Operation Power Pack

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Operation Power Pack was a multinational, United States- led military intervention in the Dominican Republic that lasted from April 28, 1965 to September 21, 1966 .

background

After the long-standing dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina , Juan Bosch was elected President of the Dominican Republic in December 1962 . Bosch was a candidate and in 1939 the founder of the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), an opposition party to the Trujillo dictatorship. He took office in February 1963. His government program included a distributive land reform and the nationalization of some foreign investments, to which the investors reacted with a military coup by General Elías Wessin y Wessin . Bosch went into exile in Puerto Rico to live with his mother's relatives.

Wessin was the commander of the Centro de Entrenamiento de las Fuerzas Armadas (CEFA) of around 2,000 trained infantrymen who were stationed at San Isidro Air Base. The troops were equipped with tanks, recoilless guns and an attack aircraft. An independent army, which was originally set up for Ramfis Trujillo, son of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, to protect the dictator and to watch over the other branches of the army.

On September 26, 1963, the government was handed over to a civil triumvirate made up of Emilio de los Santos , Manuel Enrique Tavares Espaillat and Ramón Tapia Espinal. This declared the constitution of 1963 non-existent. The population fought against this usurpation with strikes. The supporters of the constitution of 1963 described themselves as constitutionalistas .

The most active parties in these actions were the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano and Partido Reformista Social Cristiano . Representatives of the two parties reached an agreement at Juan Bosch's in the University of Puerto Rico . A counter-coup was agreed for April 26, 1965.

Saturday April 24, 1965

On the morning of April 24, 1965, the Chief of General Staff, General Marcos Rivera Cuesta, received orders to arrest a group of officers. The officers Hernando Ramírez and Álvarez Holguín, Major Juan Lora and Teniente Noboa Garner were arrested in the Campamento 16 de agosto barracks and taken to the General Staff. The Captain Mario Peña Taveras went to the office of General Rivera Cuesta, had him arrested, took over the management of the barracks Campaniento 16 de Agosto and Campaniento 27 de Febrero and released his arrested comrades.

At 1:30 p.m. Constitutionalistas occupied a private radio station, declared that they had captured the Chief of General Staff and called on the population to overthrow Donald Reid Cabral .

Dr. José Francisco Peña Gómez on the radio called on the people to take up arms against the triumvirate and to hand over the government to Juan Bosch. That night, Donald Reid Cabral radioed the insurgents to lay down their arms.

Sunday April 25, 1965

In the first hours of the morning constitutionalist military came to Santo Domingo and forced Reid Cabral to resign. The population occupied the seat of government, the Palacio Nacional , to support the counter-coup.

In the Palacio Nacional , the Comando Militar Revolucionario was formed from Colonels Vinicio A. Fernández Pérez, Giovanni Gutiérrez Ramírez, Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deñó and Eladio Ramirez Sánchez and took power at 10:30 a.m.

In the evening they handed over the presidency to José Rafael Molina Ureña .

In San Juan , Bosch announced that he would be coming to Santo Domingo as soon as the Air Force sent him a plane.

The command of the San Isidro Air Force Base, made up of Generals Wessin y Wessin and Imbert Barrera, opposed the return of Juan Bosch and the 1963 constitution.

In San Isidro, instead of the Douglas DC-3 to San Juan, North American P-51 and De Havilland DH100 took off and attacked the Palacio Nacional and the Puente Duarte .

Monday April 26, 1965

The bombardment of the Palacio Nacional and other neighborhoods in Santo Domingo continued in the morning. General Elías Wessin y Wessin prepared the occupation of Santo Dominigo at the San Isidro base 40 kilometers northwest of Santo Dominigo.

Tuesday April 27, 1965

With the bombardment of Santo Domingo, the Navy took position on the side of Wessin. The Palacio Nacional , in which Rafael Molina Ureña was, was shelled by the ships . The population tried to blind the pilots with mirrors.

José Rafael Molina Ureña, members of his government such as Colonels Vinicio Fernández Pérez, Giovanni Gutiérrez, Rafael Fernandez Dominguez and other members of the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano , went to the US embassy to see Ambassador William Tapley Bennett Jr. and asked him for mediation . He phoned Caamaño and told him that only he would be missing for the meeting. Caamaño replied that Bennett should tell Wessin to stop the bombardment, to which the ambassador replied that it was not now the time to negotiate but to surrender immediately. Rafael Molina Ureña resigned and sought asylum at the Colombian embassy ; he was followed by other constituentistas . As the Constitucionalistas government left the US Embassy, ​​Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deño came and said, “allow me to tell you that we will keep fighting, come what may”.

After he had left the embassy, ​​Caamaño and other employees turned to the Puente Duarte bridge over the Río Ozama , on which the troops from Wessin tried to penetrate into the city center.

The Constitucionalistas managed to block the Puente Duarte with barricades and Molotov cocktails .

When Juan Bosch learned in Puerto Rico that the US authorities would not allow him to leave the country and that the Constitutionalistas had no plane that could have fetched him, he appointed Colonel Caamaño as his deputy. Parliament met for an emergency session and named Caamaño President of the Dominican Republic. Juan Bosch wrote articles for the Chicago Daily News.

Wednesday April 28, 1965

A military junta under the direction of Colonel Pedro Bartolomé Benoit was formed at the San Isidro base on the instructions of the US embassy.

In the early hours of the morning, the Constitutionalistas, under the command of Colonel Lora Fernández, launched an attack on Ozama Fortress, the seat of the Cascos Blancos , the military police .

In the morning, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that the United States would be sending a small force to protect the enclosure of the US embassy and US citizens.

Parts of the 2nd US Marine Division landed and were later supplemented by parts of the 82nd US Airborne Division . Meanwhile, 41 ships of the VII Fleet of the US Navy blocked Santo Domingo and shot at it.

The 400 USMC, under the command of Bruce Palmer, Jr., began evacuating foreigners from Santo Domingo.

With the blockade of the Puente Duarte , the constituionalistas controlled the urban area of ​​Santo Domingo.

On the evening of April 28, 1965, US Ambassador William Tapley Bennett Jr. telexed that the generals of San Isidore had been pushed back, some were howling and hysterically calling for a retreat. The US ambassador added that supporters of Fidel Castro rose victorious. It was through this assessment that the Johnson administration positioned itself against the Constititionalistas . A campaign was developed to discredit them, which worked with anti-communist reflexes, the Cuban Missile Crisis was still present and the Vietnam conflict had been a war approved by Congress since August 5, 1964.

Thursday April 29, 1965

The Constitucionalistas storm the Ozama fortress and distribute the arsenal to the population.

Lyndon B. Johnson said the US could not allow another communist government to establish itself in the Western Hemisphere . The Western Hemisphere Division was headed at the United States Department of State by Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Thomas C. Mann of Texas.

Friday April 30, 1965

John Bartlow Martin , Johnson's special envoy , came to Santo Dominigo . Under his supervision, the Benoit Junta dissolved and the Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional was formed under the presidency of Antonio Imbert Barrera .

"Inter-American Peacekeeping Force"

Headquarters of the United States Armed Forces and the Inter-American peacekeeping force in the quartering of health services during the occupation of Santo Domingo:
1) Headquarters, United States Armed Forces
2) Headquarters, Inter-American peacekeeping force
3) Company D, 307th Medical Battalion in Colegio Maria Auxiliadora
4 ) Company C, Field Hospital
5) 15th Field Hospital
6) Company C at Camp Randall
Health care officers from the United States Army begin in Santo Domingo. May 1965
Honduran soldiers , the first troops of the Inter-American Peacekeeping Force, arrive to secure the peace

On May 6, 1965, the Organization of American States approved the deployment of an "Inter-American Peacekeeping Force" to the Dominican Republic by 14 votes to five, with one abstention.

Francisco Alberto Caamaño sued the United Governments for the right of peoples to self-determination . Before the UN Security Council , the delegate of the Soviet Union, Nikolai Fedorenkoder, described the project as "criminal aggression", while France's UN Ambassador Roger Seydoux called it a "real armed intervention".

As in the case of Operation PBSUCCESS , the US-UN delegate Adlai Ewing Stevenson denied jurisdiction and referred to the relevant agreements of the Organization of American States .

From May 14, 1965, the US troops secured a safety corridor which connected the San Isidro Air Base via the Puente Duarte with the US embassy in the center of Santo Domingo. In the role of a formally neutral power, they included the rule of the Constitutionalistas, supported the generals who were subordinate to them and were able to control when Juan Bosch returned. The "peacekeeping force" set up a 35 square kilometer exclusion zone in the city center for the quarter inhabited by foreigners and diplomats. About 2,700 Americans and about 1,400 other foreigners were evacuated. Checkpoints with roadblocks have been set up. The "peacekeeping force" comprised 42,420 men. At the beginning of June 1965, the Brazilian Marechal Hugo Panasco Alvim, (* 1901) took over command of the 23,000-strong OAS "peacekeeping force". US Lieut. General Bruce Palmer became his deputy. Humberto Castelo Branco had sent 1,130 soldiers from Brazil, Oswaldo López Arellano sent 250 soldiers from Honduras under the command of Policarpio Juan Paz García , Alfredo Stroessner sent 184 soldiers from Paraguay, René Schick Gutiérrez sent 160 Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua , Francisco José Orlich Bolmarcich sent 21 policemen from Costa Rica and Julio Adalberto Rivera Carballo dispatched three members of his general staff.

Conflict communication

From May 5, 1965, the US embassy gave the 160-strong press corps a list of 58 names, which were supposed to be communists in the ranks of the constitutionalistas . The research showed that the list contained double entries and people who had died for a long time.

  1. Antonio Abreu Fiallo
  2. Luís Acosta Tejeda
  3. José Estrella J. Armach
  4. Andrés Avelino García
  5. Máximo Bernard Vásquez
  6. Moisés Blanco Genao
  7. Norge Botello Fernández
  8. Benjamín Bujosa Lousy
  9. Pedro Conde Sturla
  10. Lourdes Contreras Pérez
  11. Jaime Capell Bello
  12. Asdrúbal Domínguez G.
  13. Félix Servio Ducodray M
  14. Rafael Estévez Weber
  15. Luís Gómez Pérez
  16. Homero Hernández V.
  17. Pedro Me
  18. Diomedes Mercedes B
  19. Dato Pagan Perdomo
  20. Juan Miguel Román Díaz
  21. Jesus de la Rosa
  22. Rafael Taveras Rosario
  23. Hugo Tolentino Dipp
  24. Abelardo Vicioso G.
  25. Emma Tavarez Justo
  26. Fidelio Despradel Roque
  27. Delta Bohemia Soto de V
  28. Tony Isa Conde
  29. Narciso Isa Conde
  30. Euclides Gutiérrez Feliz
  31. Manuel González
  32. González, el gallego

Rubén Salazar of the Los Angeles Times interviewed a Florentine and concluded by wishing that the US had done something to win him over. Tad Szulc was there for The New York Times and described Francisco Alberto Caamaño as a nationalist.

Attack on the Palacio Nacional

On May 19, 1965, a group of Constitucionalistas tried to occupy the Palacio Nacional, where they were shot by US snipers. Among those shot were Colonel Rafael Fernández Domínguez, the interior minister of the Constituionalistas , Juan Miguel Román, chairman of the 14 de Junio political group , Euclides Morillo, a member of the 14 de Junio and guerrillas of 1963, Ilio Capocci, the trainer of the frogmen .

US attack

On June 15 and 16, 1965, the main offensive of US troops on the area held by the Constitucionalistas took place. 67 men, women and children were killed and 165 people injured. It has been suggested that more people were killed by mortar shells in their homes.

peace contract

Ellsworth Bunker led the negotiations as special mediator and US ambassador to the Organization of American States . In mid-August 1965 negotiations advanced and a possible outcome became apparent. On August 30, under the supervision of a mediation commission of the OEA, the Acta Institucional was signed, with which Héctor García Godoy was appointed president and presidential elections were agreed. From August 31, 1965, an armistice was in effect. The war ended with the signing of the Acta Institucional .

Most of the US troops then left the Dominican Republic, the police tasks and "peacekeeping" was mainly taken over by Brazilian troops.

On September 3, 1965, Héctor García Godoy took office and on the same day the President of the Constitutionalistas Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deño resigned in a state act in front of 25,000 Dominicans and became commander of the Brigade " Gregorio Luperón ". When he was planning another military uprising in this position on December 19, 1965 in Santiago de los Caballeros , President García Godoy transferred him to the embassy in London in January 1966 as a military attaché . He held this post until mid-1967.

Attack on the Hotel Matum

On December 19, 1965, Constitutionalistas met in Santiago de los Caballeros in memory of Coronel Rafael, Fernández Domínguez and the other Constitutionalistas who were killed . They were attacked for five hours by troops from the defunct Gobierno de Reconstrucción Nacional in the Hotel Maton . Numerous people lost their lives, including Colonel Juan Maria Lora Fernández. Finally, the Fuerza Interamericana de Paz intervened .

On February 9, 1966, police fired at a student demonstration in front of the Palacio Nacional, demanding a budget for the university and the withdrawal of US troops. Antonio Santos Méndez, Luís Jiménez Mella, Miguel Tolentino and Amelia Ricart Calventi lost their lives and more than 40 people were injured.

Presidential election

On June 1, 1966, there were presidential elections with the candidates Joaquín Balaguer and Juan Bosch. The Partido Reformista candidate , Joaquín Balaguer, became president. Caamaño said from London that there was no free choice in an occupied country. José Francisco Peña Gómez confirmed that there had been electoral fraud. The population shouted in the streets that there had been electoral fraud.

With the withdrawal of the last troops of the Fuerza Interamericana de Paz , the occupation ended on September 21, 1966. On July 1, 1966, Joaquín Balaguer assumed the presidency for another 12 years; he had entered the country on June 28, 1965 on a 72-hour visa to visit his mother on her deathbed.

Victim

Around 2,000 citizens of the Dominican Republic were killed during the occupation.

20 members of the Fuerza Interamericana de Paz were killed, including 13 GIs who were often shot by PRD shooters. More than 200 GIs were injured.

literature

  • Ivan Musicant: The banana wars. A history of United States military intervention in Latin America from the Spanish-American War to the invasion of Panama New York (Macmillan) 1990. ISBN 0-02-588210-4 .
  • Subchapter Dominican Republic , in: Christian Zentner : The wars of the post-war period. An illustrated history of military conflicts since 1945 , Munich (Südwest Verlag) 1969, pp. 320–358.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Time , May 7, 1965, The Coup That Became a War
  2. Areíto , April 24, 2009, La lucha por reponer Constitución del 1963 ( Memento of the original from April 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hoy.com.do
  3. ^ William Tapley Bennett Jr., 77, Envoy to Dominican Republic . In: The New York Times , December 1, 1994
  4. ^ John S. Clark, Major USAF, Keeping the Peace, Regional Organizations and Peacekeeping , School of Advanced Aripower Studies, Air University , Air Force Base, Alabama, Nov. 1997
  5. ^ Time , June 11, 1965, Responsibility & Deadlock
  6. Jump from the boxer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1965 ( online ).
  7. 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
  8. Half-left in San Domingo . In: Die Zeit , No. 37/1965

Wikipedias in other languages

  1. San Isidro Air Base (Eng.)
  2. Ramfis Trujillo (Eng.)
  3. ^ Partido Reformista Social Cristiano (span.)
  4. José Francisco Peña Gómez (Spanish)
  5. Dominican Air Force (Eng.)
  6. Chicago Daily News (Eng.)
  7. Pedro Bartolomé Benoit (Swedish)
  8. United States Seventh Fleet (Eng.)
  9. Bruce Palmer, Jr. (Eng.)
  10. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs (Eng.)
  11. John Bartlow Martin (Eng.)
  12. Nikolai Fedorenko (Eng.)
  13. Roger Seydoux (French)
  14. Rubén Salazar (Eng.)