Trujillo Dictatorship

Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina (24 October 1891 – 30 May 1961), nicknamed El Jefe (“The Chief” or “The Boss”), was a Dominican politician, soldier and dictator, who ruled the Dominican Republic from February 1930 until his assassination in May 1961. His 31 years in power, to Dominicans known as the Trujillo Era are considered one of the bloodiest eras ever in the Americas, as well as a time of a personality cult, when monuments to Trujillo were in abundance. Trujillo and his regime were responsible for many deaths, including between 20,000 and 30,000 in the infamous Parsley Massacre in 1937 and the murders of the Mirabal Sisters in 1960. During this long period of oppression and death, the Trujillo government extended its policy of state terrorism beyond national borders. Notorious examples of Trujillo’s reach abroad are the unsuccessful assassination attempt in Caracas against Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt (1960), the abduction and subsequent disappearance in New York City of the Spaniard Jesús Galíndez (1956), the murder of writer José Almoina in Mexico, also a Spaniard, and crimes committed against Cubans, Costa Ricans, Nicaraguans, Puerto Ricans, as well as United States citizens. the Trujillo dictatorship has been characterized as more prominent and more brutal than those that rose and fell around it.