Book on Trujillo??

GringoRubio

Bronze
Oct 15, 2015
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Can anybody recommend good book on Trujillo's dictatorship: A story from start to finish. Spanish is okay. I've found German historians do a great job on Latin American subjects as well.

All I can find focuses more on the USA interactions and policies. I want something more from a Dominican perspective or Latin America at large.
 

melphis

Living my Dream
Apr 18, 2013
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The book "Why the Cocks Fight" by Michele Wrucker covers a lot of the Trujillo years but also covers the problems between the DR and Haiti. I enjoyed it but the first chapter is really dry as it goes into great depths on why cocks fight.
 

NALs

Economist by Profession
Jan 20, 2003
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Michele Wruckers' book leaves out a huge part of the history between DR and Haiti, hence the conclusions in her book are all wrong. Her book doesn't really focuses on the Trujillo dictatorship, but rather on Dominican-Haitian relations with Dominicans getting all the blame. 

Better sources, not to mention are heavily focused on the dictatorship, would be Trujillo, mi padre by Angelita Trujillo. This book is banned in the DR, but you can still get it abroad. If you buy it and decide to take it back into the country, I suggest you put over it a dust jacket of some irrelevant book. Customs officials are instructed to confiscate the book. Needless to say, the book gived a more positive look at the regime, but also goes into some pesky details that ruffles the feathers of a few families that insist they were always anti-Trujillistas when in reality that wasn't the case.

Jesús de Galíndez Era de Trujillo is a deep look into the regime with plenty of criticisms. The author was a Spaniard and lived in the country for a few years during the regime. Later he moved to NYC and taught at Columbia University. Once the manuscript that dissected the Trujillo dictatorship with precision, he was kidnapped and killed. His book is so well written, that to this day it's used in many Latin American universities are required reading to understand the workings of the quintessential Latin American dictatorship. Trujillo's regime was the most perfected of such political systems.

Those two books are really all that you need to get a hollistic and impartial idea of what was Trujillo's dictatorship from the inside out. Galindez book is readily available at Librería Cuesta and in any Dominican library. 
 

NALs

Economist by Profession
Jan 20, 2003
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I learned a lot from THE FEAST OF THE GOAT.


That's a start, but fiction shouldn't be used as references for reality.

The author himself says that he wrote a novel, not a history book (from about 2:10 on the timeline).

[video=youtube;0Cqh09iY_xI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cqh09iY_xI[/video]

He makes emphasis on the fact that his work is fiction and not a well researched history book to prevent people from taking what he wrote and believe it corresponds to reality. He took many liberties in embellishing the story, as he himself says in the interview. His exact words are una novela donde hay mas invención que memoria (a novel that has more fiction than historically factual information).
 
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GringoRubio

Bronze
Oct 15, 2015
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Those two books are really all that you need to get a hollistic and impartial idea of what was Trujillo's dictatorship from the inside out. Galindez book is readily available at Librería Cuesta and in any Dominican library. 

Exactly what I'm looking for. I find Latin America such an enticing enigma.