Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina

Rafael Trujillo with wife (1934)

Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina (born October 24, 1891 in San Cristóbal , † May 30, 1961 in Santo Domingo ) was a Dominican politician and dictator of the Dominican Republic .

Life

Origin and career

Trujillo grew up in a middle-class family in his hometown of San Cristóbal. His father, José Trujillo Váldez, was Sargento in the Spanish army, which took over the military defense when the country was rejoined to Spain in 1861 . His mother Altagracia Julia Molina was the descendant of a Haitian officer during the occupation of the country by Haiti from 1822 to 1844.

At the age of 16, Trujillo got a job as a telegraph operator, which he held for three years. Then he and his brother José Arismendy (known as "Petán") were guilty of stealing cattle, forging checks and stealing a sum of money from a post office. He was sentenced and imprisoned for several months.

At the age of 22 (1913) Trujillo married Aminta Ledesma , a farmer's daughter from San Cristóbal. This connection resulted in a daughter who was given the name Flor de Oro (gold flower) and who later married Porfirio Rubirosa . In 1916 he again embarked on a criminal career. He led a gang called La 44 who raided shops and was feared for their violence. He then went on to do various odd jobs.

Trujillo's great hour came with the US occupation of the country (1916–1924). He joined the newly founded National Guard in 1918 , where he began a steep career as an officer and in 1924 already held the rank of major . In 1927 Trujillo left the Guardia Nacional and joined the Brigada Nacional , where he rose from lieutenant to general in just ten years .

Meanwhile, Trujillo's first marriage fell apart. He married Bienvenida Ricardo , but soon divorced again. He entered into a third marriage with María Martínez . From this connection his son Ramfis Trujillo Martínez emerged.

Time as president

In March 1930 , Trujillo launched a coup against President Horacio Vásquez with the support of American troops . Rafael Estrella Ureña became the new president . A few months later, in August 1930, he ousted him and allowed himself to be elected president in a fraudulent election .

Once in power, Trujillo made every effort to keep it and expand it. He founded his own party , the Partido Dominicano , banned all other political parties and organizations, completely dismantled the democratic state system , suppressed all opposition and freedom of expression and had alleged and actual opponents (and mostly their families) brutally persecuted and murdered.

In 1932, Trujillo gave himself the title Benefactor of the Fatherland (Benefactor de la Patria) and Father of the New Fatherland (Padre de la Patria Nueva). In general, however, he was simply addressed as Chef (Jefe). A year later, in 1933, he acquired the title of generalissimo . In 1936 he had the capital Santo Domingo renamed Ciudad Trujillo (City of Trujillo).

Trujillo attached great importance to a well-groomed appearance. He loved splendid ( Napoleonic ) uniforms, pomp and baroque feasts. He tried to lighten his dark skin with white powder and make-up to cover up his Haitian (black) origins. Trujillo was obsessed with doing whatever it takes to lighten his country's people. In October 1937 he had between 25,000 and 27,000 black sugar cane workers from Haiti murdered in the “parsley massacre” ( Masacre del Perejil ). In 1938, at the Évian Conference , he offered to accept 100,000 persecuted Jews from Europe (of which only 600 came to the country; see also Sosúa ).

The dictator's arrogant tyranny and unpredictability increasingly aroused displeasure abroad. As a result of increasing protests against the arbitrary rule of Trujillo, he handed over the presidency to Jacinto Bienvenido Peynado in 1938 , but without relinquishing his powers. In 1940 Manuel de Jesus Troncoso de la Concha became president, and in 1942 Trujillo himself took over the office of president again. Ten years later (1952) he left it to his brother, Héctor Bienvenido Trujillo Molina (called Negro ), who was nothing more than a puppet.

Trujillo maintained close and good relations with the USA and the Catholic Church until almost the end of his rule . In 1954 he visited Pope Pius XII. and signed a Concordat between the Holy See and the Dominican Republic. On December 11, 1941, four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor , Trujillo declared war on Germany , Italy and Japan .

In 1947 he announced the repayment of all financial liabilities to foreign countries because the country was developing economically and industrially. Trujillo had a monopoly on all industries; it dominated the banks , the radio , the newspapers , the sugar , rum and tobacco industries and all branches of the economy in general. Trujillo ruled like a patrimonial kleptocrat . According to official information, the crime rate was low, there was order, stability and subservience. If necessary, Trujillo intervened in the privacy of his subjects, arranged marital relations, dissolved or forbidden them and satisfied his sexual lust in young girls, whom he used as he pleased and which he also gave rich gifts if he liked. In this climate of total control and oppression, it was enough to fall out of favor by just a little displeasure on the part of the Jefe .

As early as 1949, exile forces tried to overthrow Trujillo ( invasion of Luperón ). The enterprise failed, and parts of the army in exile were killed in fighting or later executed after capture . The remaining parts of the army in exile then formed the Caribbean Legion and the Ejército de Liberación de América (ELA), which again attempted a landing from Cayo Confites in 1959 . This attempted coup also failed. All in all, opposition was almost impossible due to repression and the strict regulation of social life. The persecution of opposition members sometimes took on grotesque, almost paranoid features and was heavily criticized abroad. Prominent victims were e.g. B. Jesús Galíndez , who had written a doctoral thesis on the Trujillo dictatorship at Columbia University , and the Mirabal sisters , who were involved in the attempted coup in 1959 and who were released after international protests but then murdered. The organizer of the persecution was Trujillo's secret service chief Johnny Abbes García . In early 1960, the government of President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent Senator George Mathers and Ambassador William D. Pawley to Trujillo, who unsuccessfully suggested that he resign.

Personal animosity towards the President of Venezuela , Rómulo Betancourt , led Trujillo to an attack on Betancourt in 1960. He was seriously injured during a public appearance in Caracas, but survived the bomb attack. The Organization of American States (OAS) then imposed sanctions on the Dominican Republic. Under pressure from abroad, Trujillo's brother Héctor had to resign from his presidency. He was followed by Vice President Joaquín Balaguer (in the service of the Trujillo dictatorship since 1930).

attack

On May 30, 1961, Trujillo drove to his hometown of San Cristóbal at around 10 p.m. He was “autocratic as always” ( Die Zeit ) without a bodyguard. A squad of seven shot out of a car at Trujillo's light blue Chevrolet Bel Air . The victim staggered out of his car and tried to shoot back in the dark. Then he collapsed and was dead. His body was transferred to his hometown of San Cristóbal and initially buried there. At the solemn state funeral, President Balaguer gave the funeral speech.

The funerary chapel in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where Trujillo was buried from 1964 to 1970

The mausoleum of the Trujillo family in the Mingorrubio cemetery in Madrid-El Pardo, resting place since 1970

Despite the tyrannicide of Trujillo, the fall of the dictatorial regime failed. The conspirators were arrested and executed , only two managed to escape. Trujillo's older son, Ramfis, who had traveled quickly from Paris and was promoted to colonel at the age of seven and general at ten, took power in the country and carried out the execution of some of the assassins himself. However, after the death of Rafael Trujillo, the Trujillo clan could not hold on to power much longer. After a military revolt in November 1961, the family of President John F. Kennedy was forced to leave the country.

Ramfis initially tried in vain to flee with his sailing yacht Angelita (today: Sea Cloud ), with the exhumed body of his father on board. Balaguer then allowed him and his family to leave for Paris. Trujillo's body was also transferred by yacht to Paris and buried on August 14, 1964 in the Père Lachaise cemetery, where his burial chapel is still located today (Division 85). In 1970 the remains were exhumed again, brought to Spain and buried on November 19 in the cemetery in the Madrid district of El Pardo. There Trujillo's bones rest next to those of his son Ramfis in a black marble mausoleum.

effect

"He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch!"

- US Secretary of State Cordell Hull

Senator Olin D. Johnston (D) from South Carolina praised Trujillo as “the rock of stability in the turbulent Caribbean”. In 1951 he commissioned an assassination attempt on Venezuela's exiled politician and later President Rómulo Betancourt . In broad daylight, an agent tried to inject poison into Betancourt on a busy street in Havana.

"Idol"

Trujillo's unrestricted and brutal rule was considered a blueprint for the military juntas in Central and South America over the following decades. Torture and political murder had become an everyday vehicle for Trujillo. His method of making people disappear later inspired Chile's dictator Pinochet and the Argentine colonels around General Jorge Rafael Videla . Like Videla, Trujillo has long enjoyed the goodwill of the United States as an anti-communist ruler.

literature

• Christian Schmidt-Häuer: Dictator Rafael Trujillo - Pirates of the Caribbean . In: Die Zeit , No. 22/2011 (short biography)
• Nikolaus Werz : Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. In: Nikolaus Werz (ed.): Populists, revolutionaries, statesmen. Politicians in Latin America. Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 2010, pp. 450–473.
• Franz Eder: 'La muerte del chivo': The assassination attempt on Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina on May 30, 1961 . In: Rene Ortner, Michael Gehler (eds.): From Sarajevo to September 11th: Individual assassinations and mass terrorism . Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2007 ISBN 978-3-7065-4019-3 , pp. 126-147.
• Richard Lee Turits: Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History. Stanford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8047-5105-6 .
• Bernard Diederich: Trujillo - The Death of the Dictator. Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton 2000, ISBN 1-55876-206-X .
• Eric Paul Roorda: The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930-1945. Duke University Press, Durham / London 1998, ISBN 0-8223-2123-8 .
• Wolfgang Schreyer : The Dominican Tragedy: The Adjutant / The Resident / The Reporter. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle / Leipzig 1971–1980. Three-part series about Trujillo's fall and the time after.
• Robert Crassweller: Trujillo - The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator. MacMillan, New York 1966.
• Günter Felkel: People in a hurricane. The morning, Berlin 1963.
• Mario Vargas Llosa : La Fiesta del Chivo . 2000, Grupo Santilliana de Ediciones, SA

Movies

• The Adjutant (director: Peter Deutsch, script: Wolfgang Schreyer, TV-GDR, 3 parts, first broadcast March 31, 1972– April 3, 1972, German TV broadcaster DFF).
• The Time of the Butterflies , TV film about the Mirabal sisters and their resistance fight against Trujillo, English title: In the Time of the Butterflies , USA, Mexico, 2001.
• La fiesta del chivo , film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Mario Vargas Llosa (Argentine title: El dictador , English title: The Feast of the Goat , German title: The death of a beast , on TV as The Goat Festival , TV Spain / Dominican Republic 2005, directed by Luis Llosa , with Tomás Milián in the role of Trujillos).
• In the novel The Jackal and the film of the same name , the main character claims to have murdered Trujillo.

Web links

• Literature by and about Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina in the catalog of the German National Library
• Trujillo's name pronunciation in Forvo.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ David Kaiser : The Road to Dallas. The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 2008, p. 58.
2. ↑ Christian Schmidt-Häuer: The Monster of the Dominican Republic. In: The time . May 26, 2011, accessed January 9, 2021 . 
3. ^ El dictador Leónidas Trujillo está enterrado en El Pardo . In: El País , February 4, 1986 (Spanish)
4. ↑ Quoted from: Dictator Rafael Trujillo: Pirates of the Caribbean. In: Die Zeit May 26, 2011. No. 22/2011
5. ↑ Dictator Rafael Trujillo: Pirates of the Caribbean. In: Die Zeit May 26, 2011. No. 22/2011
6. ^ The Feast of the Goat in the Internet Movie Database .

predecessor	Office	successor
Rafael Estrella Ureña	President of Dominik. Rep. 1930-1938	Jacinto Bienvenido Peynado
Manuel de Jesus Troncoso de la Concha	President of Dominik. Rep. 1942-1952	Hector B. Trujillo