The Militarization of Culture in the Dominican Republic, from the Captains General to General Trujillo (review)

On the night of 30 May 1961, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, the brutal dictator of the Dominican Republic, was gunned down by a small group of Dominican conspirators. Thus ended one of the most long-lived and repressive regimes of the modern Western Hemisphere. However, according to Professor Valentina Peguero, for the Dominican people this was only the beginning, as the influence and militaristic nature of the Trujillo regime was all pervasive, and would remain so for years to come. In fact, the Dominican Republic—or Hispaniola as it was known in the days of Columbus—was rooted in the military tradition first brought to the island by the Spanish soldiers who sought to carry on the spirit of the reconquista in the New World just as they had in the old.

Drawing upon both primary and secondary source material, Peguero brings added depth and personal insight to her work through a heavy use of impressions and insights gleaned from interviews. Among those interviewed are former members of the Dominican military, government ministers who served during the Trujillo regime, as well as intellectuals and exiles. Analyzing the history of the Dominican Republic from the colonial period through the end of the Trujillo regime (the focus of the study), Peguero not only illustrates Trujillo's complete dominance over all aspects of the nation's life and culture, but further contends that "of all the political, social, and economic forces that shaped modern Dominican history, none was more at the center of national life than the military" (p. 1).

Trujillo himself was a living example of this point, as he developed an interest in a military career from an early age. His military career began in La Guardia, the paramilitary police force created by the U.S. Marines who occupied the Dominican Republic beginning in 1916, and who then allowed him to transfer to the regular military. Throughout his rapid advancement to the top of the Dominican military ladder, Trujillo worked actively to maintain close ties with the U.S. military, and in particular the Marines, even going so far as to allow some high-ranking Marines to refer to him as "Uncle Rafael" while he was dictator (p. 51).

Interestingly, the intimidation, collective societal fear, personality cult, militarism, etc., leads the reader to consider similarities between Adolf Hitler and Trujillo, a comparison Peguero makes as well. In particular, Peguero outlines the similarities between Hitler's pogroms of 1938 and Trujillo's 1937 order to exterminate Haitians living in the Republic—"pure genocide—a holocaust" (p. 113).

As clearly demonstrated by Peguero, Trujillo's regime not only furthered the militaristic nature of Dominican history and society, but did so to the point that it became "a marching society." Marches were held in Trujillo's honor, for state holidays, for Mother's Day and on many other occasions—and served to use "public space as a theater for effusive demonstrations of loyalty" to Trujillo and the regime (p. 156).

In just under 300 pages, Valentina Peguero provides a very readable and first-rate analytical study of the long-term impact of militarism and dictatorship on a people and a culture. While serious scholars of both military and Latin American history will find much of interest in this volume, so too will social scientists and general readers of Caribbean history.