Summary: Assassination Of Dictator Rafael Trujillo

Thomas Li

ELA 11

Aug. 16th, 2017

Mr. Ramsay

Historical Journey of Dominican Americans

Captions:

1. Assassination of Dictator Rafael Trujillo

On May 30th 1961, dictator Rafael Trujillo was assassinated by rebels who wished to topple his regime. Rafael Trujillo had taken control of Dominican Republic since 1930 and had successfully increased the economic prosperity of the country. However, Rafael Trujillo’s reputation was seriously harmed when reports of a massacre against 20,000 Haitians became public. Later in 1960, Trujillo even attempted to assassinate Venezuelan president Romulo Betancourt, which jeopardized his relationship with the OAS (Organization of American States). A year

Not long after the assassination, a democratic election was organized in 1963 and Juan Emilio Bosch Gaviño was elected. Due to Bosch’s inability of dealing with the nation’s problems, he was labeled as a communist and later kicked out of the country by powerful military commanders. The military then installed Donald Reid Cabral as the new president. Unrest continued under his regime. Reid’s slow pace reforms were extremely unpopular among the junior officers who preferred the progressiveness of former president Bosch’s policies and social welfare programs. These people’s will of reinstituting the Bosch constitution split up the military and led to the revolt in 1965. Beside this faction of the military, lots of farmers, merchants, and laborers also opposed Reid for his harsh economic measures. The United States soon intervened the civil war and ended it. United States then made Joaquin Balaguer the new president of Dominican Republic. Since United States was on the side of the conservative military, the end of the civil war also marked an outflux of Bosch supporters, most of whom immigrated to the US along with other political activists. Due to the frequent foreign intervention, the border of Dominican Republic became blurry and emigration was extremely

When the first generation of Dominican Americans came to America, most of them primarily used Spanish in their life. However, the dominance of US culture and the convenience English provides led many Dominicans to use English as their first language similar to other immigrant populations. Because of that, the second generation of Dominican Americans normally lives in bilingual environments. According to the 2010 US Census, approximately 92 percent of Dominican American homes claimed that Spanish is their primary language, although about 55 percent of those homes reported that they speak English as well. Due to interactions with their peers, more and more of the future generations of Dominican American children would probably speak English