In his research for his doctorate, architect Jose Enrique Del Monte unfolds that Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo discovered and used as of the 1940s the immense power that architecture can exercise on a people.
Del Monte has presented the thesis “Architectural language in the discourse of power in the Dominican Republic, 1940-1950.”
In an interview with Elina Maria Cruz of Diario Libre, Del Monte explains:
“In that sense, education, religion, art, culture, leisure and production are considered means of dissemination and control that become the force that truly sustains the regime. From a distance, we are amazed at how an entire society participated in consolidating a dictatorship like Trujillo’s. But in its initial moment, there was a feeling of need to direct the country towards progress without the obstacles represented by the disorderly and visceral Dominican political experience. That was the turning point in our history of the first half of the 20th Century.”
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Diario Libre
28 February 2024