Francisco Alberto Caamaño

Francisco Alberto Caamaño

Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deñó (born June 11, 1932 in San Juan de la Maguana , † February 16, 1973 ) was a Dominican colonel , politician and President of the Dominican Republic .

Life

Origin and military career

Caamaño came from an influential family of officers. His father Lieutenant General Fausto Caamaño Medina was State Secretary in the Ministry of Defense of the Dominican Republic from 1952 to 1955 during the dictatorship of Generalissimo Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina . After he himself entered the Navy as an ensign , further promotions followed quickly due to family influence. After attending Naval School in Coronado (California) and Marine Corps Base Quantico in 1954, he was promoted to lieutenant captain and worked as such as an instructor. In 1960 he switched to the National Police, where he was major in command of a training unit with which he was wounded in 1962 in skirmishes against insurgents near Palma Sola.

After the end of Trujillo's dictatorship, he was in 1962, in the rank of lieutenant colonel, commander of the national police shock force, the so-called "White Helmets" (Cascos Blancos), and in 1964 of the Radio Patrulla unit . In disagreement with the corruption within the provisional government of the triumvirate under Donald Reid Cabral , the armed forces and the police, he was transferred to the air force together with other officers after an attempted coup in 1963 , where he was initially used in the armed forces training center (CEFA), the Seat of the 4th Army Brigade, from which the key leaders in the overthrow of President Juan Bosch Gaviño came.

April 1965 Revolution and President

At this time, the constitutionalist military movement (Movimiento Militar Constitucionalista) under Colonel Rafael Fernandez Domínguez, which had great support within the military and was planning the reinstatement of President Bosch after a military coup, also emerged. In January 1965 Caamaño joined this movement. The further course of action of this conspiratorial movement took on unexpected features on April 24, 1965. After the arrest of several important leaders, the remaining officers decided to launch a military uprising against the government of the triumvirate of Reid Cabral. Caamaño then took the National Palace in the morning hours of April 25, 1965 at the head of the constitutionalist military movement and at the same time became a member of the Revolutionary Committee, which was only in office for a few hours. As such, he and the Provisional President José Rafael Molina Ureña took part in a meeting with US Ambassador William Tapley Bennett Jr. , at which the various forces discussed the plans.

After the meeting was disturbed and the majority of political leaders left the meeting, Colonel Caamaño and several officers went to the new town of Santo Domingo , where he took the northern part of the capital with infantry and armored units of the CEFA. On the night of April 27th, in the company of Colonels Montes Arache and Marte Hernández, Major Lora Fernández, his uncle Captain Alejandro Deñó Serum and civilians who had joined the constitutional military movement, he took the lead of the 4th Brigade The Duarte Bridge was defended by government troops under Lieutenant Pedro Elias Bisonó. He then became the leader of the movement which, in addition to the return of President Bosch, also demanded compliance with the 1963 constitution. The WAPA radio station, located at Bosch's home in Puerto Rico , reported the victory of the revolutionaries led by Colonel Caamaño, with the message saying “God, Fatherland, Freedom - Long Live the Dominican Republic” (Dios, Patria y Libertad - Viva la República Dominicana) ended. On the night of the following day, the government of US President Lyndon B. Johnson announced a military intervention ( Operation Power Pack ) in the Dominican Republic. The official reason for the intervention was the protection of the US citizens living there, whereby the fear of the establishment of a new communist regime and thus the risk of a “further Cuba” may have played a decisive role.

On the same day, the Constitutional Command was established under the leadership of Colonel Caamaño. After this event, Bosch resigned as president and instead saw him as president of the republic, which Caamaño refused. However, he soon accepted this responsibility as leader of the military movement and President of the Dominican Republic.

After the arrival of American troops on May 4, 1965, he was sworn in as President of the Republic in arms in the fortress "El Conde" in the presence of other revolutionary leaders. As such, he was not only the political, but also the military leader of the revolution, who, however, also relied on a staff of advisors due to his political inexperience. After the attack by the Inter-American Peacekeeping Forces (Fuerzas Interamericanas de Paz (FIP)) consisting of Americans, Brazilians , Nicaraguans and Paraguayans on June 15, 1965, however, he saw himself as the unrestricted political and military chief, especially as he was given the new US Ambassador William Tapley Bennett Jr. announced the attack on the Constitutionalist Zone by the intervention forces and ordered the Chief of the General Staff, now Colonel Lora Fernández, to fire on the foreign troops in order to defend the aims and ideas of the Constitutional Government. Indeed, the Dominican units initially managed to stubbornly defend themselves against the intervention.

However, it soon came to lengthy negotiations with the Organization of American States (OAS) as a representative of American interests, which ultimately led to his resignation on September 3, 1965 and replaced by Héctor García Godoy as President. He himself was initially commander of the " Gregorio Luperón " brigade . When he planned another military uprising in this position on December 19, 1965 in Santiago de los Caballeros , he was transferred to the embassy in London by President García Godoy in January 1966 as a military attaché . He held this post until mid-1967.

Subsequently he went into exile in Cuba until 1972 . At the head of a force of only eight men, he landed on the Dominican coast near Azua de Compostela in February 1973 with the intention of founding a guerrilla movement and overthrowing the government of President Joaquín Balaguer . On February 16, 1973, he was killed after fighting with the government army, with his surviving companions testifying that he had been executed by the army units .

More than twenty years after his death, he was officially recognized by the Dominican government as a hero for his attempt to restore lawful government, and a street on the west bank of the Río Ozama in Santo Domingo was renamed "Presidente Caamaño". In 2008 a metro station in Santo Domingo was named after him and opened by President Leonel Fernández .

literature

• Francisco Caamaño Deno , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 24/1973 of June 4, 1973, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Homepage of the State Secretary for Culture - National Archives
• WIKIDOMINICANA
• Biografias de Grandes Dominicanos
• REDPODERCOMUNITARIO
• " A 43 Años de La Invasión a la República Dominicana . YOUTUBE

Individual evidence

1. ^ Waiting for Godoy . In: TIME-MAGAZINE , July 16, 1965
2. ↑ Dominican quarrels . In: Die Zeit , No. 34/1965
3. ↑ Garcia Godoy's Gordian Knot. Danger of coup in Santo Domingo - Army generals fear for their position of power . In: Die Zeit , No. 3/1966
4. ↑ "La desnacionalización y la pobreza, problemas fundamentales de la Republica Dominicana" ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ^ Politics in brief . ( Memento from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Hamburger Abendblatt , February 19, 1973
6. ↑ metro station Francisco Caamaño
7. ↑ Fernández inaugura la estación Caamaño Deñó del Metro . ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. President's homepage April 24, 2008  

predecessor	Office	successor
Donald Reid Cabral	President of Dominik. Rep. 1965	Héctor García Godoy