After more than thirty years in power, Rafael Trujillo, the dictator of the Dominican Republic, was shot and killed in May 1961 when a group of dissidents ambushed his 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air on a highway outside the capital city of Santo Domingo. New elections were held in 1962, and professor and writer Juan Bosch emerged victorious. His Socialist policies, including land redistribution, nationalization of certain foreign holdings, attempts to bring the armed forces under civilian control, and legalizing divorce, sparked opposition from the military officers, the Catholic hierarchy, and the upper-class, who feared another Cuba. In September 1963, Bosch was overthrown by a right-wing military coup led by Colonel Elías Wessin and was replaced by a three-man military junta. Bosch went into exile in Puerto Rico. Afterwards, a supposedly civilian triumvirate dominated by the remaining Trujillo sympathizers and led by Donald Reid Cabral, established a de facto government.
On April, 1965, the civil war broke out. A second military uprising that called for Bosch's reinstatement was triggered by growing discontent with Reid Cabral and his government. The National Palace was taken over by the rebels, also known as the Constitutionalists, who were loyal to Bosch and included reformist army officers and civilian combatants under Colonel Francisco Caamaño's command. Conservative armed forces, called Loyalists and led by Wessin, retaliated right away by attacking Santo Domingo with tanks and airplanes.
I didn’t experience first hand the death and destruction caused by the war because most of the armed conflict took place in the nation’s capital, Santo Domingo. My family lived in Santiago, in the interior of the island. But I clearly remember one day when we heard a deafening sound coming from the sky that sounded like machine guns. When we all went out to the street to find out what it was, we saw the sky filled with helicopters, the kind of aircraft you see in movies about the Vietnam War. Being only nine years old, I was impressed by those flying machines, but I was also terrified because I suspected something terrible was happening. "What's going on" I asked my aunt. "The yankees are invading us" she replied.
The anti-Bosch army elements had requested a U.S. military intervention. But also, American President Lyndon B. Johnson, convinced of the impending defeat of the Loyalist forces and fearing the creation of a second Cuba on America's doorsteps, authorized the dispatch of 20,000 U.S. troops to the Dominican Republics to restore order and, allegedly, to protect and evacuate American citizens and other foreign nationals, in what was known as Operation Power Pack.
Transportation from the towns in the interior to Santo Domingo was interrupted. My father had a sister who lived in the capital city, from whom he hadn’t had news for a while. In the cargo bed of an underground truck, Dad managed to get to the capital and reach the neighborhood where Aunt Pulia lived. Her house, like others in the neighborhood, had been ransacked and abandoned. At that moment he didn’t know whether she and her children were alive or dead. By asking everyone who remained in the neighborhood, Dad learned that his sister had fled with her children to another part of the capital. As it turned out, he was able to find her, and together with her children, with only the clothes they were wearing, they managed to cross the Ozama River in a boat, and on the other side they were able to find another clandestine truck that brought them in the cargo bed, back to Santiago.
After five months of fighting between the people and one faction of the Dominican Armed Forces on one side, against the American army and another faction of the Dominican Armed Forces on the other side, the conflict came to a conclusion. Later in September 1966, international troops withdrew from the country and democratic elections were held, in which Joaquín Balaguer, a former Trujillo supporter, was elected president. We went back to a precarious peace, to some sort of normality under the rule of a pseudo-democracy.
I think it was around that time when my passion for reading was awakened. I first began reading comic books and then the Reader’s Digest magazines that Mauricio, a friend, would lend me; I couldn’t afford to buy them. Every Sunday my father gave me a fifteen-cent allowance—that was ten cents for the afternoon movie and five cents for a snack. Later, when my allowance was increased to 25 cents, I was able to save 35 cents a month to buy the monthly Readers’ Digest. After that, I moved on to reading novels. “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson was my first. I used to go to the library every afternoon to read, as the books could not be borrowed and I didn’t have the money to buy them.
© William Almonte Jiménez 2015
