A Short History of the American Intervention in the Dominican Republic

The Kennedy-Johnson national security policy was based on a mixture of idealism and anti-Communism. Administration officials believed that their task was the same as what President Truman faced in 1947, i.e. to contain Communism. But in the 1960s the East-West struggle was shifting to the poorer half of the world where the United States, as a status quo power, faced the danger of falling behind. Therefore the United States also had to make sure that it supported representative, democratic government, and was not against reform, only Communist revolutionarism. Reform was to be achieved through foreign aid. The use of force was not ruled out, but was limited to situations where a Communist takeover had to be prevented.³⁰⁴

President Johnson focused his strongly anti-Communist outlook on one struggle, Vietnam, believing that any other struggles around the globe were only diversions from the fight in Vietnam and his domestic political program, the Great Society.³⁰⁵ At the same time, he could not ignore the more than 130-year long, political, economic and social presence of the United States in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which established American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, was supplemented with the Roosevelt corollary in 1904, turning it into a justification of the American intervention in the region.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s good neighborhood policy in the 1930s served as a

304 Brown, Seyon. 1983.The Faces of Power: Constancy and Change in the United States Foreign Policy From Truman to Reagan. New York: Columbia University Press, 152, 154, 186-7, 192; Paterson, Thomas G. 1988.

Meeting the Communist Threat. Truman to Reagan. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 192, 196.

305 Felten, Peter. 1999. “Yankee, Go Home and Take Me With You. Lyndon Johnson and the Dominican

Republic.” In H. W. Brands, ed.The Foreign Policies of Lyndon Johnson: Beyond Vietnam. College Station, TX:

Texas A&M University Press, 99.

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moderating effect on the American interventionism and focused on more cooperative means to solve the problems of the Hemisphere.³⁰⁶ In the early 1960s, the United States committed itself to the economic development of Latin America within the Alliance for Progress, which promised a comprehensive social, economic and political program of cooperation for ten years in exchange for reformist – but not Communist revolutionary – change. This program also had an in-built discrimination against countries with dictatorial regimes, which were temporarily ineligible to participate.

While committed to theAlliance for Progress, President Johnson moved away from the discriminative clause, making the support of American policies the only prerequisite for aid.³⁰⁷ Moreover, regional order and stability counted with more weight than financial aid in his strategy to fight Communism in Latin America. Johnson unified Latin American policy under the direction of Thomas C. Mann, who in March 1964 made it clear that private US investments would be protected, economic growth furthered while social reforms would not be stressed too much. More importantly, the United States was to refrain from intervention except when Castro-style Communist factions threatened to take over a country. Such an approach was especially important in the Caribbean, which was in the immediate proximity of the United States and where the US had already failed to prevent the establishment of a Communist country, Cuba.³⁰⁸

Judging by its history, which has been characterized by instability, the inability to govern and intervention by outside powers,³⁰⁹ the Dominican Republic was an unlikely target of either Communist penetration or American intervention. The country, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti and had approximately four million inhabitants in 1965, was

306 Schoonmaker, Herbert G. 1990.Military Crisis Management: US Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965. New York: Westport, CT; and London: Greenwood Press, 2, 4.

307 Brown 1988, 186-195.

308 Walker, William O. 1999. “The Struggle for the Americas: The Johnson Administration and Cuba.” In H. W.

Brands, ed.The Foreign Policies of Lyndon Johnson: Beyond Vietnam. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 61.

309 Schoonmaker 1990, 9.

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claimed by the Spanish upon Columbus’s first voyage in 1492 and subsequently ruled by Spain until 1821. However, instead of gaining its independence in 1821, the Dominican Republic fell under Haitian rule for twenty-three years. Finally, it became independent in 1844. In 1861, the Dominicans invited the Spanish back only to win independence from Spain again in 1865.³¹⁰

American involvement started in 1869 when President Grant wanted to occupy it. The plan, however, failed when Congress voted against it. The first time the United States intervened militarily was in the course of the 1904 revolt, supporting the ruling Morales regime. A year later, the US overtook custom collection in order to use it in part to finance the country’s large international debts and, thus, prevent European meddling in hemispheric affairs. The United States intervened again in the 1913 revolution to engineer an armistice.

Finding the Dominicans unable to govern their country, President Wilson ordered the occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1916, which resulted in eight years of American military control. Although no more intervention occurred until 1965, the United States remained involved in Dominican affairs by diplomatic and economic means.³¹¹

After the Americans left, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo managed to consolidate his authoritarian regime in 1931. It took three decades for the international community to condemn his corrupt and ruthless rule, which was finally done by the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1960. The United States started to distance itself from the Trujillo regime under President Eisenhower and the process accelerated under President Kennedy. On May 31, 1961 Trujillo was assassinated by Dominican army officers. After a show of naval force in the vicinity of the Dominican Republic to prevent the return of the Trujillo family, the Kennedy Administration lent covert American financial support and helped elect the Social

310 “Dominican Republic: History.” 2006.Dominican Republic – Official Site. Available:

http://www.godominicanrepublic.com/main.asp?xmlpath=/DominicanRepublic/About/History/history_en.xml.

Access: September 30.

311 Schoonmaker 1990, 2-5.

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Democratic Juan Bosch as president in December 1962. Bosch, who was very aptly perceived by the US as a man of good intentions but with no administrative skills could nonetheless maintain American support. Yet, he quickly alienated the Dominican society and was ousted in August 1963 by the military.

Bosch was succeeded by a junta under the leadership of a triumvirate. Bosch and opposition politicians were deported off the county. The US took a harsh line against the triumvirate, denying official recognition, recalling its Ambassador, and suspending economic and military assistance. Lyndon Johnson recognized the junta in December 1963, which added one more supporter besides the Dominican Army to Donald Reid Cabral’s regime. On April 24, some members of the Dominican army joined forces with the pro-Bosch activists and started to execute a coup against Reid. Lacking support, Reid resigned on the morning of April 25 and was arrested by the rebels led by Colonel Camaño. Under General Molina the regime forces gathered strength and what started as a coup turned into a civil war.

The Johnson Administration wished to engineer a cease-fire, but realizing that it will not happen soon, the President authorized the sending of 400 marines on April 26 to evacuate American citizens. At the Ambassador’s request, additional troops were sent on the 28^th and the 29^th to help the evacuation and protect the Embassy. The President formally authorized massive American landings on April 30^th to avoid a Communist take-over.³¹² The 22,000 American troops were neutral in name only. In reality they supported the regime forces both logistically and in the actual fights.Operation Power Pack ended with 26 American lives lost.³¹³

312 It must be noted that the decision date of massive landings are put to different dates in the literature: Schoonmaker (1990, 32, 41), Johnson, Rusk, and Chester put it to the evening of the 29^th while Felten put it to the 30^th.

See Felten 1990, 103; Johnson, Lyndon Baines. 1971.The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 201; Rusk, Dean. 1990.As I Saw It. Edited by Daniel S. Papp.

New York: W. W. Norton, 372; Chester, Eric Thomas. 2001.Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff, and Commies. The U.S.

Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966. New York: Monthly Review Press 2001, 83.

Such a controversy may follow from the fact that troop increases were the result of a series of decisions. See Schoonmaker 1990, 42. As I argue later on, this confusion is likely to be the result of the fact that formal commitment was made a day after the president made up his mind.

313COW2007. No reliable information is available on the total number of casualties.

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Meanwhile, several attempts were also made to find a diplomatic solution. On April 30 former Ambassador John Bartlow Martin went to Santo Domingo to negotiate a deal about the establishment of an interim government led by Antonio Imbert Barrera, but the interim government quickly collapsed at the resistance of the pro-Bosch forces. In mid-May 1965, an American delegation was sent to the Dominican Republic. Yet, the mission led by National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy failed to achieve any agreement due to internal division within the US delegation and a constant hardening of the US negotiating position.

Subsequently, an OAS mission – also known as the Bunker mission – took over the negotiations. It helped organize a multi-national OAS peacekeeping force, negotiated an interim government, and set elections by June 1, 1966. In the elections, with substantial American help and most likely a result of election fraud, Trujillo’s former puppet president Joaquin Antonio Balaguer Ricardo, became president.³¹⁴