Old documentary on Trujillo

PeterInBrat said:

Found this while surfing YouTube

[video=youtube_share;tgLJCEaQP7o]https://youtu.be/tgLJCEaQP7o[/video]

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Great period piece, thanks

Peter,
Thanks for posting this. As someone who has lived here for a decade and a history buff in general I really enjoyed it. Obviosly you have to take into account any slant that may be involved but it was very interersting.

Other observations -

WOW! It had Sosua beach in it!

"not so welcome are the Hatians" .....hmm some things never change

Great stuff. I wonder how it was received back when it first aired in March of '60.

PeterInBrat said:

I thought it interesting they said the DR was behind Haiti before Trujillo came along. Papa Doc wasn't so big on moving his country forward...

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*
Haiti got a head start once the US military invaded in 1915 and removed from the Haitian constitution the prohibition that until then existed in every single constitution of that country against white people owning property there. That opened the country to mass investments, mostly from the USA.*
Francois Duvalier imposed the Noirisme movement (basically a re-establishment of Dessaline's black supremacy policy). Although not as bloody as Dessalines', but most of the whites that were in Haiti fled the country (practically all foreign investment was made by whites, mostly Americans) and the Haitian mulatto population was also reduced via massacres against them (estimates of the number of people massacred by orders of Duvalier surpass even the total number of people killed by Trujillo, and unlike Trujillo all of Duvalier's victims were Haitians) and the subsequent flight due to fear. Duvalier took over the industries left behind and rather than intelligently managing them in order to make them more productive, decided to extract their wealth with no effort of improving them. The end result of Duvalier's policies is the mess Haiti became and still is today.*

Trujillo took a different approach. The US invaded in 1916 and brought peace to a country that was rattled for decades due to political instability and moderate guerrilla warfare in several parts of the interior. The Marines also removed all weapons from the Dominican citizenry, including the thousands of guns popularly known as Belgas haitianas that were given to Dominican rebels by the Haitian government in order to maintain the DR in a perpetual anarchy, especially after the assassination of General Hareoux. Most of those guns ended up as museum pieces in the USA and later in Europe. Haiti's meddling in Dominican affairs wasn't new, it was a fact of life for much of the 19th century and the only time that was put to an end was after the US invaded Haiti. Add to that the ravages made by hurricane San Zenon and Trujillo had a clean slate to start with.*

The United States changed the course of things first by invading Haiti in 1915 and then the DR in 1916. They left the DR in 1924, but Haiti didn't learn their lesson as quickly and the US left in 1935. In that time both countries were opened to uncontrolled trade and investment from the USA, the Americans initiated the practice of importin Haitians to work in the fields and in construction projects in the DR (until then Haitians hardly crossed into the DR for anything), and in 1929 the DR agreed with American-controlled Haiti to redraw the border to bring peace to the island (since 1844 Dominicans refused, often violently, to adhere to Haiti's wish of expanding its dominion beyond the original border agreed upon between Spain and France in the Treaty of Aranjuez of 1777; due to American overseeing the Dominicans gave up all that land without a fight after spending decades refusing to give to Haiti when Haiti was entirely under Haitian control).*

Trujillo rose quickly in the US army due to his intelligence and the compatibility of his personality with the fundamental values required to succeed in the US Marines. In fact, there was a US military general that once said he liked Ttujillo because he thinks like a Marine and Latin America can use 20 more men like Trujillo. Trujillo built instead of destroy because in the end he had a project to fulfill for the improvement of the country.*

The price to pay was the dictatorship and the lack of civil liberties, but the country progressed in material well being and in civic order. For the first time since the times of Spanish rule, the Dominican people lived the longest period of political stability, material progress, and general peace. Most importantly, Haiti's ambitions that consisted of; first, dominate the Dominicans directly and by force, when that failed attempt to kill off the entire Dominican population (the Dominicans are the only people in the Western Hemisphere who's war of independence was a war of extermination, an object that was not acheived because Haiti lost every battle), and when that failed via indirect influence such as supplying arms to Dominican rebels in order to keep Dominican society in suspense. Trujillo kept Haitian ambitions in check, in part due to his strong government and in part thanks to the USA.*

When Trujillo was killed, the DR was a different country but for the better in everything except civil liberties.

When Papa Doc died, his idiot son took over (Trujillo also had an idiot son destined to rule the DR, but as much as an idiot as he was, he was still smart enough to know nothing good can come from his rule, so he left the DR when he had the chance) and did nothing to stop Haiti's spiral downward started by his father. Once his son left Haiti in a hurry, Haiti was a completely different country but for the worse in just about everything. Not even the trees and forests escaped the ravages of the Duvaliers, only thinking in stripping wealth (in this case cut the trees to sell the valuable wood to the international market and the less valuable to the peasants as charcoal) instead of creating wealth. Unlike Trujillo, Duvalier didn't expanded public education, increased and improved the infrastructure, invited foreigners that in the long term had very positive effects in the development of agriculture, the economy, and culture in general. Unlike Trujillo, Duvalier didn't dot every town with a hospital, didn't create Haiti's first national parks to protect the environment, didn't impose sanitation to keep Haitian towns cleans and the people as healthy as possible. Unlike Trujillo, Duvalier didn't made Haiti self-sufficient in the foodstuffs that makes up the diet of the people. He didn't developed industry, he didn't grow the middle class, he was nothing more than a big waste of time!

Whether the DR would had been better off without Trujillo is hard to say, because so much of modern DR is based off of what Trujillo created (and many mistakes were made after Trujillo).*

But the same question regarding Haiti and Duvalier produces a definite and clear answer: Haiti and the whole island would had been better off without Duvalier. And that is a fact that may be a pill hard to swallow for some, but remains a fact none-the-less.*

PeterInBrat said:

I thought it interesting they said the DR was behind Haiti before Trujillo came along. Papa Doc wasn't so big on moving his country forward...

They were kind of casual about the Parsley Massacre. There is a lot to unpack. Such as Sosua happened in part bc the US turned away the settlers and Trujillo was wanting some fresh European stock.

I'd like to find out more about the Japanese and Italian settlements.

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Trujillo took in the Jewish settlers mostly to appease the international community after the "Parsley Massacre". He believed it would improve his image.
I don't know about the Japanese, but I can tell you that the Italians relocated to Juan Dolio. (wink-wink)

Trujillo also introduced some Hungarians, but don't know in what year. What I do know is that a short time after they arrived a spike in break ins and theft hit the capital. Once it was detected that most those crimes were being committed by Hungarians, Trujillo deported almost alll the Hungarians from the DR. As a miracle, the crime wave came to an end. lol

I don't know if they escaped the Hungarian 'persecution,' but I know that one of Luis ?lvarez Renta's ex-wife was born in San Crist?bal to a Hungarian parent or parents. She lives mostly in Santo Domingo, but one of their son lives in the USA if I remember correctly. Haven't kept in touch with him for a long while now. Their other daughter and son still lives in Santo Domingo though.

What happened with the Hungarians probably explains the popular saying no seas tan h?ngaro (don't be like a Hungarian.) Its usually expressed when a kid is misbehaving.

NALS, did you take the time to write that response? Or did you have it ready to go?