1. During the Trujillo-Hulk treaty, for the first and only time in the history of the Republic (and possibly of any country in the world) the national debt was completely repaid.
........And not too long after DR was back in red, in 1961 our foreign debt had ballooned to 15 millions dollars, which wasn't chump change at the time. I would not put this item in the list of his accomplishment.
2. Constructs (the physical structures and as institutions):
- Banco Central de la Rep?blica Dominicana (establishes the Dominican Peso de Oro with an exchange rate of RD$1=US$1, and remained as such for the entire dictatorship - prior to this the Dominican Republic didn't had its own currency but rather used the US Dollar as legal tender).
This is inaccurate. According to Jose De La Gandara; One of the reasons why the annexation to Spain failed was the terrible job the Spaniards did in substituting "OUR" currency with "THEIR". The pace of the exchange was too slow and they didn't have proper controls in place, this allowed the poor peasants to be targeted by scammers and speculators, who would "Buy" the money from people at very low prices and then exchange it to the Spaniard authorities at normal rate, making huge profits.
During the "Restoration War", one of the demands made by the rebels to the Spanish army was the devolution of the Dominican currency, which the Spaniards kept safely stored in Santo Domingo.
Inaccurate. In 1917 the American administrator (Knapp) reorganized the Dominican armed forces, calling them "Guardia Nacional Dominicana". In 1921 he renamed it "Policia Nacional Dominicana".
3. The Dominican Armed Forces was a respected institution within and outside the Dominican Republic. Establishes the Air Force and greatly expands the capacity and might of the Navy and Military. Also, Dominican military men were much more serious and took their duty seriously, unlike the many charlatans that currently find themselves in the ranks.
All of Trujillo's accomplishment were made to serve his political projects and I would refuse to give so much credit to someone who always acted more like a vulgar thief instead of a high ranking official. 3 years before taking the presidency, while acting as army chief he was given 500,000 dollars to buy supplies for the army, he stole the money and never was able to demonstrate how he spent it.
In 1928 Trujillo initiated contacts in England to buy 2000 rifles at 77 dollars per. Later it was discovered that he only paid 25 dollars per units, and the rifles he acquired were useless models, made in 1893, much older than what the army already had.
As Valentina Peguero puts it in her Books (Militarization of the Culture in Dominican Republic);
"Behind the facade of reformer and modernizer, Trujillo was undermining his superiors and profiting at the expense of the state and Dominican taxpayers."
The best policy implemented by Trujillo while acting as army chief was hanging a sign outside his Santiago Office that said;
"Those entering this office remember that Trujillo reads your minds."
4. In terms of Public Works, the amount of investment was extraordinary. For example the churches, etc.
Giving away Dominican's taxpayer money, building churches and mega churches for an institution that is way richer than our nation doesn't count as excellency in my book.
he encouraged Dominicans to be clean (prior to his regime Dominicans rarely bathed or took showers, it was him who taught the populace this hygienic ritual),
Sources?.
Even in religion his mark was made by encouraging the Virgin of Altagracia as the national virgin to which all Dominican Catholics were to show respect towards, even the Cibae?os began to revere the Virgin of Altagracia despite Cibae?os having had the Virgin of las Mercedes as their virgin and the Santo Cerro as their holiest place. La Altagracia became the virgin of all Dominicans under his regime.
Getting people to swap superstitions does not amount to "excellency" either. How many santiagueros got killed after swapping virgins?.
everyone dressed decently in public,
people followed the laws, the border was respected,
At what price?.
6. The companies that he established initiated several domestic industries (nails, suits, glass, carton, paint, fire arms, tobacco, insurance, chocolates, footwear, vegetable oil, batteries, cement, electricity, paper, salt mines, real estate, textiles, marble queries, gypsum mines). He even created Dominicana de Aviaci?n.
According to Michael Hall, in his book; "Sugar & Power in the Dominican Rep.", Trujillo's fortune probably reached one billion dollars and he owned (with his family) around 50% of all the assets in the country, but he didn't do that by being excellence, rather in spite of his mediocrity as a business man. Trujillo's financial brain was Anselmo Paulino, nicknamed "El Tuerto" (one eye), he was the engine behind the creation of all the companies that would later form part of the "Corde" group (Dominicana de Aviacion included). He was so influential that there's a period within the "Trujillo Era" known as "El Anselmato". One of his accomplishment is the construccion of the "Haina Sugar Mill", one of the world's biggest at that time.
So how did Trujillo payback the guy who helped him amassed his incredible fortune?, he fired him partly because of rumors & family gossips, put him in jail for a few months and later "encouraged" him to move to France.
None of Trujillo's business's practices amount to excellence, he simply bulldozed people who were in his way to make more money and gather more power. He forcefully acquired almost all of the foreign owned sugar mills, using intimidation and bribery, and making incredible easy for him to get all the land needed for his sugar crop without properly compensating the state. But that wasn't enough for this dumb ass, neither was that during WWII England was buying virtually 100% of our sugar production, at the incredible price of 26.5 cents per pounds. It was not enough that he had and endless pool of slaves, making hundreds of prisoners work uncompensated in his farms and plantations, he still needed more.
Once he owned most of the sugar mills, he exempted them from paying taxes, virtually making impossible they would operate with any loss. At the same time he hit the few foreign companies that still remained in the business with a 20% tax!. That is not being excellence Nals, that's being a vulgar thief and a bully!.
Even in some of the most controversial aspects of his regime, such as the importation of Europeans and Japanese, the primary goal was to develop certain sectors of the economy and strengthen the Hispanic, Latin and Catholic character of the Dominican people. For this reason the invitation was not to just any Europeans, he didn't wanted Anglo-Saxons or Germanic people,
The only reason why Trujillo didn't fill the island with Nazis can be resumed in three words; Franklyn Delano Roosevelt. Trujillo knew what he could and couldn't do, and in the eyes of FDR, bringing Germans to the Caribbean was a "no no". Still, he managed to bring a few of them, but as soon as WWII started, he accused them of plotting against the government and put them in a concentration camp.
He brought as many Scandinavians as he could (2,000 of them).
He imported the Japanese precisely due to their expertise in growing temperate foods, and that's why he placed them in the Constanza Valley where the weather is most apt for such crops.
Not too long ago the government of Japan apologize to the offspring of those Japanese immigrants and agreed to pay them financial compensation for all the suffering they endure in DR. they also agreed to let back into Japan those who wanted to do so. Trujillo never gave this people all he promised, never supplied them all they needed to fully contribute to our agriculture.
During WWII; Roosevelt organized a Refugee Conference looking for countries willing to accept German-Jews (funny how the "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave" was no willing to take Jews). Trujillo's envoy expressed his willingness to accept 100,000 Jews; the whole world laughed at Trujillo and reluctantly gave him 2,000. Before that, Trujillo sent word to FDR that he wanted to bring 100,000 Puerto Rican to DR, Roosevelt gave him "zilch", zero, nada.
In october of 1937, while making a run near the border, a "smiling" Trujillo was vigorously shaking hands of Haitians living in DR, telling them "they had nothing to fear", all they needed to do was cultivate the land and make sure their crops reach the markets. 3 days later, all those Haitians were either dead or running for their lives.
Put all these things together Nals, and instead of excellency what we have is possibly one of the worst (if not the worst!) immigration policies in human history; literally,
"Trujillo no daba pie con bola". In immigration he went from one miserable failure to another.
