Z is for Zapote and Zacarias

The last in my A-Z of the Dominican Republic, and I am feeling sad it has come to an end because I have really enjoyed writing it and also learned a lot from researching and from your comments. Thank you all.

Z is for Zapote and Zacarias Ferreira. The former is a fruit and the latter my favourite Dominican singer.

Zapote is known as Sapote in English and is a rough brown skinned fruit which is orange on the inside with a single stone in the middle. Apparently it can be eaten on its own and is also used in smoothies, milkshakes, ice creams and desserts. However my step sons assure me it has a strange taste if you eat it on its own - I have never tried but I have enjoyed the milkshake, just blend with sugar and evaporated milk.

The fruit has all sorts of medicinal qualities and is said to be an aphrodisiac and good for gastro intestinal problems. The oil from the stone apparently can cure baldness, and is also a diuretic and good for the throat and heart conditions. Finally the latex from the tree is a cure for verrucas!

Zacarias Ferreira is a bachata singer who was born in Tamboril, near Santiago in the central north west of the country, an area famous for the traditional Dominican music known as périco ripiao, which his father and his uncles all played. He then went to Santo Domingo where he joined the National Conservatory and also sang with a local bachata band.

périco ripiao

His first album, Me Liberé, came out in 1997 and won the prestigious Dominican music award, the Cassandra and he won it again with his second album.

When I first came to the DR, in 2001, his music was played everywhere and I fell in love with it immediately. There is just something magical about the music itself as well as his voice. The very first dance I had with the man who is now my husband was to a Zacarias Ferreira song – Amiga Veneno which means poisonous girlfriend! Here is a video featuring 25 of his best known songs including Amiga Veneno.

I cannot think of a better ending to the A - Z series of the Dominican Republic than Zacarias Ferreira, as when I hear his music, wherever I am in the world, it just transports me back to the DR where it is played in the colmado, the supermarket, on the bus, in the homes, you hear it everywhere. 

Y is for Yola and Yaniquque

Letter Y of my A-Z of the Dominican Republic is for Yola and Yaniqueque (pronounced yannykaykay).

A yola is a boat, usually wooden or sometimes fibre glass, in which Dominicans, and other nationalities, travel illegally from the DR to Puerto Rico, which lies 100km or 62 miles to the east of the Dominican Republic, and which is part of the USA.

Immigration to Puerto Rico is a relatively new phenomonem which began after the death of Trujillo in 1961. This was followed by the overthrow of Juan Bosch and the US invasion in 1965. During this period the restrictions on migration were lifted and the borders between the US and the DR were opened, leading to thousands of middle class and professional Dominicans moving to the US and Puerto Rico.

In 1960, the population of Dominicans in Puerto Rico was only 1,812, in 1970 it was 10,843 and by 1980 it was 20,558. The census in 2010 showed 68,036 Dominicans of whom of 30% are illegal.

However, the illegal immigration to Puerto Rico is relatively new, with the first recorded illegal trip happening in 1972. The people who go on yolas are not the middle class professionals, they go to escape poverty with the dream of making more money in Puerto Rico.  It is thought that over half of those who leave on yolas are women, who leave their children with a family member in the hope of finding work to send money back to them.

The yolas are usually very overcrowded as the people who run these trips like to maximise their income and all money is taken up front. The person who organises the trip does not travel him or herself, and therefore it is immaterial to them if the boat is overcrowded. It costs between 30,000 to 40,000 pesos per person to make the crossing, which is in the region of 700 to 1000 US$. The people are usually recruited in the larger cities and then travel to the woods and undergrowth near a predetermined beach. They hide out in the woods waiting to be told at what time they should leave, almost always during the night or the early hours of the morning. The captains of the boats are paid around 30,000 pesos to take the people and return.

Yola journeys are not for the faint hearted. A trip can take 26 to 28 hours, that is assuming the weather is good and the captain does not get lost which often happens as yolas rarely have radar.  The route is across the Mona Passage which is notorious for high waves and sharks. As the boats are overcrowded, some people fall overboard, some are washed overboard by high waves, some are thrown overboard to save the yola from sinking and sometimes the whole boat sinks. Some die of starvation or dehydration if the boat becomes lost at sea.

No-one knows how many people have died making these voyages as often bodies are never recovered. One of the worst tragedies was in 1989 where as many as 500 died near Mona Island, and often we hear in the news about other smaller scale disasters where 30 to 60 die.

The US coastguard catches hundreds or thousands of Dominicans every year trying to make the trip. As well as Dominicans there are Haitians and Cubans. In 2003 for example as well as 1469 Dominicans captured and returned to the DR, some 2000 Haitians and 1500 Cubans were caught as well.

To try and deter people from going, the Dominican government shows pictures of dead bodies floating in the water and posters with sharks pointing out the dangers. However, if caught by either the Dominican or Puerto Rican authorities, the travellers face no charges, although the captains are usually sent to jail. Many will then simply try again.

When you go in a yola, there is always someone waiting for you. Illegal journeys are journeys to your death

Once they reach Puerto Rico the Dominicans are normally collected from wherever they land by a member of their familiy and they quickly blend into society, many working in unskilled areas and sending money home to their family.


Yaniqueque as it is known in the DR, is also called Johnnycake. It is originally a cornmeal flatbread eaten as an early staple in the US, and is thought to originate there from the native Indians. It is also called hoecake in the southern USA as it was cooked on a shovel or hoe over an open fire by field workers.

The word is thought to come from Jonakin which was the name given by the slaves to a cake made of corn.

Yaniqueques or yanikeke are the Dominican version of the jonnycake, supposedly brought over in the 19th century by the cocolos who were descendants of slaves working on English speaking caribbean islands. They are made with flour and baking soda and are typically deep fried. You will often see yaniqueque for sale on the beach, and Boca Chica beach in the south of the island is famous for them.  If you want to try making them, there is a great recipe from Mari here.

X is for Xenophobia

For letter X of my A-Z of the Dominican Republic I am looking at  X for Xenophobia. Xenophobia comes from the Greek xenos meaning stranger or foreigner and phobos meaning fear, so literally it is a fear of foreigners. It is also defined as a deep rooted irrational hatred towards foreigners or people of other races. Why is this in my A-Z of the Dominican Republic? It is because some Dominicans are xenophobic towards Haitians, and various international communities and organisations such as the United Nations are often accusing the country and government of the DR of xenophobia towards Haitians by violating their human rights.

This will be a long post, as to understand why such xenophobia exists and in what forms, it it necessary to go back in time and examine the history between the two countries. And although Hispaniola is one island, we are talking of two countries, two nations, two different cultures, two different languages and two different backgrounds. It is like comparing the Chinese with the Americans, or the Russians with the British. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are much further apart in many ways than say Canada and the USA.

Haiti is the third of the island on the left

When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492, he named the entire island La Isla Española and it wasn’t until 1697 that the Spanish formally ceded the western third of the island to the French, who were already there and developing it at full speed, by means of the Ryswick treaty.

The border crossing

From then on, the two countries began to follow totally different economic paths, which had far reaching effects or their future populations and economic, social and cultural development. What we now know as Haiti concentrated on sugar and became the most productive colony of the northern hemisphere. In order to achieve these massive levels of sugar production, the French imported huge numbers of African slaves. By 1790 there were more than half a million black slaves, and only 30,000 whites, and 27,000 freemen both black and mulatto.

However, in what is now called the Dominican Republic, it was a very different story. The Spanish weren’t interested in sugar, so they didn’t import any large numbers of slaves. The population was much smaller than Haiti and practised subsistence farming along with only a small amount of sugar cultivation. So by 1790 in the DR there were 125,000 white Spanish landowners, 60,000 slaves and 25,000 black and mulatto freemen. The blacks were a minority and as the Spanish were encouraged to marry the freemen and also the slaves, the mulatto population grew. This was the demographic basis for the present population composition of Haiti and the DR. Haiti is genetically African, The Dominican Republic is genetically Spanish with some African and some like to think, Taino Indian bloodlines mixed in.

When the Haitian Revolution broke out in 1791, the white French fled the colony both during and after the revolt to escape the wrath of their slaves. Those few remaining were massacred, leaving Haiti as an almost totally black country with a relatively small number of mulattos.

Following the revolution, in 1804, Haiti became the world’s first sovereign black republic and invaded what is now the Domincan Republic, leading to a twenty two year occupation during which the Haitian president, Jean Pierre Boye, tried to destroy the Hispanic culture by closing the university and tried to stop the influence of the Catholic church. These policies increased anti Haitian feeling in the country which eventually gained independence in 1844. This difference in racial make-up helped amplify and worsen Dominican-Haitian rivalry.

When Trujillo was elected President in the DR he described the Dominican Republic as Hispanic, Catholic and White and Haiti was Afro-French with a voodoo religion. He considered Haiti to be a threat and the antithesis of the DR and his fear of the influence of the Haitian culture led to the Parsley Massacre of 25,000 Haitians in the border area as I described in letter T for Trujillo.

Trujillo

After the 1937 massacre, Trujillo subjected the Dominican population to a constant barrage of anti-Haitian propaganda. Haiti and Haitians went from being good neighbours to becoming the scapegoats of Dominican society. By stimulating nationalism, Trujillo sought to distract the public opinion by focusing on a foreign enemy. No target was more convenient than Haiti, given the long history of animosity between the two countries and a whole generation of Dominicans was raised learning to dislike and distrust Haitians. Furthermore, antihaitianism allowed even the poorest of Dominicans to feel racially and culturally superior to Haitians.

Trujillo’s heir, Joaquim Balaguer continued the policy of xenophobia, instilling fear against Haitian imperialism and deepened the view that to be a Dominican is above all else not to be a Haitian. The Dominican definition of their identity as a people was based upon this. Schools and newspapers spread propaganda with the goal of dismissing the African heritage of the Dominican Republic and to distinguish between Dominicans and Haitians. The Dominican people are described as a white people of Hispanic descent. Trujillo, in the Dominican Republic, celebrated the concept of la Hispanidad (Spanishness). However, when a person’s skin left no doubt as to their black heritage, a concept of "Indianness" was quickly created to explain that away. Thus, a Dominican whose skin color is midway between a mulatto and black is identified as being of Indian origin. Hence this obsession by the Dominicans to define themselves as something as not Haitian and African, stems from the relationship with Haiti, going back to the colonial era.

Dr Joaquin Balaguer

It is however unfair to tar all Dominicans with the same brush. Many are neither racist nor xenophobic, and many went out of their way to hide Haitians to save them from being massacred by Trujillo, including the Dominican politician Jose Francisco Peña Gomez, who is believed to be of Haitian descent and was adopted by a white Dominican family. He became Balaguer’s most feared opponent in the presidential elections, and despite his colour, he was very popular amongst Dominican voters. However, in order to defeat him Balaguer stirred up massive anti Haitian feeling, which was made easier for him as the Haitian President, Jean Betrand Aristide was an outspoken critic of the way Haitians were treated in the DR. Balaguer responded by starting the mass deportation of Haitians and in a three month period about 50,000 Haitians were deported. In May 1994 Balaguer defeated Peña Gomez by playing the nationalist card once again.

Peña Gomez

Today, anti-Haitian bias is most noticeable in the Dominican Republic's deportation policies, aimed not only at both legal and illegal Haitian workers, but also at Dominicans of Haitian descent and children born to Haitian parents. Many are simply seized, then dropped off at the Haitian border; a country which some of them have never even been to. I was working in my colmado once when the police came in and rounded up all the Haitians in there, drinking and playing dominoes. They put them in an open sided cattle truck to take them away. I was appalled by this and so climbed into the truck myself, telling them to arrest me too. This caused great consternation but nevertheless, the truck drove off to the police station, with me in it, and after various frantic phone calls from the Captain in charge, we were all let go just before we got to the police station.

Officially, the Dominican government has publicly condemned the systematic abuse of Haitians whether legal or illegal in the country. They are allowed free medical care in the public hospitals, and I have not known anyone turned away. However this obviously puts a tremendous strain on an already overloaded health service. In addition, Haitian mothers are often denied birth certificates for their newborn children delivered in Dominican hospitals, meaning that their children are effectively stateless. The Constitution does gurantee citizenship to anyone born here, apart from those who are only briefly passing through on their way to somewhere elese. Hence legally the country can deny birth certificates to these Haitian babies by simply saying that the mother is in transit.

No one knows how many Haitians are living legally and illegally in the Dominican Republic with  the figures ranging from one to two million. Most come looking for low-paid, unskilled work, in the sugar plantations, agriculture and construction. Not unlike several countries, the Dominican Republic is dependent on the availability of cheap labour to meet the demands of its growing economy. Haiti, from having been one of the richest countries in the Caribbean is now one of the poorest countries in the world, due to having to pay high reparations to France when they became independent, a series of poor and ineffective governments and massive deforestation as the people cut the trees down to make charcoal for cooking.

The border. DR on the right and Haiti on the left

However, after the earthquake the number of Haitians here increased and it must be said that the Dominican Republic was one of the first and most effective in terms of helping its neighbour after that appalling disaster.

To understanding the xenophobia against Haitians one needs to understand history. Genetically Dominicans are different from Haitians and understanding where they come from may help to understand why Dominicans deny their African heritage, and concentrate on their Spanish heritage more. Dominicans have been taught for generations that Haiti and Haitians are the enemy, whether borne out in fact by invasions, or in political rhetoric by the likes of Trujillo and Balaguer. That is not unique to the DR, as several countries use an opposing power to help win support for themselves, such as Margaret Thatcher and the Falkland Isles, and George Bush and the war on terrorism and Iraq.

Haitian Jean, my fabulous former gardener - a gem of a man 

Not all Dominicans dislike Haitians, and not all are xenophobic. The country could not function effectively without them, but the deep seated mistrust is unlikely to disappear without education, and great political will.

W is for Whales and Wasakaka

In my A-Z of the Dominican Republic we are nearly at the end. This post is on W and W is for Whales and Wasakaka. Looking at whales first.

Each year, between January and March, between 3,000 and 5,000 humpback whales make the long and slow journey from the polar regions of the North Atlantic to the warm clear waters of the the Bay of Samana in the north east of the Dominican Republic, to give birth and mate for the following year.

In the above map, the area marked in dark blue shows the territorial waters of the Dominican Republic; the green shows the waters of the Sanctuary for the Marine Mammals.

The Dominican Republic is fortunate to have one of the largest and best humpback breeding sanctuaries in the world and the Dominican government enforces strict whale protection laws and guidelines to ensure the safety and conservation of these amazing animals. There are strict guidelines if you want to go and watch them, and boats have to keep a respectful distance so as not to disturb them too much.

The female typically breeds every two or three years with a  gestation period of eleven months. When born, the calves are about 4 metres long and weigh around 700 kg. They are nursed by their mothers for around six months and leave their mothers when they are just over one year old and around 9 metres long. Both males and females reach maturity at around 15 years old when they are around 16 metres long and weigh 40,000 kg. They live for 45-50 years.

They eat around 5000 lbs of tiny shrimp and plankton and small fish a day, twice a day, but only in the feeding season which lasts 120 days in the cold waters. A group of whales will swim rapidly in wide cicles under a school of fish and then blow air through their blowholes. The bubbles then net the fish and each whale will take his or her turn swimming into the shoal, mouth open, swallowing thousands of fish in one gulp.
 

They are incredible animals and the Dominican Republic has hundreds of tourists each year, just to have the chance of watching them.

My other W is for Wasakaka. This is a sauce, which is served with chicken at one of the Dominican Republic’s fast food restaurants known as El Provocon.

The chicken is cooked over carbon and served with this fabulous sauce and usually accompanied by yucca and lightly fried or boiled onions.

Whilst the recipe for Wasakaka is a secret, luckily Aunt Clara, author of the famous Dominican Cooking recipe book, has her version of it which is scrumptious, and it is here.

I would love to serve it with yucca too but for some reason I am totally incompetent when it comes to cooking it, it is always stringy and hard, so I eat my Wasakaka chicken with mashed potatoes!

V is for Viralata

Continuing my A-Z of the Dominican Republic V is for Viralata. This is pronounced Beeralata or Veeralata depending on which part of the country you come from. Dominican Spanish is confusing as the letter V is often pronounced as a B but not always. When I was learning Spanish someone would say what sounded like "Dondé tu bas?"meaning "Where are you going?" but actually written vas not bas. Very confusing when I wanted to look words up in the dictionary. B is known as B larga and V as B corta. Even some Dominicans get confused!

This means we buy street dogs which are fierce or angry

Viralata is made up of two words. Vira comes from the verb virar meaning to turn and lata means a tin or a can. Viralata means to turn over or tip over a can or tin and refers to street dogs who get into the oil drums used as rubbish bins and tip them over to get at whatever is inside.

If the Dominican Republic were to have a national animal it would have to be the viralata. They are absolutely everywhere. It is estimated that in the capital, Santo Domingo, there are around 90,000 and even that could be a gross underestimate. These animals literally live on the street and look for food wherever they can find it. They are very intelligent and every food establishment and butcher will always have a group outside. It does not mean they all do not have homes, many do, but they are not allowed into the house and so spend their time lying on the road in front of the house. Often the so called owners cannot afford to feed them either. Most will have other viralata friends and they will play together and run around together and of course mate together, which increases the problem all of the time.

On the whole they are not aggressive, although I find it a little nerve wracking sometimes to have to walk through a big group of them, worried about being attacked or bitten as there is still rabies in the DR and of course viralatas are rarely vaccinated. Having said that I have never ever been attacked or even threatened by one. Some do have the nasty habit of chasing motor bikes and often get nasty kicks from drivers or passengers.  Some Dominicans, especially children, seem to take pleasure out of hitting them, or throwing rocks at them or abusing them in other ways.

As far as I can see, there is no  nationally coordinated programme of seeing the viralatas as a problem and of trying to do something about it. In some towns however, when they do seem to be getting out of control, the local authorities will put down poison. I will never forget going to work one day as a diving instructor and seeing the beach littered with corpses of street dogs. Appalling and heartbreaking.

However, there are some institutions in different parts of the country who work very hard to capture, neuter and then release the dogs. One of them is called the Asociacíon de Amigos Por Los Animales de Sosua or the Association of the Friends of Animals in Sosua, and they operate a spay and neuter programme and a rescue programme for street dogs. You can see their website here. Many of the dogs now get adopted by people living overseas and they get whisked off to Canada or the US. Easier for a dog to get a visa than most Dominicans!  And I had a comment on my last blog posting telling me about Animal Balance who also do fabulous work sterilising and vaccinating the street dogs. Their website is here.

Viralatas are a massive issue in the DR. It is heartbreaking to see dogs being badly treated and suffering. For some reason, and I do not know why, Dominicans do not treat dogs in the same way as people from my culture. Dogs are not usually seen as pets nor allowed in the house. Many will not even touch them. I have a rescued English Mastiff and my stepchildren will never touch him, he even gets washed at arms length with a broom - he still enjoys his bath though!

 In order to solve the problem there needs to be education and a nationally government sponsored programme of spaying and neutering, rather than relying on a few organisations, who, while they do amazing work at a local level are only solving a tiny part of this national problem.

U is for UASD

My 'U' in the A-Z of the Dominican Republic is for UASD, pronounced 'Wass' which stands for the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (Autonomous University of Santo Domingo). It is the public university here in the Dominican Republic with its flagship campus in Santo Domingo, the capital and with regional campuses in Puerto Plata, San Juan de la Maguana, La Vega , Hato Mayor, Nagua, Santiago Rodriguez, Higüey, Barahona, Santiago, Mao and San Francisco de Macoris.

It was first called Santo Tomas Aquino University, and was established in October, 1538, and is the oldest university in the Americas. Originally a seminary that had been operating since 1518, Pope Paul III gave the mandate to upgrade it to a University. At that stage it had four schools; Medicine, Law, Theology and the Arts.

1755 Santo Tomas Aquino University ruins

Since then it has closed a few times, and then reopened.  Firstly in 1801 due to the Haitian occupation of the country, and was reopened in 1815, when the DR returned to the Spanish. It closed again in 1822 as the students were recruited to military service on the order of the Haitians governing the country again. When the DR became independent in 1844, there was once again the will to restore the university although it took a while and in 1866 the university was replaced with the Professional Institute of Santo Domingo. It closed again in 1891 to 1895 and in November 1914 was renamed the University of Santo Domingo. It shut its doors yet again in 1916 to 1924, due to the United States occupation of the DR and during the 31 years of Rafael Trujillo it struggled with even the most basic freedoms. After the death of Trujillo in 1961 it was granted autonomy.  By tradition, an “autonomous” university in Latin America is one that provides protection and sanctuary for political dissidents by excluding the police and the military from campus. Even today neither the police nor military have any jurisdiction on the premises.

Nowadays there are eight schools:  Humanities, the Arts, Law and Political Science, Health Sciences, Economics and Social Sciences, Science, Engineering and Architecture, and Agricultural Sciences. It has the highest enrollment of students in universities in the DR, currently running at around 170,000, probably because the cost of enrolling and studying is minimal as it is heavily subsidized by the state. This is a major increase over 1995 when there were some 65,000 students.

Very unfortunately, what was once a centre for learning and debate has lost its way somewhat, due in part to the lack of calibre of professors with some leaving academia for other sectors of the economy, where they will receive higher salaries. Others emigrated for economic reasons, but many of the best fled the country to escape political persecution under the repressive regime of Joaquín Balaguer, which ended in 1978.
In addition, the University is short of funding, and this has led to cutbacks in research, salaries, equipment and student services. This then leads to strikes by the faculty demanding higher wages and student protests for better services.

It is really sad as a public university should mean that anyone irrespective of their financial position has the ability to study and better themselves through education. Nowadays the fact that it is a public university is taken to mean incompetence, lack of productivity and the qualifications are said not to be worth the paper they are written on. Many students see it as a means just to gain the credentials to be able to have a better job and not as a place to really develop their abilities.

As the first university in the Americas it deserves better and so do the young people of the Dominican Republic who cannot afford to go to the private universities here.

T is for Trujillo

My A-Z of the Dominican Republic continues with letter T and Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina who was the President of the Dominican Republic for 30 years.  As Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, and we went to the cinema to see ‘101 Dalmatians’ and ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, Trujillo was busy being one of the worst tyrants ever in the history of Latin America, responsible for the deaths of over 50,000 people.

Trujillo was born on 24 October 1891 in San Cristobal, to the west of the capital Santo Domingo, and was the third of eleven children in a working class family. His grandmother was Haitian and later in life he wore pancake make-up to lighten the traces of colour he had inherited from her. As a child he was a petty thief and also liked to collect  bottle tops which were called chapitas and so he was known as El Chapita. He hated the name and when he became President he banned the word from the vocabulary.
He had various jobs including a telegraph operator, but when the US invaded the Dominican Republic in 1916 they established a National Guard which he joined. He rose rapidly through the ranks to become a Lieutenant and then a General and in May 1930, using strong arm tactics he won the elections and was declared President.
From the start he used brutal oppression of actual or perceived members of any opposition and his death squad would drive through the streets in a red Packard, known as the death car.

He was obsessed with race and status and in 1937 was told that the Haitians in the border area were taking jobs away from Dominicans, especially in the sugar industry, and were stealing animals and crops. On 2 October 1937, whilst drunk at a party in Dajabon on the border with Haiti he gave orders for the solution to the Haitian problem by saying,

 “To the Dominicans who were complaining of the depredations by Haitians living among them, thefts of cattle, provisions, fruits, etc., and were thus prevented from enjoying in peace the products of their labour, I have responded, ‘I will fix this.’ And we have already begun to remedy the situation. Three hundred Haitians are now dead in Bánica. This remedy will continue”

All along the border, Trujillo's men asked anyone with dark skin to identify sprigs of parsley which they held up. Haitians have problems with the ‘r’ in the Spanish word for parsley, "perejil." If they could not pronounce it, they were killed with machetes which the Dominican soldiers used so they could say the carnage was the work of peasants defending themselves. Had they used bullets it would be easily identified as government work as only the government could afford bullets.
The massacre was henceforth known as El Corte, the cutting, alluding to the machetes, or the Parsley Massacre and people living in the far north west of the Dominican Republic at that time remember hundreds of Haitian body parts being washed up on the beaches.

Jewish refugees in Sosua

There was condemnation of the Parsley Massacre and to try and improve his international popularity, whilst at the same time continue with his plan to ‘whiten’ the Dominican population, Trujillo offered to take Jewish refugees.

Around 5000 arrived, however many left for the US and the 700 who remained founded the community of Sosua. Unfortunately for Trujillo many were married and of those who were not, very few went on to marry Dominicans, so his ‘whitening’ plan did not succeed.

Known as El Jefe meaning the Boss, he was a total megalomaniac. He changed the name of the capital from Santo Domingo to Cuidad Trujillo; the name of the highest mountain from Pico Duarte to Pico Trujillo. He insisted that churches use the slogan, “Dios en cielo, Trujillo en tierra” which means “God in heaven, Trujillo on earth.”  He had an insatiable sexual appetite and people would try and send their daughters away, rather than risk them being taken by Trujillo. Refusal to hand over your daughter resulted in death.

The Mirabel sisters

By the late 1950s, opposition to Trujillo's regime was starting to build to a fever pitch. A younger generation of Dominicans began to call for democracy which was met with even greater repression. However, the repression began to lead to international condemnation and the Venezuelan president, Romulo Betancourt was outspoken against him. Trujillo responded by arranging for an assassination attempt, a car bombing which injured but did not kill Betancourt. This incident inflamed world opinion and diplomatic relations were severed by many countries. Trujillo became increasingly paranoid and on Friday November 25 1960 he gave the order to murder the three Mirabel sisters, Patria, Maria Teresa and Minerva. The sisters, known as the Butterflies after Minerva’s underground code name, were outspoken opponents of Trujillo and were beaten to death. Trujillo had now become an embarrassment to the USA, whose Secretary of State had previously said, “He may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch.”

On May 30 1961, whilst driving to the home of his mistress in San Cristobal, Trujillo’s car was ambushed and a wounded Trujillo exited the car in order to fire back at his attackers. He was subsequently riddled with bullets, and killed. Some say the Americans were behind the assassination, given he was such an embarrassment; others say it was organized from within the country with no external assistance.

Trujillo's car after the ambush

Supporters of Trujillo claim that he reorganized both the country and the economy. He built roads, schools, ports, airports, infrastructure, and paid off all the foreign debt.   They say his rule saw more stability and prosperity than most living Dominicans had previously known. And even today, in fact more often as crime increases, he is seen as a guardian of law and discipline, and more and more people are saying, “What we need is another Trujillo”. They speak with fondness about the fact you could leave money lying in the street and no one would take it. There is a growing nostalgia for the social order he imposed.

Monument at the spot where Trujillo was assassinated

His opponents claim that civil rights and freedoms in the Trujillo era were virtually nonexistent, and much of the country's wealth wound up in the hands of his family or close associates. It cannot be denied however that this one man had a profound influence on the Dominican Republic.