Rafael “El Jefe” Trujillo served as dictator and president of the Dominican Republic from 1930-1938 and from 1942-1952. During the four years when he was not in office, he ran puppet presidents in sham elections and continued to act as dictator behind the scenes. During his lifetime he built a strong personality cult, amassed vast amounts of wealth, and oversaw a genocidal massacre of Haitians along the border that separates the two countries on the island of Hispaniola.
    Trujillo rose to power when the United States invaded the Dominican Republic in 1916 when the tiny Caribbean nation threatened to default on its un-payable debts. During the occupation, the U.S. military contingent trained a pro-American faction of the army with the intention of using them to overthrow the government. Trujillo quickly rose to the top ranks of the military and found an ally in Rafael Estrella Urena; together the two plotted a coup d’etat in 1930. After Estrella’s band of rebels seized power, he appointed Trujillo to be chief of police and later he ran for president with Estrella as his running mate. During the election, opposition candidates and their supporters were harassed, intimated, and thrown into prison without charges. After successfully eliminating any opposition, Trujillo won the election with an implausible 99% of the votes.
    American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said of El Jefe, “He’s a bastard but he’s our bastard.” During his reign, Trujillo continued to have political opponents jailed, tortured, and killed. Meanwhile, he embarked on the project of building a personality cult. He began by renaming the capital city of Santo Domingo as “Ciudad Trujillo”, a name which undoubtedly has not stood the test of time. While he did spend a lot of money in a massive project to build up the infrastructure of the Dominican Republic, he also spent vast sums of his wealth on mass producing statues and monuments to himself as well as a giant electric sign saying “Dios y Trujillo” which was visible from most places in the capital city. During World War II, Trujillo sided with the allies and hoarded massive amounts of weapons supplied by the U.S.A. although he never committed any Dominican troops to the war. He was also known for monopolizing the Dominican farming industry, appointing friends and family members to the highest positions in government, and sleeping with hordes of teenage girls who were brought to him as gifts from people who wanted favors from him.
    Since Haiti had governed the island of Hispaniola until 1844 when it became split between them and the Dominican Republic, a large Haitian population lived on the side of the Dominican Republic. Trujillo had no problem with the mulatto population of his country but he wanted all the full-blooded African Haitians to be ethnically cleansed. In 1936, claiming the poorly demarcated northwestern border to be a source of illegal immigration, Trujillo met with then-Haitian president Stenio Vincent to negotiate for stronger border protection. The talks broke down and after the two failed to reach an agreement, Trujillo sent his troops to the border. When the Haitian people learned of the impending militarization of the area, they fled and attempted to cross over into Haiti. While running away, the troops attacked and killed them with machetes, refusing to use guns because they feared international inspectors would be able to trace the bullets back to the Dominican army. Although the number killed is in dispute, it is estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 Haitians were murdered in what has come to be called La Massacre del Parajil. The genocide was named as such because the Dominican soldiers would ask the Creole speaking Haitians to say the Spanish word “parajil”; since they could not pronounce the word the same way that native Spanish speakers do, they would be immediately hacked to pieces by the soldiers. In 1941, Trujillo tried and failed to lead an assassination plot against Haitian president Elie Lescot in a bid to dominate the entire island of Hispaniola.
    In 1961, Rafael Trujillo was assassinated by seven Dominican citizens, six of which were later executed. The guns they used were later traced back to the CIA. Trujillo’s legacy is controversial. Some Dominicans favor him for strengthening the country’s infrastructure while others decry him for his gross violations of human rights.
Wucker, MIchelle. Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle for      Hispaniola. Strauss and Giroux, 1999.