Assignment 450 words

University of Nebraska Press

Chapter Title: The Fall of Trujillo

Book Title: The Pitcher and the Dictator Book Subtitle: Satchel Paige's Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic Book Author(s): Averell “Ace” Smith Published by: University of Nebraska Press. (2018) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt216692j.22

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18

The Fall of Trujillo

As the summer of 1937 turned into fall, the dictator’s passion for his mistress Lina burned with ever- greater intensity. When her twenty- first birthday arrived on September 23, 1937, Trujil- lo’s love for Lina was splashed over the front page of the cap- ital’s newspaper. There for the nation to see was an oversize picture of Queen Lina I accompanied by an anonymous poem that everyone knew had been penned by Trujillo:

She was born a queen, not by dynastic right but by the right of beauty, and so when the chords that filled the air during her splendid reign— laughter, music, fantasy— fell silent, she still reigned with the power of that right— her beauty.

There is nothing under the sun comparable to the bewitch- ment of her eyes— stars for the sky where the nightingale wan- ders giving voice to the mystery of the night. Her hands— silk, amber, perfume— have been made for the ermine of the glove and for the passion of the kiss. On her lips, whose fire evokes the pomegranate flower, lingers always her smile— irresistible seal of charm and conquest!— that is as sweet and soft as those pink and blue tints announcing the aurora.

The seductive power of Anacoana, the poetess Queen of Jara- gua, abides in her eyes as an immortal bewitchment, as a remote enchantment.

Such is Lina: one of those beautiful women whom divinity sends to the world only rarely, so heaven’s voice may come to earth and poetry sing its glory with silver trumpets.1

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Soon thereafter at an evening party for the smart set, Queen Lina I showed off her new sparkling diamond bracelet to the U.S. ambassador’s wife.2

• • •

In the time of Trujillo, a joke made the rounds: One day a well- fed dog strolled into Haiti. He soon came across a gaunt dog that looked sideways at his visitor and asked, “Are you mad? Why did you come to this land of hunger?” “Why did I come here,” replied the Dominican dog, “why I came here to bark, to bark!”3

When October 1937 arrived along the Rio Masacre, the normal trickle of lean Haitians walking west across the river border back into Haiti grew to a stream. Somehow they had gleaned omi- nous rumors about their people in the border town of Bánica.

Two days later a great uproar took hold of Dajabón, a Domin- ican city and major border crossing nested along the Rio Masa- cre. A bustle radiated away from the Parroquia Nuestra Señora del Rosario Church, where a dance was being held that night. All day long men scurried about the city. Cars and trucks arrived at the church with refrescos, flowers, and decorations. A hand- some podium was carted into the church. The streets were swept, beggars were shooed away, windows were washed, and Dominican flags were placed all over the city on walls, in win- dows, and off any existing flagpole. Above all a large portrait of President Rafael Trujillo was moved into the church, where it was placed between two large Dominican flags and rubbed until it sparkled. By midafternoon men carrying machine guns seized control of all strategic points in and around town.

Just as dusk set in, Dominicans scurried to the church from the countryside after hearing that a celebrity was coming. When night fell, the presidential motorcade pulled up to the curb. Well- armed men in crisp Guardia uniforms jumped off the running boards of the lead car and the trailing long Packard. They quickly formed a human security corridor. The soldiers

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saluted the president as he emerged from his car. For a passing second Trujillo looked up at the church’s tiered, white- stucco bell tower; then he lowered his head and pasted a stern look on his face as he walked past the crowd into the auditorium.

People pressed at the windows to catch a glimpse of the president. “I came to the border country,” he proclaimed, “to see what I could do for Dominicans living here. I found that Haitians had been stealing food and cattle from our farmers here. I found that our people would be happier if we got rid of the Haitians.” He paused, then stamped his foot, raised his hand, and enunciated slowly and empathically, “I will fix that. Yesterday three hundred Haitians were killed at Bánica. This must continue.”4

As quickly as the word spread among the Haitians living in Trujillo’s country, it was beaten by the word of Trujillo. That next day soldiers aided by handpicked thugs rounded up 1,900 Haitians and corralled them in Santiago’s main square, which was hedged in by government buildings. The horror lasted for hours. Soldiers brandishing machetes and clubs encircled the men, women, children, often whole families. Thugs methodi- cally bludgeoned, clubbed, and hacked the innocents to death.5 Despite the midday heat the nearby residents closed their shut- ters to muffle the cries of the doomed. As night fell, trucks piled high with corpses began leaving the square, with blood drip- ping from their tailgates. All that remained in the morning was a trail of blood leading to dusty roads.

That same day in the northern port city of Monte Cristi, hun- dreds of Haitians were herded to the docks. They were marched to the end of the harbor pier, where their hands and feet were bound. The soldiers ganged up to push them en masse into the deep waters, knowing that their corpses would be conveniently devoured by the sharks of the Sargasso Sea.6

Back at border crossing in Dajabón, Trujillo’s troops perched by the side of the road leading to the bridge over the shallow

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brown water of Rio Masacre. As panic spread inland from the killings, multitudes funneled toward Dajabón on donkeys and on foot, desperate to cross the river border back into Haiti. When the first crush of Haitians arrived, they were cut down by soldiers swinging machetes. Wave after wave of Haitians were slaughtered until the arms of the soldiers grew weary. Despite strict orders against using their guns, the exhausted soldiers began firing on the fleeing Haitians with their Krag rifles.7 In what became a relay of death, teams of soldiers carted the corpses down to the banks of the river to dump them in. In desperation the fleeing Haitians tried to cross downstream and upstream from the main road. The Dominican soldiers spread out, and moved to the banks of the river to cut down their victims on the shores. After just a few hours, the Rio Masa- cre was choked with the mangled, rotting corpses of Haitians and their donkeys.8

Like variations on a danse macabre, the slaughter played out differently in Pedenales, Jimaní, Bánica, Dajabón, Monte Cristi, Santiago, and as far away as Samaná. In urban areas the soldiers fanned out in roving bands. House- to- house searches were con- ducted. Any Haitians they found were ordered to immediately leave their homes, for repatriation they were told. They were transported to crudely improvised or borrowed corrals guarded by soldiers. Once the corrals were brimming with Haitians, the soldiers closed in to decapitate them with machetes. After the bodies were hauled away, dirt was spread over the ground to hide the blood. Then the corrals were again filled, and the Hai- tians again slaughtered. Torsos, together with severed heads, were tossed into the back of trucks that were driven to remote ravines, creeks, or, where possible, the ocean. There they dumped their bloody loads. On Trujillo’s word between fifteen thou- sand and twenty thousand Haitians were murdered.9

Trujillo put a muzzle on the Dominican press. For three weeks there was no mention of the massacre. Then, on the morning

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of October 21, 1937, an insignificant three- inch item ran in the New York Times on page 17 sandwiched between much longer daily stories about a small plane crash in Salt Lake City and a political fight between the Rhode Island governor and race- track operators. Under the headline “Haitians Reported Shot by Dominican Soldiers,” the massacre was described as “a bor- der clash . . . in which several were shot.”10 Four days later the Times reported, “More than 300 persons were killed.  .  .  . The final toll would reach 1,700 dead.”11

It took over a month after the killings for Trujillo to feel enough pressure to publically concede that something had happened. On the same day that the New York Times pushed the death toll to 2,700, Listín Diario brushed it all off as “inci- dents” that “are not of an international character, nor are they invested with an importance and gravity which may impair the good relations between the two neighboring Republics.”12 The following day President Roosevelt was briefed that “the total deaths might exceed 5,000.”13

It took until early December for Haitian president Stenio Vincent, who until now had remained eerily silent, to charge that eight thousand Haitians had been victims of “mass mur- der.”14 The first sign that Trujillo realized a storm was brewing came a week later, when his newspapers reported that sixty farmers had been arrested for retaliating against Haitians who had plundered their fields and livestock. In lockstep Trujillo’s national congress passed a resolution voicing its “solidarity and its adhesion to his [Trujillo’s] international policy” concerning Haiti and for protecting “the dignity, decorum, and rights of the Dominican people.”15

Quentin Reynolds, the thirty- five- year- old star editor of the powerful American magazine Collier’s, was curious to discover the truth. So he caught a plane to Ciudad Trujillo to see what he could uncover.

At once President Trujillo invited the pudgy, curly- haired

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Collier’s editor to dine with him at one of his clubs. As Trujillo plied the editor with fine wine, Reynolds was immediately struck by Trujillo’s ability to answer his toughest questions about the killings with a patient paternal smile and “apparent frankness.” “The whole affair,” Rafael stated smoothly, “has been overemphasized. Some Haitians crossed the border, probably to steal cattle or goats. Some Dominican farmers fought with them. Many were killed on both sides.” “It is a regrettable inci- dent,” he continued, “and no one feels worse than I do about it. However, it is certainly no cause for international action.”16

Rafael finished his argument by invoking “stand- your- ground” laws. “You see, it is like this,” he argued. “A thief comes into my house and I deal with him according to my own law. There is no reason for anyone else butting in.” Reynolds pressed the dic- tator: “But Haiti believes that the Dominican army did the kill- ing?” “The killing,” Trujillo countered with a friendly smile, “as I understand it, was done with knives and machetes. My army carries rifles and uses machine guns.”17

“I would have believed him— anyone would have,” Reynolds thought, “if I hadn’t looked into the tortured eyes of mothers who had seen their families wiped out.”18

Next the Collier’s editor traveled to the Haitian border, where he met many of the surviving victims including Madame Tel- saint Telfort. She told Reynolds that Trujillo’s soldiers kept fir- ing at her as she staggered across the river “with a bullet in her arm.” Reynolds discovered that “it was a bullet from a Krag rifle. The Dominican army use[d] Krag rifles.” He was sickened by the carnage. “It is easy,” he thought, “to look at a bullet wound after you have seen a machete wound. Anything is easy to look at after you have seen a machete wound.”19

The pressure mounted. The New York Times kept publishing; the U.S. State Department kept asking questions. Finally Trujil- lo’s agents heard that Reynolds was about to publish a major exposé in Collier’s. The dictator folded.

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To the astonishment of his nation, on January 8, 1938, Tru- jillo made an address by radio, declining to run for reelection as president: “I shall begin formulating a categorical reaffirma- tion of my purpose previously revealed on many occasions, to relinquish official investiture in order to enjoy the peaceful rest of private live. ”20

“Dread transformed the faces of men of industry,” Listín Dia- rio wrote. “The foreign colony was impressed. Anguish and intense silence drowned the hopeless cry that swelled the heart of the republic.”21

Just as suddenly the reelection campaign, which had been up and running for nearly two years, was abandoned. Trujillo opted to install his trustworthy friend Vice President Jacinto Peynado as president. Anyone wondering how things stood needed only to stroll by President Peynado’s home. Over the entrance hung a large neon sign that read, “Dios y Trujillo,” “God and Trujillo.”22

While political processes could be manipulated, nature could not. That year in Ciudad Trujillo, carnival queen Lina Lovatón bore Trujillo a daughter, whom they named Yolanda.23 The ex- president was moved to make Lina’s new baby legitimate, so he had congress immediately pass a national law to make chil- dren born out of wedlock legitimate with the proviso that the child’s mother was not cheating on her husband when she conceived.24

A much bigger problem, however, was brewing. For months First Lady Doña María had been storming around Ciudad Tru- jillo, brimming over with hatred. In her mind the repercussions would be far worse than the sting of a public affair, for she believed that Lina posed a real threat to her marriage. Before long there was a failed assassination attempt on Lina with all signs pointing to the Doña. That was too much for Trujillo. He loudly let it be known that anyone who hurt Lina would be liq- uidated. Within days he sent his financial agents to Florida to

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quietly purchase a house for Lina. They found her a magnifi- cent Miami mansion, which had once been owned by General Motors president Alfred Sloan. There Trujillo installed Lina with her family. Thereafter she and her family lived in safety while being provided for generously.25

It was no secret that the dictator and Lina remained devoted to each other to the end of their lives. Lina bore the dictator two children. And often quasi- conjugal visits were arranged in the following decades— depending on the proximity and/ or the mood of the Doña— at times in secret and at times very much in the open.

After his passion for Lina had cooled down, the dictator knew no love, only lust. Cursed was the man upon whose daughter Trujillo’s leer fell. The heartsick father was compelled to serve his daughter up to the dictator.

Word traveled around the capital city in the early 1950s that relations had unraveled between the Doña and her husband. Folks in the know felt sure that a divorce was in the works. The Doña began hearing this rumor all too often for her own lik- ing. So she waited for a moment when she was alone with her husband “in the privacy of the nuptial chamber.” Pulling a gun on her husband, she crisply announced she would “put a hole in him” if he divorced her. Trujillo put aside his divorce plans. Using his many available forms of persuasion, he cajoled the Vatican into issuing a papal dispensation to remarry the Doña in a Catholic Church in 1955. Thus the Doña and the dictator achieved conjugal peace.26

• • •

Dominicans never gave up their fight for freedom. Much of their struggle is hard to document as Trujillo was every bit as effective at wiping out evidence of opposition as he was at wip- ing out the opposition. Many, like the gifted writer Juan Bosch, felt they had no choice but to flee into exile and to resist from

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abroad. Others stayed at home to resist. There were waves of bombings of schools and public buildings in Santiago in the 1930s and 1940s.27 Yet as Trujillo tightened his grip on all aspects of Dominican society, it became nearly impossible to operate a broadly organized resistance movement. Conspiracies had to remain compact. As the years passed, most of the efforts to oust Trujillo took the form of assassination plots or offshore inva- sions. In May 1956 a small group of conspirators wired explosives under a church in Moca, which Trujillo was slated to dedicate. Only days before the event, an informer turned in the conspir- ators. The church dedication went off as scheduled.28

By the 1950s several large anti- Trujillo organizations led by exiled Dominicans took root in New York City and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Juan Bosch’s Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (prd) was the most effective of these groups, organizing every- thing from picket lines at the Dominican Embassy to political rallies and public information campaigns to open meetings.

However, it was the exiled Jesús de Galíndez Suárez who came to occupy a special place of hatred in Rafael Trujillo’s heart. Galíndez was a Basque nationalist who had fled to Ciu- dad Trujillo at the end of the Spanish Civil War. He was soon disgusted by Trujillo’s dictatorship and left for New York City. There Galíndez became a lecturer in international law at Colum- bia University. Overnight he became one of the key authorities on Trujillo’s government. At the time it became widely known that he was completing a scathing indictment of Trujillo as his doctoral thesis.

On a calm spring evening in 1956, Galíndez wrapped up his lecture at Columbia’s Fayerweather Hall. He accepted a ride from one of his students to the subway station at the corner of Fifty- Seventh and Eighth Avenue. He thanked her, waved good- bye, and then entered the New York subway system, where he disappeared.29 Bosch’s prd quickly charged that Trujillo was behind the professor’s disappearance. His actions jumped the

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case to the status of a cause célèbre for the American and inter- national press. News organizations in the late 1950s closely fol- lowed all the new developments in the Galíndez case like an unfolding murder mystery. For Trujillo this had the painful effect of shining an international light into the darkest cor- ners of his dictatorship.

The generation of Dominicans who came of age in the late 1950s thirsted for the liberty that their parents had given up on. They called their movement to overthrow the dictator Catorce de Junio or ij4.30 Once Trujillo’s agents caught wind of their conspiracy, they began mass roundups, jailing, and torturing of the conspirators. Three of the ij4 leaders were married to three Mirabal sisters— Dr. Minerva Mirabal de Tavárez, María Teresa Mirabal de Guzmán, and Patria Mirabal de González. Each of the sisters had been jailed and tortured early in 1960 for their associations with ij4. Yet even in the face of grave danger, they continued to stand by their husbands. They repeatedly embar- rassed the dictator by visiting their husbands in jail. Trujillo grew so personally incensed at the brazen defiance by the sis- ters that, in a fit of rage, he ordered their assassination by his secret police.

Trujillo’s secret police dangled the promise of a visit with their husbands to lure the sisters into a trap. On their way to see their husbands, Trujillo’s men waylaid the sisters’ car, dragged them into a sugarcane field, and clubbed them to death. Their corpses were placed back inside their car and driven up a wind- ing mountain road near Santiago, where it was pushed off a high cliff. Unfortunately for Trujillo, his bloody farce fooled no one. From that day, November 25, 1960, a visceral hatred of his regime pervaded the country.

On May 30, 1961, after the breeze from the Caribbean began reversing direction and the air had cooled, Trujillo took his daily walk along El Malecón. The dictator was now an old man. As he aged, he was often plagued by fits of incontinence, and he

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became so anxious about his darkening complexion that he began caking his face with pale foundation and powder before public appearances.

Once the breeze fully flipped, Trujillo finished his afternoon paseo along El Malecón. He returned promptly to his office to wrap up lingering administrative chores. Chores completed, he summoned his driver, Zacharias, to take him to visit his daugh- ter Angelina. It wasn’t until about 10:00 p.m. that he ordered Zacharias to drive him to his estate just outside San Cristobal so he could relax in the arms of his young concubine.

The road to San Cristobal originated at Trujillo’s quarter- sized Washington Monument. Zacharias glided onto this road in their light- blue 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, adorned with a chrome swan hood ornament and long, sleek chrome horns mounted on the passenger- side fender. He slowly eased the car up to sixty miles per hour as they hit the open road. Suddenly their rear wind- shield exploded. Blood gushed from under the dictator’s left armpit. “Coño [cunt],” Trujillo snarled. “I’ve been hit.”31 Zacha- rias screeched their car to a halt in the middle of the highway. An angry Trujillo grabbed his revolver. In a fraction of a sec- ond, before Zacharias could stop him, Trujillo staggered out of the rear passenger door to take revenge. With cold purpose the assassins walked toward the dictator and unloaded their pow- erful weapons into him. Trujillo’s revolver fired a single shot in the air as he fell to his knees. His face pitched forward onto the still- warm pavement.

The three assassins roughly grabbed the corpse. They hauled it to their car and pitched it into the trunk. In the middle of the road lay Trujillo’s bloody dental bridge.

Joy swept the populace:

Ay, Maria, Maria, Maria Sing and don’t cry Because singing you make

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Honey, the heart happy

They’ve killed Chapita On the highway They’ve killed Chapita On the highway

Let’s shout Let’s shout In this way They’ve killed Chapita And won’t let me see — Popular Dominican merengue from December 1961

Rafael Trujillo habitually consulted brujos possessing the power of divination.32 Before he seized power, a famed brujo had prophesized that he would be swept into power by a hurricane and out by one.33 This prophecy caused Trujillo to obsessively track hurricanes during his thirty years in power. Hurricane Frances made landfall near Cape Cana of the Dominican Repub- lic in early October 1961; six weeks later Trujillo’s family was forced into permanent exile off the island.

• • •

Trujillo thought the young man was smart. Smart was trou- ble. So he sent twenty- five- year- old Juan Bosch to jail— just to think things over. He let a few months go by. When the young writer was released, he was surprised to learn that he had been appointed director of government statistics. Shortly thereafter Trujillo dropped by on Bosch unannounced to let him know that he had been appointed “chief of journalism and litera- ture.” Just as the meeting was ending, Trujillo dropped a by- the- way request that Bosch write a series of laudatory essays on the regime. Before the end of 1937, Bosch was growing increasingly troubled by events: Trujillo’s phony reelection campaign, his

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jailing of all dissidents, his grabbing of all national economic assets for his own benefit. So sickened was Bosch by the Hai- tian massacre that he left for Puerto Rico.34

For decades Bosch lived in exile, making a living by publish- ing short stories, essays, and novels. At first he thought of him- self as an artist who was above politics. It took a few years of living among Dominican exiles in Cuba to become convinced that political action was an imperative. There he founded the prd in 1939. Bosch’s group quickly became the loudest voice against Trujillo.

With Trujillo dead in 1961, Bosch returned to the Dominican Republic to establish a new constitution. When free elections were finally called in 1962, Bosch ran for president of the repub- lic. He was a striking man of natural charisma who looked into people’s eyes with his piercing blue irises, so large they spilled far under his eyelids. Entering a room he wore a serious near- frown that easily turned into a laugh, one that seemed to lower his black- rimmed glasses and wrinkle his high forehead. His deep intellect, in tandem with his facile grasp of language, made Bosch a spellbinding orator. As he spoke of his plans for long- needed reform, his broad mouth set off against a square jaw and high, rectangular forehead added determination to his words.

Election Day, Thursday, December 20, 1962, marked the first free, honest election in the Dominican Republic since 1924. A holiday was declared. “Men and women,” the New York Times wrote, “dressed in their finery to stand in the long queues stretch- ing in front of schools, public buildings and hotels when the polling places were installed.” “They voted,” the Times reported, “in a mood that combined solemnity, gaiety and some bewilder- ment over the intricacies of a process that was virtually unknown here even to the generation that is now in middle age.”35

To the surprise of all observers, Juan Bosch’s prd swept to victory in a landslide, tallying 59.5 percent of the vote despite running in a field of five candidates.

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It was February 1963 when Bosch rose to take the oath of office as president. Standing nearby, smiling and glad- handing was American vice president Lyndon Johnson. In his inaugural speech Bosch urged long- overdue social and economic reforms for the peasants and urban poor. It was time, Bosch insisted, to give the people of the Dominican Republic “a place in the sun among advanced nations of the Americas.”36

President Bosch only made it to September. The military, the economic elites, and the Catholic Church banded together to oust the reformer. A triumvirate composed of rightest busi- ness and military interests tore up the new constitutions and seized power.37

• • •

Finally, on April 25, 1965, civil war broke out in Santo Domingo between Bosch’s followers, known as “Constitutionalists,” and Trujillo’s old army, called “Loyalists.” After a few days of fight- ing, it was clear that the Bosch Constitutionalist forces were on the verge of victory. In full panic President Lyndon John- son sent in the marines. That evening he went on national tele- vision in the United States and lied, offering as his excuse the need to protect American citizens: “Let me also make clear tonight that we support no single man or any single group of men in the Dominican Republic. Our goal is a simple one. We are there to save the lives of our citizens and to save the lives of all people.”38

Johnson left out the critical fact. When the marines landed, they sided with Trujillo’s old army.39 In fact they saved it from imminent defeat. As negotiations over a truce and new elections dragged on for months, the Americans got busy reconstituting, resupplying, and even paying the salaries of Trujillo’s old army.40

Election Day arrived on Saturday, January 1, 1966. Bosch faced off against Trujillo’s ex- puppet president Joaquín Balaguer. Balaguer’s method for winning the election was simple. Tru-

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jillo’s freshly reconstituted army was given the green light to unleash a reign of terror to crush any existing or nascent opposition; the army made it known to Bosch that if he ven- tured out of his home to campaign he would be killed.41 Once Balaguer won the rigged election, he sicced Trujillo’s old army on Bosch’s supporters; at least 350 of them were killed in the first six months of 1966.42

• • •

Dr. Jose Enrique Aybar stayed on the island after Trujillo’s fam- ily fled. For a time he was a pariah. But his fortunes turned when Bosch was forced out of power by a military coup. On the day that the U.S. Marines spread out across Ciudad Trujillo, they seized houses at key intersections to secure their positions. Sweeping west the soldiers came to Calle Dr. Delgado. It was clear to them that the house at the corner of San Juan Bosco was ideal for their purposes. The marines surrounded the house and demanded that the residents come out with their hands above their heads. Out charged a small gray- haired man brandishing a revolver. The squad of marines unloaded their guns into the little man, who, it turned out, had been an ally: Dr. Jose Enrique Aybar.43

Trujillo’s gang- member friend, Miguel Ángel Paulino, had slowly ascended to the rank of general under Trujillo. When the Trujillos fled, Paulino fled too. Only after the military coup ousted Bosch did General Paulino return to the country. Just a few years later, in January 1968, he was gunned down on the streets of Santo Domingo by a jealous musician.44

• • •

Thirty- seven years after the assassinations of the Mirabal sisters, a crowd gathered at the Trujillo Obelisk. Its white surface had been painted over with colorful larger- than- life images of the three sis- ters.45 At the rededication of this marble monument, the Domini- can poet Carmen Sanchez read her poem “Danza de eternidad.”46

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