1965 Revolution in the Dominican Republic

You're going to have an election overnight? They don't know what it means. They'll vote for anybody. So we put out comic books about how to vote, pamphlets on voting procedures, etc. We had an election and Mr. Juan Bosch in photo was elected president of the Dominican Republic - someone I never trusted. He took office about two months later. He went on a trip and came back two days before his inauguration.

He was supposed to be met triumphantly at the airport, but there was such a mob scene they decided to take him by helicopter to the headquarters of the Dominican radio and television studios where he would make a speech to the people. Alice and I had in our house three American journalists from the 50 or so who had come for the inauguration. None of them spoke Spanish. I didn't interpret as it went along; I told them I'd give them a summary at the end.

After the speech I said, "Before I tell you in detail what he said, I want to tell you that he just committed political suicide. He has committed political suicide. It just so happened that the Ambassador and the political section of the embassy hitched their star, our star, totally to Juan Bosch, ignoring even the political opposition. The Ambassador was sort of a pet of Bosch. Whatever Bosch wanted, Bosch got.

I issued warnings -- again, in writing and orally -- saying, "This man cannot be trusted. I said, "No, sir, he's not. I know him better than you do. Well, Juan Bosch was a catastrophe. He was overthrown by the military, and they set up a three-man civilian junta. Our reaction was to suspend diplomatic relations, withdraw the Ambassador and leave a skeleton staff.

I was part of the skeleton. The Ambassador, at the airport, when we said goodbye to him, said to me, "Val, you'll see, the people of the Dominican Republic will rise up in arms, outraged by this military coup. Obviously they didn't rise up in arms. The worse part was that we suspended aid and withdrew our massive AID [Agency for International Development] mission that we had there.

When Kennedy was assassinated, we were in Santo Domingo and the embassy organized a service at the Cathedral. The entire three-man junta, all of whom were personal friends of mine and very decent people, were all there at the church. After the service one of them, Donald Reed Cabral, who at the time was Chairman of the Junta, asked to come to our house for a drink. After we talked about the tragedy he said, "Val, if you have any influence, can you see if relations can be renewed?

Now there is a chance, because there will be a new president, Johnson, for you to renew relations with us. Our economic, financial situation is terrible now and if something isn't done there will be total chaos and the real gorillas will take over. It was one of his first moves to renew relations with the Dominican Republic and to resume aid.

Obviously the aid program was taking a long time to make its effect. When all hell broke loose in the Dominican Republic, I participated once in a meeting, 24 hours after this happened, with Tom Mann, President Johnson and a few other people. I said, "Yes, Mr. Secretary, by all means I would. I was sent to Santo Domingo to be the spokesperson. My first two briefings were very successful.

U.S. troops land in the Dominican Republic - HISTORY

Anyway, the first two briefings were all right, pretty good. But then they started expanding the security perimeter without telling me, the press spokesman. They gave out, in Washington, lists of names of people who had been killed, executed. I remember I was faced by questions. This was the first I had heard that this statement had been made by the White House. Nobody would tell me.

The Dominican Civil War of 1965

You can imagine what it is to brief journalists who are more informed about what's going on than you are. He says, "Hey, Val, why did they enlarge the perimeter? I told Washington to tell them to keep me informed or I would give up. So about the fourth day I was a nervous wreck and had a briefing session.

I am informed that, in order to help me, John King, who was then working for the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, would come from the State Department. I had started a new technique. I tried not to have regular 4 o'clock briefings but to brief as many individual journalists whom I knew, individually, and that was working out pretty well. I recall when the US Marines came to evacuate my family missionaries from the US and my dad refused to leave. He told the marines that the Domincan people were good people and he did not intend to leave the country.

We stayed through the revolution with no problems. To this day I when I return to visit the DR I am very sad when I see all of the poverty, but they are still the friendlies people in the world.

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I was a teen when the invasion took place. I remember following it in the papers and then writing an article against it in my school paper. I am still interested in DR politic situation. It was actually my second international political experience of this type after the Panamanian demostrations against the U. I dont understand none of this.

Reblogged this on inspvis and commented: My uncle fought in the war against Trujillo. To the author of this post: I recently wrote a novel which deals in one chapter fairly extensively with the Dominican Revolution. I would like to post one or more of these photos on my website or on my WordPress blog, the latter which I am just getting started. Do you know if they are copyrighted, and if so, how I could get permission to post them? Also, would you be interested in doing a guest blog either on my webpage or on my blog? The Dominican Republic it is one beautiful country, every foreign country want a piece of the land.

I remember like today the revolution of I was only 12 year old. I love my country even so I have been here in US 38 years I go and visit every year, God Bless the honest and good hard working people of the Dominican Republic. Te amo pedacito de patria. Obviously written by a very anti American author.

I travel to the country often, and contrary to the negative slant of this article, there are many nice parts of the country, and a lot of money. The whole country does not look like that barrio photo shown. Most of the money is in the hands of Dominicans and Spaniards, not as much American imperialism as the author suggests. Many problems exits and poverty is still a reality. Apparently options are limited in first world countries as well, if you are following the current elections.

Dominican Civil War

I was 17 years old during the Dominican Revolution,it was an honor to see the people of DR,defending the constitutional government of President Juan Bosh. Its very sad that our country is still under the hands of people without nationalistic morals.. The poor are worth now,the mayority of our children are lacking nutritional food,education,and a decent home to live.

Only a few has the bounty of money,and only small group controles our rich economy. I always ask myself how if Balaguer was the brain behind The dictator Trujillo ,how the people of the Dominican Republic elected him as the President in the forced election?. Was the United State the responsable of Trujillo s death,of the overtrown of our constitutional president Juan Bosh,of the political unstability in DR? The result of all of these abuses against the Dominican poor can be seeing in the hunger of thousand of our people.

God protect our Dominican children,the future of our beloved country,I hope its a new revolution,the revolution on education,jobs,shelter,and the revolution of changing our views with a new critical social sensibility that gives Dominicans power and control of their own destiny. My father Fernando Pimentel Alonzo is in that picture he is up front with the machine gun and his father my grandfather is in the back Franciso Caamano!

My mother is presently writing a book about her life in the Dominican Republic. She knows so much about what has happened there during this time. He became one of my brothers Godfather. She stood close to many of the political issues and had almost lost her life. She also saved my dad and many other Americans from getting killed. What I know about that story is that she sat with Dominican soldiers and they were talking about killing the Americans that were with them the next morning. When they all went to sleep my mother took their riffles and hid them. My moms book is going to be very interesting.

She talks about her life when her parents had passed away to her being in the orphanage to the revolution and all that she went through. To her becoming a US citizen. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email.

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