Difficult to grade authoritarian leaders like that. Trujillo was very bad during a shorter period of time. Guevara started guerrilla war campaigns around Lat Am to spread communism and Castro stayed in power until his death and still seem to govern from his grave with his brother Raul who just recently supposedly retired.
There have been numerous tyrants of the 20th century. These oppressors have led to great death and destruction throughout various parts of the world. Take Enver Pasha for example. He was in power for five years and his death toll was 1.1 to 2.5 million. Vladimir Lenin is another example.
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For the sake of comparison, something like 98% of Dominicans never had any family member tortured or killed by the regimen. Plus, most that were tended to be communist.
A good way to visualize it, today around 10% of the Dominican population is considered white, which is a considerable greater percentage than the percentage of victims during the 31 year span of Trujillo. Now travel throught the DR and see what 10% means by simply looking around. The greatest error committed during the Trujillo regime was torturing/killing members of some prominent Dominican families. The Dominican upper class eliminated him because of that. If it wasn't for that, most likely Trujillo would had died from old age as dictator of the country.
Look at the things the killers of Trujillo had. Cars, guns (only close friends of Trujillo were allowed to have guns, because back then not even the police had guns by orders of Trujillo), houses that were nicer and more comfortable than most, etc. Once the upper class got rid of Trujillo, the same group took control of the DR and to this day exist things such as the law that prohibits anything positive can be said of Trujillo without saying something negative, but you can say anything negative alone and that's fine. There is still a law that prohibits Trujillo's remains to be buried anywhere in the DR, as if dust and bones are able to do anything anymore (I guess some people are more Dominicans than others, but there are other Dominican dictators such as Lilís and they are all buried in the DR.) There is freedom of speech, but Angelita Trujillo's book "Trujillo, mi padre en mis memorias" was prohibited after it became the number one seller in Dominican bookstores and it still is prohibited. If the book is found in any passenger in Dominican airports, it will be confiscated. It's on sale in countries like the USA, you know freedom of speech and all of that.
Certainly, Trujillo's regime have positive and negative things. There is nothing wrong remembering the negative aspects, but not being able to mention the positives without mentioning the negative unless you want to be punished, prohibiting books on Trujillo when you don't like what it says even though there are many books that are anti-Trujillo are things I will never agree with and will continue to denounce it as long as they exist.
Whomever feels bothered by that, go right ahead and feel as bothered as you want.
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