Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa (review)

Allen Wells's book recounts the relocation of European Jews to the Dominican Republic during the Holocaust. In the 1940s US and Dominican authorities facilitated the settlement of about eight hundred Jewish refugees in Sosúa, on the northern coast of the country. What makes Wells's study original is its placement of the story within the contexts of American Jewish response to the Final Solution, US policy toward Latin America, and Dominican politics. A Latin-Americanist at Bowdoin and the son of a settler himself, Wells not only read documents in US and Dominican archives, but also interviewed several of the colonists.

In the first part, Wells analyzes the circumstances preceding relocation. As the Nazis radicalized their antisemitic measures, the number of German and Austrian Jews seeking to emigrate shot upward. The resultant international crisis ultimately moved Western governments to restrict immigration, both on the eve and in the wake of the Evian Conference of 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt's ill-fated attempt to inspire an international solution to the problem. But if Evian was an overall failure, the Dominican Republic, then in the first decade of the tyrannical rule of Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961), did indicate interest in accepting refugees.

Trujillo had political and ideological motivations. His dictatorship had come under international criticism for its authoritarianism and violence, especially after the massacre of several thousand Haitian immigrants in 1937. Trujillo wanted to improve his external image and restore good relations with the US. He also wanted to "whiten" the Dominican population by promoting "miscegenation" of European refugees with locals and reducing the flow of African-ancestry immigrants from nearby countries. The 1937 massacre reflected this drive.

The interests of the US and Dominican governments partially converged with those of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a vocational-training and relief organization. Non-Zionist, the JDC's leaders helped settle displaced Jews in Palestine, but opposed creation of a Jewish state. Rather than criticizing the US government for its restrictive immigration policies, the JDC sought to collaborate with it in finding alternative options. Nor were the JDC's officers devoid of eugenic assumptions, believing that agrarianism could "regenerate" fellow Jews whose physical and spiritual strength had been compromised by urban life in Central and Eastern Europe. During the 1920s and 1930s the JDC had relocated urban Jews from overcrowded parts of the western USSR to agricultural colonies in the Crimea and Ukraine with relative success.

Wells devotes the second part of his book to the early history of Sosúa. As war grew imminent, and plans for other possible refugee destinations fell through, US and JDC authorities took up Trujillo's offer. In 1939 the JDC created the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA). Trujillo donated one of his numerous estates—Sosúa—as the colony's site. Despite its poor soil and scarce water, DORSA accepted; at first planned as an acclimatizing and training facility, the estate soon became the actual colony, the first two hundred and fifty refugees reaching it soon after the contract was signed in 1940.

US concerns about potential Nazi infiltration limited the flow of colonists. Some immigrants were selected because of the personal intervention of US politicians and JDC officers rather than due to their suitability for agricultural labor. Those unable or unwilling to farm were located in the El Batey area of Sosúa, where they became an irritant to the others. Dominican priorities resulted in the acceptance of more male than female colonists, undermining morale and diminishing the likelihood of permanent settlement: one of the main difficulties Sosúa faced was the desertion of colonists to other places on the island or to the US.

Wells emphasizes the role of political patronage in Dominican politics. In exchange for patronizing the Jewish colony, Trujillo expected favors from DORSA and the allegiance of the settlers. DORSA's leaders did indirectly help convince the...