Ravings of a madman, even by Golo standards. BTW one of the people for whom he has such high was a guest in my house the other day, I'm proud to say.
- Thread starter Frank the Tank
- Start date
Trujillo's Grandson Seeks To Set Record Straight About El Jefe
A new wave of revisionist historians, with little credibility or morals, except among DR's pendejos have propagated the myth about Trujillo's dictatorship as a period of repression, turmoil and poverty.
But these historians were not born, or lived thru Trujillo's Era. They're like parrots who repeat what his enemies have turned to dogma.
But why? My guess is they're afraid of the truth. They have forced prohibition of Trujillo's history. They have erased 30 years of history to cover up their real intent.
I lived in Trujillo's era. I came from a middle class family. We lived in peace, prosperity and security. We left our windows open. Like youth today we freely went to parties, chased girls, drank, and wore cool fashions. I listened to American music thru radio from USA. I was an avid listener of the World Wide Hit Parade. I went bananas the first time I heard Tommy Roe singing " Sheila". I used to follow Mantle, Maris' Yankees. I witnessed Lew Burdette, Whitey Ford pitching thru radio. Life was good, simple. We had copper pennies like America, silver & gold coins.
Trujillo paid the national debt. We were the only true sovereign nation in Latin America.
We never needed BID, World Bank, FMI.
Trujillo's administration was impeccable. Government offices operated like clockwork. Everything was properly institutionalized. The proof is that most government today operate under Trujillo's organizational schemes in some of the same offices he left.
As long as you paid your cedula tax of $2 you were fine. Other than that I never heard of taxes.
I drove my father's car at 14 without a license. Never stopped! We used to party like crazy. The mountains were green, rivers flowing with clean water.
The phone company CDT charged $5 a month with limitless minutes. You could talk forever and only pay $5.
I don't recall ever a blackout. Garbage was collected daily. The streets in Santo Domingo were swept with sweepers.
We had the finest highways and paved streets. The pavement of Autopista Duarte was airport quality concrete, just like the beautiful Malecon, unlike today's cheap mixed asphalt.
Potholes? Where?
Trujillo built Duarte Bridge to last 50 years. It is in better shape than Bosch's Bridge built decades later. It has outlived its tenure.
I climbed all the way to Camp David Ranch El Generalisimo resort hotel near Santiago very high up the mountain. You can see Santiago from there. It looks like a small speck from the impressive view of the valley. The one thing you can see from the vastness is a monument that stands tall signifying what Santiago is all about. Without it, Santiago is just another town full of motoconchos. Trujillo's monument is Santiago.
Food was plentiful. We used to shop at Wimpy's, today's equivalent of Jumbo, but smaller.
Having lived every generation since Trujillo, I venture to say my youth was better under Trujillo than at any time. We had social networks. I was part of the Dominican Band Stand dancing rockNRoll & Twist channel 7. We listened to Pedro Maria Santana rock music programs, Elvis, Paul Anka, Buddy Holly, Frankie Valon's Venus. It was wonderful!
But what is the picture painted by pseudo- historians like Juan Daniel Balcacer, Hector Lachapelle, Moya Pons and Franklin Franco? One of desolation, crimes against humanity and poverty.
What do these historians have in common?
They're all PLD/PRD government paid mouthpieces who get paychecks, juicy expense accounts, travel expenses, exhonerations and military pensions in some cases.
If I didn't know them well, I would have kept silent. But judge for yourself.
Balcacer is the current minister for "Efemerides". His job is to print paper flags @ organized florals for national holidays. He's a self-made historian of sorts, because he was a member of my neighborhood group in NYC, Washington Heights & while I was going to college, he was standing in the streets doing nothing. Including his own resume & biography, he never shows any degree in any college or history major. I graduated. He didn't.
If he did when did he get it. I graduated & he was still jus hanging around Audubon Avenue. I knew his girlfriend from the Nanita family.
I picked up a DR paper 20 years later and like magic, he is the most recognized historian!!
I challenged him several times publicly to tell me how he became historian. He stopped writing me.
Take Moya Pons. He's another Leonel boy who miserably served as minister of enviroment. A nerdy balding guy who used to spend his time sitting in rocking chairs at a Ciudad Nueva Library talking politics with guys like Miguel de Camps. He is a self-serving historian who plans to elevate Leonel to glory. Has anyone asked about his pension?
Take LaChapelle. Here's a lowly captain from Barrio Mejoramiento Social whose claim to fame in my neighborhood at the time was a girl chaser with the uniform. He takes advantage of the '65 revolt, climbs aboard a tank, crosses the Duarte bridge, shoots at buildings and after LBJ cleans house he ends up being a two star revolutionary general and historian.
Franklin Franco was always a communist bon vivant from the most expensive Gazcue neighborhood, who smokes a cigarette like if he were a French Count. He still lives in the same sprawling mansion near Maximo Gomez like a national hero. He hated Trujillo. He's alive & well isn't he? Living like a king.
Be aware that these are not pass me down stories. These guys were my neighbors. Lachapelle lived right across from the Borrom? brothers, near now General Cesar Bolivar Asiatico and Captain Miguel Puente, whose son was my schoolmate.
How dare they change history like this?
Worst off is the new generation of revisionists who follow these people, like Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz. Those who read his award winning fiction "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" will note his claim to fame was badmouthing Trujillo with more footnotes than actual writing. I read the whole book, and his new piece of junk "This Is How to Lose Her" and this guy in both books uses the same wasted anecdotes about Trujillo and talks about DR as if he really knows crap.
I saw Junot Diaz here in DR. I heard him speak in front of a student/ parent assembly at CMS. The man is a neighborhood punk who used foul language just like he uses in both books. That shows you how much he knows about DR customs.
But even his last book about stories in his New Jersey enviroment & his desire to prove he used to lay every girl he laid eyes on like typical Dominican, are bogus. True, his books are fiction. But he draws his characters from his own life. Notice, he was Oscar Wao!
It turns out, by reason of destiny, that I know, perhaps as good as him or better the neighborhoods in Jersey where this story was written & where he lived. I tried to picture my days in New Brunswick, Edison, Piscataway, Princeton, the Raritan, Highway US1 where I used to drive my muscle car often and what he describes doesn't seem plausible.
I used to commute daily to Edison from Chatham, NJ an upper middle class area where I lived near Summit from my house at Chatham Glen townhouses by the river. I know New Brunswick & Piscataway like the palm of my hands. I was a member of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce. I used to lunch with Phil Levitan a major trucking owner from Piscataway. I dated girls at Piscataway's Park and the movies.
He paints a picture of what is not. He did the same with Trujillo.
Time will tell. Trujillo looks better everyday compared to the thieves and robbers who govern DR.
The youth is beginning to ask themselves what can be worst than Leonel?
I challenge anybody to tell me how life was under Trujillo. And unless you opposed him and plotted against him, there was no reason not to enjoy life.
Trujillo never forced me to go to his military parades at the Malec?n. I loved it.
His army was the best in America, professional, respectful, well groomed, unlike this organized crime unit we have now.
The previous Leonel Fernandez police chief was credited with over 3000 deaths in indiscriminate shootings by Human Rights groups. I never saw a dead body before I returned to DR in 1993. It seems dead bodies are everywhere in the greatest crime wave in history.
Disregarding Trujillo's killing of innocents, raping of women and the Haitian massacre, let's just say he died of old age in the 1980's. What would have happened then? History teaches us there are few options; a new strongman or a son is elected, a civil war ensues or at the very least a time of turmoil where lives are lost. It could be the DR would have had a new strongman and as history teaches us with repetive dictatorships they generally become more tyranical so this wouldn't necessarily have been a bargain. At any rate dictatorships never last indefinitely. Therefore, it could be proposed that the DR got off easy.
Thank you. I'm proud to have been your guest.
Well if your in country don't forget to visit us in Cibao.
Sorry, but no. History does not teach us that. Quick/easy counter-examples: Pinochet, Franco, several Argentines, and many others. There are plenty of cases in which a strongman gracefully hands over power to elected officers.
History however teaches something else:
The VAST MAJORITY of societies have had strongmen for most of their history. Yeah, they just did not call them 'dictators'. They usually called them kings or emperors. Lots and lots and lots of them. Most great civilisations were built that way...And no, we are not talking about ancient history only...Just go back a few decades, and a lot of European countries had some type of "dictator" (whether called that or not).
Elected governments are a fairly new invention. Before the US, very very few societies had them...nearly all had 'dictators' (usually called kings)...The French had a bloody and chaotic revolution, but went back to absolutist governments after that... and even after the US and French revolutions, most societies continued to be ruled by 'dictators' (under a name or another)...
History shows that governments like Trujillo's are the rule rather than the exception.
My mother's husband, Told me something similar to what Golo 100 said about the Trujillo regime. He said, during trujillo regime, people slept with the doors and windows open even during the night, and people never stole a single thing. If there was a drunk man sleeping on a bench in the park or street, people never dared to touch or steal this man's belongings because they had respect. I know my grandmother didnt liked trujillo's regime, because her family had a piece of land stole from them. All i hear is only the negative stuff about Trujillo. But sh8t! man, I bet his governance was far more better than any of these lowlife scums that are running the dope show now. Fine, the guys that brought trujillo down are heralded as heroes, but look now....They only get together for the anniversary of the end of the regime, but they dont say squat about all the BS that is happening now....Are they recieving $$$ to keep their mouth shut?? Honestly, I think trujillo's dictatorship was better that today's so-called democracy.
I'm not a Trujillo fan, BUT let's face it, the entire world has changed since his death. People left doors open in the US, too, before then.
So yes, my in-laws left their doors open on their SD finca. Up until the day the government [aka Trujillo] decided they wanted it.
So yes, my in-laws left their doors open on their SD finca. Up until the day the government [aka Trujillo] decided they wanted it.
That is exactly my point. Believing people's good behavior and decency depends on who the president is, is not only unfair to people, but also a very strange way to see society. People need to close their doors today simply because there are more thieves around and this is not because they go unpunished, but because family and society are sick and they're values reversed. Trujillo did not have a policeman at every corner, so if people wanted to be thieves then they could have been so, freely. If punishment stopped crime, death penalty would be the solution for it. And we all know it isn't.
What about Cuba? Or Venezuela? Or El Salvador? These are just in recent memory. What if we go back a few hundred years and look around the globe?
It could have been a lot worse here in the DR. And it a certain thing that Trujillo or his successor would have fallen at some point as most dictators do. Therefore, rather than focusing on good things of a questionable past it would be better to focus on what is needed for the future. And no a new dictator is not what this country needs but a politician who inspires people to expect more.
It is naive to think any country in today's world would do better with a dictator. I don't think anybody can point to a country ruled by a dictator that is doing even ok, let alone well. Yeah, we can listen all day to old timers dream aloud about their past, and we should let them because they didn't know any better: governments were better, cars were better, women were better, music was better, you know the drill... There are plenty of examples of dictatorships today, all of them in impoverished countries that have usually gone from one dictator to another. Democracy has failed in many countries (DR included), but dictatorships have not only failed, but have destroyed those countries' futures (DR included).
Dictators do keep things tidy. And tidy is good for business. So some people disappear and get tortured and some young girls get raped in the process? So long as you got your happy little life, right, apologists?
Dictatorships still reign all over the world: China, Russia, Vietnam, North Korea, Myanmar, Sudan, Gaza, Lebanon(by Hezbollah via Syria/Iran), Mali, Egypt(is it democracy to be ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood?), Jordan, Syria, Turkey(with free elections at all it is one of the most corrupt, ruled by Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic rule), Sierra Leone, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Cuba, Nicaragua(free elections? Where?), Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan( don't tell me those were free elections?) almost the entire African continent is ruled by dictators.
We have a constitutional dictatorship. We have found ways to rediscover Partido Dominicano with the PLD's attempt to establish a one-party system and Leonel Fernandez has tailored the constitution so that he can rule forever.
So what's the difference? I object to references that Trujillo raped women. Do senators, Diputados, top generals and government officials today have a need to rape women? The answer is no. They buy them easily with nice gifts, expensive dates, paid rent & favors. "Funcionarios" are loaded with menores looking for a weekend "pinta".
Trujillo was the same. He had women brought to him by his own friends, even his own ministers' wives. It was a priviledge to some women to be had by El Jefe.
He was loaded with cash, power, good looks, the best dressed man in DR in civilian clothes..what more can you ask? Yet, look at the wife he chose and stayed with until his death? The ugliest duckling you could find. He kept his family together. Ramfis was a playboy. He was too modest. With his looks, power, money and mysterious personality I would have had the biggest "Harem" in history. I would have laid every woman I laid my eyes on. He didn't. He married his school girlfriend! So he laid Kim Novak. Well, how many has Alex Rodriguez laid? Alex couldn't touch Ramfis in looks, prestige and pedigree. How many of our legislators have been indicted for sex abuse? Check the news. Is a constant. They don't even pay alimony. We had a chief of the armed forces marry a megadiva with scant reputation. Now he is a new "historian and poet". He bought her a luxury apartment, a Mercedes AMG. Where did he get that cash? She left him, now the guy spends his time Twitting poetry to women. Barbaro!
I find Ramfis cannot touch me or millions of Dominican horny men who screw daily 4 & 5 different women a week.
I hate hipocrites. Stop the Trujillo sex stuff. We have no moral to talk about that, I know I don't. Let's stay with politics.
Exactly,I agree.The reason why people during the Trujillo era did not steal others possessions was because
of the fear of repercussions, it was not out of respect.