The Dominican Republic during the 1930's was under the absolute contol of Trujillo. What other posters have written is valid. The vast majority of Dominicans were extremely poor and lived in rural areas. They were not really affected by the Great Depression. Trujillo actually workd hard in the 1930's to bring the rural masses into contact with the Dominican government, to make them(hhhhmm, let me find the words) almost, well, dependent on the government. Perhaps beholding, grateful to the government for providing schools, clinics, roads, and bridges. The most iportant factor Trujillo brought to the DR was security. Crime, banditry was virtually eliminated(well, except for Trujillo himself). The DR went through a period of enormous growth(infastructure, public schools,etc) during the Great Depression. Trujillo was the reason for all of it. Trujillo's iron will guided the nation through a time of extreme global economic distress. Trujillo modernized ports and built the largest suspension bridges in Latin America, all during the Great Depression.
Agreed, Trujillo created the middle class, the Second World War and spiking commodities prices made that possible, along with paying off the nation's national debt in (from memory) in 1947.
Trujillo had hard core policies dealing with agriculture. A basic tenet of Trujillo's agro-policy was that nation had to be able to sustain itself. Food security was importnat to Trujillo. Trujillo gave out land to the avergae Dominican. He went so far as to break up large estates and give the land to the poor. But, there was a stiff condition. The "men of work" had to be productive. The lazy would find themselves sent to labor camps. Land could(and was) taken away from people who were idle or poor workers. Their were additional penalties that could inflicted on unproductive farmers. Crop yields soared, Trujillo used the surplus to fund many government programs and pay off the National Debt. Trujillo used the tobacco crop(almost exclusively) to pay for weapons purchased from French arms dealers who refused to accept "America's worthless paper currency". Before the fall of France to the Germans in 1940, almsot all Dominican tobacco was sold to the French.
I can add more details if you like.
How did the Dominican Republic handle the Great Depression? Remarkably well.