Trujillo offered sanctuary to 10,000 European Jews, but by 1939, it was too late. Their assets were no longer theirs, passports not allowed. Trujillo's motives? He wanted to "whiten & brighten," and create a middle class. Whatever. His motives may not have been pure, but he saved 700 lives.
10,000 would not create much change in a society with 2 to 3 million people, much less when they are confined to a tiny remote place as was Sosúa back then.
The rest was simply to undo what was done during the Haitian Domination and that was a general desire of Dominicans well before Trujillo was even born. In fact, that has been the purpose ever since the country was created, because many of the changes were created by foreigners against the will of the Dominicans. Return things to how they were, it's as simple as that. Things such as the condition of the country, namely the underdevelopment and constant political instability for much of the time before the Trujillo regime caused msny of these incentives to fail.
For example, did you know that one if the first laws created after the country was independence was to incentives the return of Dominicans, much of which was pushed out of the country? What color were most of these Dominicans? Hmm... Where was Trujillo then?
Did you know that in 1888 a colony of mostly Swiss was settled in Sabana de la Mar? For the record, Trujillo was born in 1891.
Did you know that in 1894 Congres passed a resolution that stipulated that 30% of the rights of exports has to go to fomenting immigration of Europeans? That was approved by President Heureaux (the one with a Haitian father). Trujillo was a few months from his third birthday.
Did you know that in 1882 a law on municipalities on article 23 it included among the obligations of the municipalities of fomenting the immigration of Europeans and establishing them in their localities? Heureaux went as far as creating the Junta Central de la Immigración in the Sánchez port, the one in Montecristi and the one in Puerto Plata? Trujillo wasn't born when that took place.
Did you know that during the presidency of Juan Isidro Jiménez (I think it was from 1899 -the year Heureaux's dictatorship ended- to 1902) a decree was approved that 30% of the proceeds from the La Romana port was to go to fomenting European immigration? That was a few decades before Trujillo rose to power.
Dis you know that in 1901 funds were legally made available to use for fomenting European immigration to El Seibo? Again, several decades before Trujillo rose to power. He was just 10 years old at the time.
Did you know that in 1891 (the year Trujillo was born, btw) the Executive Power exonerated from port fees to any national boat that brought no less than 50 immigrants (at a time when most immigrants were white)?
Did you know that in the same year Sr Francisco Leonte Vásquez was given a concession by the government where he was exonerated from paying $40 pesos from the production in his native San José de Ocoa ( a large sum at the time) for every head of immigrants that he brought to the country? Again, same year that Trujillo was born.
Did you know in 1905, then President Morales Languasco signed a decree that suspended the requirements to enter and establish themselves any foreigner that didn't arrive by any contract from agriculture, industry or government?
Did you know that in 1912 a new law of immigration was put in place which, among other things, stipulated the creation of Dominican immigration agencies in Europe, the United States, Puerto Rico, and Cuba?
Those are only some examples. The idea behind all of that was that since the Dominican population was already predisposed to marry lighter because since colonial times lighter skin has been seen as a mark of beauty, and seeing what similar policies did in neighboring Puerto Rico and Cuba under the Spanish government, and in other Spanish American countries such as Venezuela; it would had responded to a desire of the Dominican people to have more lighter skin people among the society.
In fact, there are testimonies such as this one by the Mexican José Vasconcelos after visiting the DR in 1926, just 2 years after the first invasion of the USA had ended and 5 years before Trujillo rose to power. That's just ine example, in this case speaking how the white race is predominant in the La Vega area and in the Cibao in general, but he dedcribes various places in that book such as La Romana (where he describes that in the crowds he saw a combination of white and black people without being separated unlike in other countries -at that time there was racial segregation in the USA and other places-), San Pedro de Macorís, Santo Domingo, etc.
Again, 5 years before Trujillo rose to power.
I would like to know how was that Trujillo influenced all those actions or even the composition of places like La Vega and the Cibao before he was even president. More than Trujillo influencing the country in this respect, he himself was influenced by the country by the time he rose to power. As much as some people refuse to accept it, minus the abuses he was a typical Dominican in the way that he thought and implemented his actions.
Even today there is a tendency towards lighter skin in the country, often considered an essential (but not required) part of beauty. It gets to the point that a lighter skin person will be seen as beautiful (unless the person is seriously ugly in other ways) even if they may seem to most here as someone of more normal looks. This goes way beyond Trujillo, to the ti e when most of the population was considerably lighter than today. It was forced to change by outsiders, against the will of Dominicans because most, even among the darker ones, those actions were seen in a negative light because Dominicans liked being in a society with a predominance of very light and white people. Why? Because that's how Dominican society was at that time and it never wanted to change. It also wasn't of replacing Dominicans with outsiders, but rather to include Dominicans who with every generation with further mixing the foreigners would be "melted" into the Dominican population, as happened elsewhere such as in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, etc.
To put it another way, had these foreign influences that caused the changes in Dominican society had not taken place, the things mentioned here and others would had never taken place either since Dominican society would had never benn torn to pieces and on the verge of disappearing.
