pocket sized devices to text people who are in the same house), Trujillo’s odds of upward mobility were depressingly low.
To supplement his income, he started a side hustle that involved stealing cattle, forging checks and committing postal robbery. He wasn’t very good at this and spent several months in prison after being caught.
This didn’t stop him though. Soon after getting out, he formed a violent gang to do it bigger and better than before. These guys enjoyed stealing so much that Trujillo decided he wanted to do it professionally.
So he went into politics.
Rara: the soldier man
In a country with weak institutions, one of the best ways to get your foot in the political door is to climb the military ranks. This may take some time, but once you’re high enough to announce coups on national television, you’ll know that your journey is complete and you’re free to loot with impunity.
By 1927, Trujillo had risen to Commander in Chief. All the while, he engaged in shady business deals involving tenders for food, uniforms and equipment. The “commissions'' were pretty tidy and allowed him to amass a Hush-Pupi-sized fortune.
Ice cold. The shades and the person. A young Trujillo in his military outfit. Image courtesy of mopupduty.com
Aside from making him richer, the army also made Trujillo a certified meanie. He used his position to purge the army ranks of anyone who didn’t agree with him and placed his friends in key positions.
Rara: the statesman
Trujillo's chance to seize political power appeared in 1930 when President Horacio Vásquez was opposed by a group of revolutionaries. Unbeknownst to anyone, Trujillo had Nicodemusly brokered a deal with the rebels: the army would not interfere with the coup as long as Trujillo could run for President in the next elections.
Cornered and without support, Vasquez resigned.
Trujillo would go on to win a very believable 99% of the vote. It was reported that there were more votes than voters, but hey, every election has technical glitches.
Mere months after Trujillo became President, disaster struck: a hurricane flattened the capital city. This perhaps foreshadowed what was to come for the country.
The rubble after the quake in Santo Domingo. Image courtesy of UPI News.
Officially, 2000 people died. But the streets reported that this number included the untold stories of Trujillo’s political adversaries who conveniently vanished, “committed suicide” or perished in “road accidents” during this time.
In addition to eliminating opponents, Trujillo used the crisis to display his organisational skills. Buildings were swiftly rebuilt and equally swiftly renamed after himself. Later, streets, parks and even mountains throughout the country bore Trujillo’s name.
Every ceremony, sports event, or even game of 30 Seconds had to be dedicated to Trujillo: the Benefactor of the Fatherland and Father of the New Fatherland. Houses were to have signs declaring “In this house Trujillo is Chief” - “El Jefe”, as he was known.
Besides controlling every aspect of life on the island, Trujillo used his secret police to stomp out dissent. These cats intimidated, arrested, tortured, kidnapped, raped and assassinated anyone dumb enough to so much as sniff at El Jefe the wrong way.
The man, the myth, the legend. President Rafael Trujillo walking around doing stuff. Image courtesy of resumenlatino.com
Rara: the business, man
With great oppression comes even greater corruption. I mean, by the end of his tenure, Trujillo was worth $800 million (about $5.3 billion today). How did he do it? By working hard and making productive use of his 24 hours.
That and by personally repossessing 30% of the farmland and forcing Dominicans to buy their food from his companies.
So successful was this “business” that Trujillo eventually had enough capital and clout to buy out companies in other sectors like insurance and tobacco production. Like a certain telecom billionaire, Trujillo now virtually controlled the economy.
So what do you do with $5 billion?
You buy neckties of course. 10,000 of them to be exact.
You also buy 2,000 suits, barrels of Ace of Spades wine, villas across the continent and you invest in Lady Whistledown-like gossip publications.
Rara: the family man This wealth wasn’t just for him though. Trujillo generously promoted family members to top positions in the government and army. Because video games hadn’t been invented, Trujillo’s 4 year old son was given real life military experience and was made an army colonel.
“Blesser'' would be too positive a term to describe Trujillo’s relationships with women. Although he was married (3 times in fact), he was rumoured to keep a coterie of mistresses at all times. None of this was verified, of course. It's not like audio recordings of him summoning his paramours to his lodgings for coital congress ever emerged.
Who would be dumb enough to be caught doing something like that?
Rafael Trujillo and...one of his wives. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Anyway, Trujillo allegedly preferred bountiful light-skinned women, who would be scurried into his quarters after ticking their names off a register. Each temptress would have one or two chances to impress the President (with their charm and intellect, of course). If he liked them, he would keep them. If they resisted, Trujillo would pressure their families to get his way. No surprise then that he was later accused of raping several young ladies.
So yeah, from government to the bedroom - consent was a big part of Trujillo’s personal ethics.
Rara: the racist man During Trujillo’s reign, the Dominican Republic was portrayed as a white Hispanic society. Which wasn’t exactly true. The country had a fairly large black and brown population which included the Haitian community near the border.
Trujillo hated these people.
The reason is kind of unclear, but it's probably the same as any racist: just for just. Ironically, Trujillo’s grandmother was a black Haitian. Trujillo denied this part of his heritage; it was an act of treason to even mention it.
In October 1937, Trujillo declared that the “Haitian occupation” of the border would no longer continue. He then promptly ordered all Haitians in the area to be murdered on sight. About 20,000 were killed.
Trujillo’s police working hard and having fun in what became known as the Parsley Massacre. Image courtesy of repeatingislands.com
This proved to be a moment of madness. While the massacre received little attention from international media, the internal pressure forced Trujillo to relinquish the presidency in the 1938 "elections".
The change was in name only. Trujillo remained fully in control. Jacinto Peynado, the new President, was nothing more than a puppet who received instructions directly from El Jefe’s desk.
Over the following years, the presidency was passed around Trujillo’s inner circle like a venereal disease - which given the leader’s proclivities was not unlikely. In 1943, Trujillo became the President again. But, probably bored of the bureaucracy, he gave it up to his brother in 1953 and then to Joaquín Balaguer in 1960.
Still, when Trujillo wasn’t president he had fancy titles like “Chief” and “Benefactor”, or “Commander of the Armed Forces”. Just to remind the peasants who was really in charge.
Rara: the dead man It's difficult to fathom how someone who wielded such power could eventually lose it. I mean, the only way to stop a character like Rafael Trujillo is to kill him. Which is exactly what happened.
Trujillo initially enjoyed a warm relationship with the USA. He praised them and took their side in voting at the UN. More importantly, he hated communism.
Relations soured a bit in 1956 when a US lecturer who criticized Trujillo’s regime was kidnapped from New York and murdered in the Dominican Republic. There were no consequences for the regime and this incident likely gave Trujillo the impression that he could get away with this sort of thing.
A few years later, Trujillo devised a plan to murder Romulo Betancourt, the President of Venezuela. Betancourt's sin: being part of a conspiracy to remove Trujillo from power years before.
(Un) fortunately the plot was found out before it could be executed. The Organization of American States (OAS) severed diplomatic ties with Trujillo and imposed economic sanctions. The USA, finally realising that sponsoring a genocidal maniac with a long memory and a violent temper wasn’t going to advance their foreign policy interests, withdrew all support for Trujillo.
And then they withdrew Trujillo himself.
On May 30 1961, 7 assassins, assisted by the CIA, shot and killed Trujillo while he was en route to a “meeting” with one of his mistresses.
Did they shoot enough times? Did they get him? Trujillo’s bullet-ridden cruiser. Image courtesy of warfarehistorynetwork.com
Fun fact: Trujillo’s wife was the only person who knew his bank account details. She never disclosed them to anyone. Not even the children. So now you know what happened to THAT $5 billion.
So to recap: Rafael Trujillo was a racist, a rapist and a ruthless exploiter of his own people. Unsurprisingly, the streets overflowed with rejoicing Dominicans when the news of Trujillo’s death broke.
You’d think that the Dominican Republic was better off without him. But it's not clear that anything changed for the ordinary person.
Juan Bosch, an exiled Trujillo critic, was elected as the next President in December 1962.
He lasted 9 months.
His socialist policies like land reform and economic empowerment for the poor landed badly against US interests. So America did what America does and had him deposed in a military coup in 1963.
Thanks, Uncle Sam.
The moral of the story is that if you’re going to be a nasty human, make sure you don’t piss off the biggest bully in the yard in the process.
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