Essay on Rafael Trujillo Former President of the Dominican Republic

The reign of Dominican politician Rafael Leonidas Trijillo Molina, is considered in the bloodiest eras of Americas history. He was also associated with military and his ruled twice on the Dominican Republic. Remembered with the words cruel, efficient and ruthless, during the time when the country was occupied by the US, he was a trainee in the US Marines. The end of this occupation led to the dictatorship of Trujjilo, as he paved his way to the top. His regime was undoubtedly the evillest one as he allowed no opposition. Also, he put bans on press, and allowed no freedom of speech. During his reign he used brutal ways to suppress and repress anyone who opposed him. His ways were terroristic and people hated him. It was a feature of him to oppress his known or suspected opponents. He uses to maintain a list of people from around the world whom he thought were his enemies. His gang named as ‘” The 42” used to ride a car whom they named as “the car of death”. One of his most cunning actions was to give permission for the formation of an opposition party, so the ones who oppose them could be identifies and then he would clear his path by killing them all (Manley 2012).

Some killings of Trujjilo were taken into notice at international level, like the murder of Mirabal sisters, that made him loose the critical support that US was giving him. US also blocked the Trujjilo’s access to the profits of sugar quota after he gave the approval of the assassination of Venezuelan president.  He accepted Jews and Japanese immigrants, and exiles of the Spain, in his open-door policy. He was a racist and targeted the black inhabitants of the neighbor countries and also some Afro- Dominican citizens. The Jews were only accepted by the Dominican Republic in 1938, and no other country was accepting them. Trujjilo was willing to accept 100,000 of them on generously (Lebert 2013).

In 1937, Trujillo started a massacre, on the claim that his former opponents were being harboured by Haiti. In an attack that was ordered by him he became the murderer of tens of thousands of people of Haiti. The exact number is no known, though it is said that it may be between, twenty to thirty thousand. The machetes were used on his order to murder the Haitians, and decapitate the victims. He used every brutal method to torture and kill the victims, one of them was to drown them into the ocean while being hand and feet bound. After such brutality the Haitians were even stopped from retaliating and their response was muted, but after many efforts they were able to put this up internationally and demanded its investigation (Montgomery 2018). Trujjilo was then pressurized by the US and he agreed on a reparation settlement. Trujjilo supported Lescot financially who was a presidential candidate of Haiti at that time, and Lescot eventually won. Trujjilo thought that now he would use him for his own benefits but he didn’t turned out to be his supporter. Trujjilo couldn’t bear this and gave orders for his assassination, and did everything in his reach to discredit him. Lescot, finally had to leave the country when his associations with Trujjilo were proved.

The massacre of El Mozote is regarded with the name of village in and around which it took place on 11^th December 1981. In this massacre around 800 civilians were killed during the Salvadoran Civil War. It was not the only massacre of its type many other incidents of the type had preceded it, namely the student massacre, Oscar Romeo funeral massacre, the indigenous genocide, and Sumpul River massacre. The massacre of El Calabozo happened after it and also many others. The past centuries have been filled with brutalities like this, it shows that in the past there was no value of human life and massacres like this would happen sometime for the sake of land and at other times a tyrant would just do it to weaken its opponent or to suppress a campaign against him.  This particular massacre happened because some leftwing guerrilla groups coalesced into the Farabundo Martui National Front to battle El Salvador’s right wing military dictatorship. El Mozote had a neutral reputation before this massacre that was unlike many other villages of this area. El Mozote was Evangelical Protestant, while many of the neighboring villages were Roman Catholic and so liberation theology greatly influenced them and they were also sympathetic to guerrillas. Before the massacre a man that was the wealthiest in the whole town warned them that it many happen that an army would pass through the area in a state of counterinsurgency operation, but that wealthy man was given assurances that the residents would not be harmed if they would stay in their own place, and not retaliate (Serrata 2011). On the belief that if they fled they could be mistaken as Guerrilas , the people of the town resolved to remain at their own place, and also offered to protect the peasants of the surrounding areas. At December 10, the Salvadoran army reached the village and then on 11 and 12 December they started the execution of men and women and did all the brutalities they could with the residents of that village. During the morning they started their interrogation and torturing also. In the noon, they separated women from girls and children and started abusing them and then shooting them with a machine gun. They way of the killing was so brutal that even discussing it would be offensive. The entire population was killed and the buildings were set to fire, the army remained in the El Mozote that night and moved out the next day. The tyrant army them marched towards the village Los Toriles and continued their tyrannical murders (Ashman, Fine and Newman 2011). They did not left a single way in which they did not tortured the people, the men and women were taken out from their homes, set in a line, robbed and then shot and their homes were set on fire.

As per the indifference of wealthy Salvadorans to their poor fellows it seems that the origination of El Salvador’s chaos is many decades old, it is easily possible to track their origin in the colonial times. The country at that time seemed to be moving toward a civil war, the reason of that seemed the 47 years old military rule. All through this rule the military was supported by 2percent of the population, that 2 percent was a small but powerful group that was the owner of the 60% of the land. Most of the Salvadorians were poor, though their seemed to be developing a middle class. In all of this the difference of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ have only increased. The population was increasing at the rate of 3 percent yearly that was considered as one of the fastest rates of growth. Due to this reason those who were have-nots have grown in number and they then started to raise their voice against such inequalities. There were opposition movements all along the country, but none of them succeeded until leftist agitators that were better at organizing techniques began drawing many of the unhappy Salavadoreans , most of them were young, to their side. 

References of Rafael Trujillo Former President of the Dominican Republic

Ashman, Sam, Ben Fine, and Susan Newman. "Amnesty International? The nature, scale and impact of capital flight from South Africa." Journal of Southern African Studies 37, no. 1 (2011): 7-25.

Lebert, Joanne. ""Wiring human rights activism: Amnesty International and the challenges of information and communication technologies." In Cyberactivism, pp. 219-242. Routledge, 2013.

Manley, Elizabeth. ""Intimate Violations: Women and the Ajusticiamiento of Dictator Rafael Trujillo, 1944-1961."." The Americas 69, no. 1 (2012): 61-94.

Montgomery, Tommie Sue. Revolution in El Salvador: From civil strife to civil peace. Routledge, 2018.

Serrata, Médarv. Poщtica de la dictadura: El poder de las palabras en la Era de Trujillo. 2011.