Speaker 1: Whats looming my sword of damacles. This is Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: a podcast about the doom looming over each of us
Speaker 1: that could get could sweep down and just just shatter
Speaker 1: our worlds at any second. My guest today to talk
Speaker 1: about the feeling of having doom looming directly over her
Speaker 1: head is Kataboo. Kat you talk you right up. Sorry,
Speaker 1: we were just talking about your apartment and the looming
Speaker 1: death art that's over your head right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great, it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: I hate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I'm nervous. But I've also promised that if
Speaker 3: this thing hanging over your head falls on you, that
Speaker 3: I will promise to vindicate you and post it wherever
Speaker 3: your heart desires.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate having Sophie as an avenger for me.
Speaker 1: Yes, Cat do you are a researcher who studies and
Speaker 1: also professionally makes fun of Fox News on the tiktoks,
Speaker 1: TikTok and other platforms. Kat, where can people find you? First? Off,
Speaker 1: before we get in here, because they should in fact
Speaker 1: find you, track you down?
Speaker 2: You foind me on TikTok and YouTube. I do long
Speaker 2: form and short form content and then I'm also signing
Speaker 2: up for like the billion other sites that are popping up, and.
Speaker 1: You're gonna, you're gonna get on threads.
Speaker 2: Got him on threads, and it's just I forget that
Speaker 2: it exists, and then I have to post a TikTok
Speaker 2: there and just like I'm making so many.
Speaker 3: Things, got on threads, and then I was like, I
Speaker 3: don't want to be here, and then I and then
Speaker 3: so I think there's an account I've never used it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: do you know any kat.
Speaker 1: You are you are in the in the business of
Speaker 1: professionally surveilling. You might say a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1: who would really like to be either dictators or the
Speaker 1: direct employees of dictators.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's a perfect way to describe them.
Speaker 1: So today I thought we would talk about one of
Speaker 1: the og right wing dictators. We are talking at about
Speaker 1: like a classic, like one of one of the all timers.
Speaker 1: This guy is like, he's not the Jordan of right
Speaker 1: wing dictators, because that's got to be that's got to
Speaker 1: be our boy Hitler. But he's like he's like the
Speaker 1: Scottie Pippen of right wing dictators for sure. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we are talking about Rafael trueheo.
Speaker 3: I'm not really proud of you for knowing two basketball
Speaker 3: players names. First of all, Yeah, I feel like I
Speaker 3: feel like I've trained you and you've done well. It's
Speaker 3: only taken six years.
Speaker 1: Look, I know other basketball players like Magic, Magic, Magic Jimmy,
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: Right, I think that's.
Speaker 1: Are we good? Yeah? Yeah, so he says we're right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Magic Jimmy, Scottie Pippin, the Big Bopper. That sounds right.
Speaker 1: What do you know about Rafael Truo?
Speaker 2: I know nothing about Raphael trueO.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you know much about the Dominican Republic, which
Speaker 1: is the country that he he dictated.
Speaker 2: Very basics of like geography and.
Speaker 1: Vibes that is that is perfect. That is basically what
Speaker 1: I knew about the Dominican Republic before. I mean, we
Speaker 1: did some episodes on Haiti on Papa Doc and Baby
Speaker 1: Doc a year or so ago, which is where I
Speaker 1: really did my first deep dive into the history of
Speaker 1: the island. That both of those countries are on Hispaniola.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's interesting because like the Dominican Republic
Speaker 1: was very nearly a state, like it came within a
Speaker 1: hair's breadth of being part of the United States, probably
Speaker 1: would have been wound up more like Puerto Rico is
Speaker 1: in terms of like its legal status. We are absolutely
Speaker 1: central to everything that has happened in the history of
Speaker 1: the Dominican Republic, and most of us are like you
Speaker 1: know you and like I was, you know before I
Speaker 1: started reading on this topic, like it's just not a
Speaker 1: we like Americans barely hear about it. Right when you do,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, someone had a wedding in the Dominican right,
Speaker 1: Like that's that's I think the normal amount of knowledge
Speaker 1: most Americans have, which is fucked up because we we've
Speaker 1: caused a lot of problems over there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I feel like that's the case with
Speaker 2: a lot of these types of places where you don't
Speaker 2: hear anything, and then you're like, oh, we are completely
Speaker 2: responsible for their demise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it with the Dominican Republic and with Haiti.
Speaker 1: A big part of it is that they are so
Speaker 1: close to us, right like it is, it is close
Speaker 1: enough that it could have realistically been part of the
Speaker 1: United States from a like like in the from a
Speaker 1: political standpoint, like it's not further away than a number
Speaker 1: of like other island possessions that our country has taken
Speaker 1: over the years. And we do take possession of the
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic for a period.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we have the fun game was it us
Speaker 3: or was it now?
Speaker 1: No, in this case, it's it's us in Spain and
Speaker 1: France who are like the ones really and Haiti. Actually
Speaker 1: Haiti gets some fucking around in the Dominican Republic too.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna have a fun time talking about this
Speaker 1: because before we before we discuss Rafaeltrahio, who is true.
Speaker 1: He's interesting because he's both like, in some ways a
Speaker 1: kind of traditional strong man dictator, but in some ways
Speaker 1: he might be like one of the smartest dictators that
Speaker 1: I've come across in terms of how he builds and
Speaker 1: uses power and how he manipulated his population and exercised
Speaker 1: control over them. He's really unique in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: There's some very interesting aspects of how he kind of
Speaker 1: wields power that are unique to him. So this is exciting.
Speaker 1: We're going to have a good time talking about this horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible man who did a genocide.
Speaker 2: Can I ask ahead of time, how long did he
Speaker 2: rule or is that like a spoiler?
Speaker 1: Almost thirty years? Okay, so damn when you go when
Speaker 1: you're into dictators, and Sophie and I are big dictator stance.
Speaker 1: Love them. There's, like I would say, broadly speaking, three
Speaker 1: kinds of dictators. You've got your flash in the pan dictators, right,
Speaker 1: your guys who like takeover and they're there for a
Speaker 1: couple of years and then they get cooed or assassinated, right,
Speaker 1: and they're out pretty quick.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Even Hitler kind of is a short termer, right, Like
Speaker 1: he's only in there about twelve years. And then you've
Speaker 1: got what I would say is like, you know, the
Speaker 1: the the dictator equivalent of like living to like eighty
Speaker 1: or so, which is around thirty years. That's Stalin, that's Maw,
Speaker 1: That's where true hello is. And then every now and then,
Speaker 1: it's very rare for one of these guys to last
Speaker 1: more than thirty years. And that's when when you're when
Speaker 1: you're in like the thirty to thirty five year range
Speaker 1: reigning is a dictator that's like absolute goat tier in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, holding power. You know, those guys
Speaker 1: are are are tough sons of bitches. But Trujillo was like,
Speaker 1: right at twenty nine years, so that's a pretty good
Speaker 1: run as dictators go. He's not he's not bad. Probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't be talking about these guys like they're like they're
Speaker 1: like they're your buddies. I don't know how else to
Speaker 1: do it at this point.
Speaker 3: You know, you you called him Scottie Pippen, which is.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, yeah, he's he's a Pippinesque character. So let's
Speaker 1: talk some history and geography both. As I said, the
Speaker 1: Dominican Republican Haiti are on the island of Hispaniola, which
Speaker 1: is famous for being the first place that Columbus discovered. Today,
Speaker 1: Haiti is about a third or so of the island,
Speaker 1: and the Dominican Republic lays over the bulk of the island. Now,
Speaker 1: initially all of Hispaniola was claimed by Spain, right, but
Speaker 1: you know, Spain, they lost interest pretty quickly because people started,
Speaker 1: they started quote unquote discovering the rest of South America,
Speaker 1: and like, Hispaniola didn't have a lot of silver, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of was their whole thing for a while.
Speaker 1: It was like how much silver can we get to
Speaker 1: wreck our own economy via terrible inflation, Like let's really
Speaker 1: fuck ourselves over for the rest of time by importing
Speaker 1: way too much fucking silver. So Hispaniola kind of comes
Speaker 1: a backwater after this initial burst of excitement because you know, Spain,
Speaker 1: they got their Peru, they got Mexico, They're all all
Speaker 1: up in all those blazes, right. So the first slaves
Speaker 1: start being brought to Hispaniola as a of the fact
Speaker 1: that like the initial folks that they are working because like,
Speaker 1: since there's not a huge that you know, they do
Speaker 1: have some silver mines they have, you know, they're mining
Speaker 1: some other stuff and they've got some agricultural plantations set up.
Speaker 1: And initially the people that they're using to work these
Speaker 1: plantations are the indigenous Tino and Carib peoples. But they
Speaker 1: kill a huge number of those people, right, like the
Speaker 1: majority of the folks who had lived their pre contact.
Speaker 1: So this importation of slaves two Hespaniola starts because they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we need more laborers. Right by the start of the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, friedman on the island outnumbered enslaved people. So
Speaker 1: it's not initially what it's going to become, this kind
Speaker 1: of like massive slave plantation system that actually takes a
Speaker 1: little while to really get going. Most slave ownership on
Speaker 1: Hispaniola was more intimate and smaller in scale than the
Speaker 1: vast plantations that would come to dominate Haiti or the
Speaker 1: American South. Right masters rarely had much more than one
Speaker 1: or two enslaved people who engaged in small scale wage
Speaker 1: labor alongside them and their families. Since cash was in
Speaker 1: short supply. Most slaves on the island in this early
Speaker 1: period were taken through piracy. They were also often stolen
Speaker 1: French colonial slaves, so like literally like French boats full
Speaker 1: of slaves would come by and people would you know,
Speaker 1: raid them and take people off of them. In sixteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, there's a big kerfuffle and Spain and France
Speaker 1: have a treaty over Hispaniola, and this is where France
Speaker 1: gets what's going to become Haiti. And the chunk of
Speaker 1: Hispaniola that becomes Haiti is the colony of San Domain, Right,
Speaker 1: that's the name of the French colony that's going to
Speaker 1: wind up rebelling and becoming Haiti. And the French treated
Speaker 1: their possessions on Hispaniola just like they treated their possessions
Speaker 1: on all of the other Caribbean islands where they were involved,
Speaker 1: So they would just started importing huge numbers of enslaved people,
Speaker 1: primarily demand sugar plantations, right, that's the big fucking business
Speaker 1: in this period of time, and it's a pretty shitty
Speaker 1: thing to farm. You don't want to be a sugar farmer.
Speaker 1: It's a not a long life. Now, the Spanish colony
Speaker 1: that is going to become, you know, kind of the
Speaker 1: center of what becomes the Dominican Republic, is called Santo Domingo.
Speaker 1: So you've got the French San Domain and you've got
Speaker 1: the Spanish Santa Domingo, which is a little bit confusing,
Speaker 1: which is why we're going to start calling the Dominican
Speaker 1: Republican Haiti very soon here. And the economy in Santa
Speaker 1: Domingo is very different from Haiti. Haiti is turning into
Speaker 1: this like slave plantation economy. In Santa Domingo. There is
Speaker 1: still slavery, but it's again it's on a much smaller scale.
Speaker 1: Much of the economy, rather than being based around like
Speaker 1: sugar plantations, is cattle ranching, some tobacco growing, and kind
Speaker 1: of small scale export of wood in animal hides. And
Speaker 1: Spain is not thrilled with this state of affairs because
Speaker 1: it's a lot less profitable than San domin Right, Like
Speaker 1: this kind of like all this small scale stuff is
Speaker 1: not making the sort of money that San Domain is
Speaker 1: making France, but Spain is kind of it's very difficult
Speaker 1: to actually govern beyond like the city of San Domain.
Speaker 1: So you've got this this city that is effectively the colony,
Speaker 1: and then anytime you're outside of the walls of the
Speaker 1: city and the hinterland and these hills and mountains and stuff,
Speaker 1: it's basically ungovernable, right. And this kind of population of
Speaker 1: what's going to become the Dominican Republic fills up very
Speaker 1: quickly with a mix of you've got some freed slaves,
Speaker 1: some escaped slaves from what's going to become Haiti. They
Speaker 1: intermarry with indigenous peoples and with poor whites, and they
Speaker 1: create this kind of creole subculture of ungovernable cowboy bandit types. Right.
Speaker 1: That's like the majority of the population, because the city
Speaker 1: is always going to have more people in it, but
Speaker 1: that's the majority of the land mass is kind of
Speaker 1: these the very small numbers of these sort of like yeah,
Speaker 1: cowboy bandit type folks. Historian Lauren Derby writes that they
Speaker 1: quote hunted wild cattle in the interior and sold smoked
Speaker 1: meat and tobacco to contrabandists based on neighboring Latortu Island,
Speaker 1: locally termed Montero's. These proto peasants were the Dominican equivalent
Speaker 1: of the hibbarro, the Puerto Rican backlands highlander. This contraband
Speaker 1: economy of black masterless men was so successful that Spanish
Speaker 1: authorities had to resort to draconian measures to contain it.
Speaker 1: In sixteen oh six, for example, Governor Assorio torched northern
Speaker 1: settlements to the ground in a failed effort to curb
Speaker 1: contraband by forcing rural inhabitants to move closer to Santa Domingo.
Speaker 1: The fact that many of the wealthiest pirates in this
Speaker 1: pan Antillean maritime community, warmerlados, such as the highly successful
Speaker 1: Domingo Sanchez Moreno, probably double e galled the crown. So
Speaker 1: this is a like number one sounds kind of dope.
Speaker 1: Like these people have built like a pretty interesting culture
Speaker 1: for themselves, and the only way that Spain can keep
Speaker 1: a lid on it is like by periodically massacring huge
Speaker 1: numbers of them, right, Like that's all you can do
Speaker 1: is you march your army into the interior and kill
Speaker 1: and burn whatever you can. But they can kind of
Speaker 1: just sort of bounce when they see the army coming.
Speaker 1: And it's not easy to march an army into the
Speaker 1: antia rear of Hispaniola and have them not die of
Speaker 1: all sorts of wild ass diseases. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like again a little bit like of an anarchy in
Speaker 1: most of these.
Speaker 2: Sounds like an ideal society to be good. It sounds perfect, Yes,
Speaker 2: that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Fucking cowboys fucking making beef jerky presumably, Yeah, it sounds great.
Speaker 1: Hella tobacco, Yeah, it sounds dope. So while sand Do
Speaker 1: mag exists under this pretty horrifying racial caste system like
Speaker 1: slavery as awful as it's going to exist basically anywhere
Speaker 1: during like the period of the African slave trade, Santa
Speaker 1: Domingo is a lot less controlled and as a result
Speaker 1: kind of a lot less awful, and so it doesn't develop,
Speaker 1: which is not to say that it's you know, there
Speaker 1: aren't there isn't slavery. There aren't a lot of like
Speaker 1: abusive social structures that exist, but it doesn't develop the
Speaker 1: same preconditions for revolution that you get in Sandomang, right,
Speaker 1: And as we all know, in Sandomang enslaved people have
Speaker 1: themselves a revolution starting at the tail end of the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, and in one of history's great upsets, they
Speaker 1: win their freedom from France. Now, this is how we
Speaker 1: get Haiti, and the rest of the world has never
Speaker 1: stopped punishing Haiti for this, right We talk about this
Speaker 1: again in our episodes on Papa Doc and Baby Doc.
Speaker 1: But basically Haiti's history from this point is being continually
Speaker 1: fucked over by everyone else on the planet close to it,
Speaker 1: not far from it, up to the present day. So
Speaker 1: in Haiti, you know, they're dealing with, after this period
Speaker 1: of revolution, pretty continuous incursions from the French until they
Speaker 1: finally forced Napoleon to get the fuck out of there,
Speaker 1: and the process of getting Napoleon out and of you know,
Speaker 1: ensuring their liberty means that they build up a pretty
Speaker 1: good army, like Haiti has by kind of the late
Speaker 1: period of fighting off the French repeatedly, they have a
Speaker 1: pretty like powerful military. And they are also by the
Speaker 1: point they're done fighting the French for the most part,
Speaker 1: they're kind of they're deeply traumatized, right, They've had all
Speaker 1: of these horrific wars. They are basically constantly aware of
Speaker 1: the fact that all of Europe and all of the
Speaker 1: Western world wants them back in fucking chains, and so
Speaker 1: they're pretty paranoid. And the thing that they start to
Speaker 1: focus on once France is less of a threat is
Speaker 1: the fact that they've got this neighbor, right, They've got
Speaker 1: Santa Domingo sitting on most of their island, and it's
Speaker 1: a possession of Spain and Spain if you're not up
Speaker 1: on your Napoleonic history, for one thing, Spain is kind
Speaker 1: of briefly a part of Napoleon's empire, at least chunks
Speaker 1: of Spain are. So the Haitians are like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't really like that they're just sitting there a possession
Speaker 1: of Europe, right, it feels like this they could this
Speaker 1: could be really bad for us. So why don't we
Speaker 1: Why don't we take them over? Right? Why don't we
Speaker 1: deal with Santa Domingo. And to make a long story short,
Speaker 1: Haiti invades and they occupy Santa Domingo for about twenty
Speaker 1: two years from the early to the mid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and like all occupations, it's not pleasant, right, Like very
Speaker 1: rarely do you like occupy a country with soldiers, and
Speaker 1: everyone is like, we really like being occupied by your soldiers.
Speaker 1: This is a good time for everyone, right, instant of.
Speaker 2: Deming being is like being occupied by the Spanish at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 1: Or are they just no, No, the Haitians kicked the
Speaker 1: Spanish out for about twenty years, okay.
Speaker 2: So it's just occupation, occupation, cool, super fun everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's colony, which is an occupation to a
Speaker 1: military occupation. And then in eighteen forty four the Dominican
Speaker 1: Republic becomes a thing because they fight a war with
Speaker 1: Haiti and they kick the Haitians out and declare their independence.
Speaker 1: And they managed to keep their independence for about fifteen
Speaker 1: years until the Spanish come back and take them over
Speaker 1: again for like four or five years. So it's not
Speaker 1: a not a super stable history here, right, pretty messy,
Speaker 1: Like could you I already feel tired just thinking about it.
Speaker 1: You can imagine how exhausted someone who was like born
Speaker 1: in eighteen hundred in the Dominican Republic would be by
Speaker 1: like eighteen fifty. Right, It's just this carousel of assholes
Speaker 1: taking your place over, right.
Speaker 2: I think about like being a kid like right at
Speaker 2: the beginning of that, and it's like today kids for
Speaker 2: people that remember like pre nine to eleven, you know,
Speaker 2: and then you just get to see everything change. I
Speaker 2: feel like that's so much more exhausting. And you have
Speaker 2: like five occupations. That sounds super fun, like a really
Speaker 2: fun fifty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly how everyone in the Dominican Republic feels.
Speaker 2: I'm sure.
Speaker 1: So the US Civil War is over and Washington is
Speaker 1: like they're not thrilled with everything that's been happening in
Speaker 1: the Dominican Republic because it's pretty you can get from
Speaker 1: DC to the Dominican real fast, right, it is not
Speaker 1: far away from the continental United States. And if you
Speaker 1: know much about America in like the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: we've got this kind of big attitude that like, we
Speaker 1: don't want Europe fucking around and what we consider to
Speaker 1: be our backyard and all of Latin America and the
Speaker 1: Caribbean is basically our backyard in our eyes, right in
Speaker 1: this period of time. I'm not saying this is right,
Speaker 1: this is just how DC is thinking about things. And
Speaker 1: so a lot of American politicians are like, well, we
Speaker 1: don't like the Europeans are not doing clearly not doing
Speaker 1: a good job keeping things stable in the Dominican Republic,
Speaker 1: and this place is in our sphere of influence. So
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five we have US a vote on
Speaker 1: whether or not to annex the Dominican Republic, and it
Speaker 1: fails by a single vote. So US influence will remain
Speaker 1: kind of indirect after this point for a while, but
Speaker 1: it's not going to stay indirect forever. But you can
Speaker 1: see just how close it came to like presumably probably
Speaker 1: being like a possession like Puerto Rico is in a
Speaker 1: legal sense, you know, like that's kind of I think
Speaker 1: a realistic way to look at how it might have
Speaker 1: gone down. Who knows, but the constant warring between the
Speaker 1: Dominican republican Haiti and they have there are regular conflicts
Speaker 1: between the two countries kind of in the through the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, means that politics in the Dominican Republic early
Speaker 1: on is just kind of a succession of strongman generals, right,
Speaker 1: because when you're dealing with all of this sort of
Speaker 1: governmental turnover, all that really matters is like can you
Speaker 1: keep other people out right? Can you actually effectively defend
Speaker 1: the country. And within Dominican politics, there's a vicious split
Speaker 1: between these kind of liberal and conservative parties, all of
Speaker 1: which are headed by these sort of strong man military types.
Speaker 1: And when we say liberal and conservative, and I'm not
Speaker 1: talking in like the modern US, since the Conservatives, broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: a big thing that they are advocates for is being
Speaker 1: annexed by the United States, right, because they're looking at
Speaker 1: number one, how powerful the US is, particularly after the
Speaker 1: Civil War, and going like, well, shit, they can probably
Speaker 1: stop this constant turnover, right, Like, things would probably be
Speaker 1: a lot more stable, we would probably be in better
Speaker 1: economic shape if they were to come over. Whereas liberals
Speaker 1: are like, we don't want to be governed by yet
Speaker 1: another foreign power. We would like to be something that
Speaker 1: approximates a modern state. And these liberals will usually give
Speaker 1: the US Constitution as kind of the ideal example of
Speaker 1: the structure of a government that they want. But there's
Speaker 1: pretty universal agreement among these political elites that even though
Speaker 1: they like the idea of how the US government is
Speaker 1: supposed to be set up, they don't believe that Dominican
Speaker 1: peasants can be democratic citizens. Right. And these kind of rich,
Speaker 1: educated people who are a very small fraction of the
Speaker 1: population are like, well, these like these are uneducated, wild cowboys.
Speaker 1: You can't have them, you can't give them any rights, like,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't know what to do with them. That is
Speaker 1: very much the attitude that these people have. They're not
Speaker 1: like nice folks, right. This attitude is well represented by
Speaker 1: the words of Americolgo, a Dominican writer. In one of
Speaker 1: these kind of intellectuals, he argued that the state needed
Speaker 1: to lead from the top down until the citizenry could
Speaker 1: be educated to a higher degree responsibility. He called the
Speaker 1: peasants quote degenerate due to racial mixture, a tropical environment,
Speaker 1: and a poor diet. Thus, he said, the working class
Speaker 1: of the Dominican Republic can never be governing but rather
Speaker 1: governed classes. So pretty rough stuff.
Speaker 2: Hill, Yeah, they wouldn't know what to do with autonomy,
Speaker 2: Like you want to know what to do with the
Speaker 2: idea of doing things to yourself?
Speaker 1: Like best these guys. Best, these guys, just let us,
Speaker 1: you know, run things. We've been doing so well prior
Speaker 1: to this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously I'm the one that can fix this.
Speaker 1: Just just me, no one else. Now, there is when
Speaker 1: we talk about sort of white supremacy, which a lot
Speaker 1: of these attitudes are influencing things, but it's not the
Speaker 1: same as you're going to get in like the American South,
Speaker 1: or as you're going to get in Europe not all
Speaker 1: that far after this point. There is this kind of
Speaker 1: attitude among a lot of elites that like, you can
Speaker 1: whiten the population in some ways, and that's going to
Speaker 1: become more of a thing later on, Right, So just
Speaker 1: keep that in your head because we will be talking
Speaker 1: about that once the thirties come around. Here. Outside the
Speaker 1: urban parts of the Dominican Republic, politics revolved very heavily
Speaker 1: around little strongmen who are like, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: kind of many dictators over you know, a few towns,
Speaker 1: a chunk of the countryside, and you know, the best
Speaker 1: of them were kind of able to keep areas of
Speaker 1: the interior relatively stable and protect their peasants from banditry
Speaker 1: and unrest. Depending on the book, you'll hear these guys
Speaker 1: kind of referred to as either cadillos or caciques, which
Speaker 1: is a casique is an older word taken from the
Speaker 1: social order on the island in the days kind of
Speaker 1: before Columbus arrived, right, And it's kind of it kind
Speaker 1: of gets applied to these more modern figures. Who are
Speaker 1: they are in every sense of the word. Their warlords, right,
Speaker 1: you know, small scale ones, but not that's an accurate
Speaker 1: way to look at them. Now. I found a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting sources for this episode, but the strangest and
Speaker 1: most entertaining is a biography of Trujio written by one
Speaker 1: of his generals, the guy who wound up running his
Speaker 1: intelligence division for a while. This dude's name is Arturo Espiat,
Speaker 1: and Arturo was the son of one of the two
Speaker 1: or three wealthiest countries or families in the Dominican Republic,
Speaker 1: and so his family are some of these warlord types
Speaker 1: right in this sort of pre Trujio era. And he
Speaker 1: is an untrustworthy piece of shit, which you can tell
Speaker 1: because he opens his book by repeatedly denying he tortured anybody.
Speaker 1: And I want to reach you a quote from this
Speaker 1: because it's really good. I remained neither a shame nor
Speaker 1: regretful of my years as an intelligence officer. I earned
Speaker 1: my nom de guerre Navahita, the Blade, not because I
Speaker 1: was guilty of any atrocities. The name stemmed from my
Speaker 1: tendency to plunge straight to the heart of any problem
Speaker 1: or situation. I believed in direct simple action. However, there
Speaker 1: is not a single Dominican who has ever or can
Speaker 1: come forward to prove that I caused him to be tortured,
Speaker 1: Nor can any Dominican family charge that one of its
Speaker 1: members died at my hands or my I don't know, bro,
Speaker 1: I feel like people who don't torture anyone never need
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 2: That I'm not guilty of any atrocity. Sure is raising
Speaker 2: a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: I also love they called me I was the head
Speaker 1: of intelligence. They called me the Blade, not because of
Speaker 1: any cutting I did. I was just so cool and
Speaker 1: smart and strong.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They called me the dick kicker. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: not for any violent reason, totally unrelated like okay, the Blade.
Speaker 1: So with the caveat that Arto is very untrustworthy source.
Speaker 1: He is a local and a local who gives us
Speaker 1: an attitude of how the upper crust the kind of
Speaker 1: like these these sort of like high up in kind
Speaker 1: of like warlord types wanted to see themselves and talk
Speaker 1: about themselves right. So he gives us an idea of
Speaker 1: how elites and Dominican society in this period wanted to
Speaker 1: pretend that things worked right, and the way that he
Speaker 1: frames this period of Dominican history is that these regional
Speaker 1: strongmen were kind of ungovernable by the central government and
Speaker 1: would periodically overthrow it to put their own guy in charge.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: The Dominican government was never strong enough to resist the caciques.
Speaker 1: The army was merely a handful of ill trained conscripts.
Speaker 1: Recruitment was simple. From time to time, the government would
Speaker 1: call on loyal casiques for volunteers. The local chiefs would
Speaker 1: then round up a batch of unhappy youths and send
Speaker 1: them to the capitol. Sometimes it was necessary to use
Speaker 1: force when Casique handcuffed his volunteers to a huge rope
Speaker 1: and send them to the army with this message, here
Speaker 1: are your volunteers. Please return the rope. Man, I got
Speaker 1: plenty of boys, but ropes cost money, homie, Like, bro, I.
Speaker 2: Only got so much fucking rope over here, Like you
Speaker 2: got it. It's like giving tupperware, you know, Like I
Speaker 2: want you to enjoy the thing I made, but it
Speaker 2: got please return it, like don't keep it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is treating like sending them conscripts like a
Speaker 1: covered dish, Like no, no, enjoy that, man, it's really good.
Speaker 1: The good conscripts but could you could you send me
Speaker 1: back the bowl? Ye?
Speaker 2: Next day, I see you, just like make sure you
Speaker 2: don't forget it, and I need a last time. But
Speaker 2: like I need that fucking rope man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very funny. Now you know who always sends back
Speaker 1: the bowl? Cat good?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Please tell me the sponsors of our podcast. Uh if
Speaker 1: they send you boys, which you can order, you can
Speaker 1: have boys sent to you, you know, you know, conscripts
Speaker 1: or whatever. Uh, just send back the role, That's all
Speaker 1: they ask Sophie.
Speaker 3: Sophie is that the aggressive head shacking or was doing
Speaker 3: would not translate on this audio medium.
Speaker 1: But no, see what I have to deal with here,
Speaker 1: Cat unbelievable.
Speaker 3: Respectfully, you're welcome.
Speaker 1: Ads, we're back, and we're talking about falling in love
Speaker 1: with a magician, which I hope to do one day. Sure,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, how could what could be better than loving
Speaker 1: a magician? You know, getting to live in Las Vegas? Uh,
Speaker 1: probably getting sowt in half.
Speaker 2: You're talking about dating a really successful magician. Though I
Speaker 2: feel like most magicians don't work in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: I feel like both the least and the most successful
Speaker 1: magicians work in Las Vegas. There's a big. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of parts of Vegas you could work.
Speaker 2: You don't want to date magician. You want to do
Speaker 2: either the worst out there at the best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to date the shittiest magician because that'll
Speaker 1: always feel good about myself.
Speaker 2: Is there better?
Speaker 1: No? No, No, I want I want my magician partner
Speaker 1: to come home at the end of a long day
Speaker 1: and I'll be like, yeah, I made some podcasts. People
Speaker 1: like them, and they'll be like, yeah, I got stabbed
Speaker 1: on Fremont Street, you know, trying to trying to busk.
Speaker 2: And then they're like and then they look at you
Speaker 2: and they go pick a card, should I guess something
Speaker 2: in your ear? And it's their entire earnings of the day.
Speaker 2: It's just like eighty two cents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which which they got from? Ah, I forgot
Speaker 1: all the names of the casinos on Fremont Street. Anyway, Yeah, kat,
Speaker 1: you ready to get back into this little history lesson.
Speaker 2: I don't even know how ready I am.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay. So, the upside of the state of affairs
Speaker 1: that exists in the Dominican Republic in the late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds is that the caciques have a lot of power
Speaker 1: and there are generally options for Dominicans outside of the
Speaker 1: urban areas if they don't like who they're living under. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's mobility, but there's poverty. You know, you can
Speaker 1: kind of just be like this guy sucks. I'm going
Speaker 1: to like hike for two days, and then you know
Speaker 1: there'll be a different strong man or no one at all,
Speaker 1: and you know, I can try to figure out my shit.
Speaker 1: But it's basically impossible for the government to set up
Speaker 1: large scale agriculture or to trade or do anything that
Speaker 1: would allow them to function the way that like a
Speaker 1: nation functions, because everything outside of the capital is just
Speaker 1: like a mix of banditry and like small scale peasant
Speaker 1: farmers and stuff. It's very unstable. From an early age,
Speaker 1: the Dominican economy, such as it is, relied heavily on
Speaker 1: the United States, and this was a calculated choice by
Speaker 1: several of the more liberal general types who wound up
Speaker 1: running the country in the late eighteen hundreds. In eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, they signed a reciprocity treaty that made the
Speaker 1: United States officially the main trading partner of the country.
Speaker 1: We leased one of their ports so that our navy
Speaker 1: would be able to do boat stuff there, and we
Speaker 1: started handing out loans to them right because the government
Speaker 1: is trying to get into a more stable position so
Speaker 1: that they can govern the Dominican Republic. And we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we got money. We'll give you guys money to do that.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. The terms are not ruinous. We are absolutely
Speaker 1: not working on a way to fuck you over, just
Speaker 1: like we did Deahiti. Next door promises, Pinky swears, sounds
Speaker 1: of it. This is never going to happen again, Kat,
Speaker 1: But all of the money we give them winds up
Speaker 1: in the hands of local strongmen, and none of it
Speaker 1: goes towards like helping regular people or making the country
Speaker 1: function better. I know it won't happen again. Not so weird,
Speaker 1: Yeah it would be. It would be crazy if after
Speaker 1: this we just flew a palette of billions of dollars
Speaker 1: in cash to a country let's call it smarrak and
Speaker 1: then lost it all. Like that would be wild if
Speaker 1: we'd done that. All good stuff, good stuff. So in
Speaker 1: a yeah, the US is like, ah, you got to
Speaker 1: pay us back for all these loans that just got
Speaker 1: robbed by your you know, the assholes running the country.
Speaker 1: You know what We're going to do for you guys,
Speaker 1: because you're such good clients. We're going to appoint a
Speaker 1: private company to handle getting you to pay back your
Speaker 1: foreign debt, and we do that in eighteen ninety two. This,
Speaker 1: you know, leads to a series of events that in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh four culminates in the United States creating the
Speaker 1: Santo Domingo Improvement Company. Now, the job of this country
Speaker 1: is to take control of their entire custom system, to
Speaker 1: regulate customs for the Dominican Republic at all of their ports,
Speaker 1: skimming money off of the top through these like in
Speaker 1: export taxes and shit to repay debts to American Like
Speaker 1: at this point, a lot of it's privately owned American
Speaker 1: companies that can't be met by the Dominican government. By
Speaker 1: nineteen oh five, the United States controls all custom houses
Speaker 1: in the country. So we're just like running you know,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff for the Dominican Republic, not for them.
Speaker 1: We're running it so that we can skim off the
Speaker 1: top money that would otherwise theoretically go into like taxes
Speaker 1: and shit.
Speaker 2: You know, I can't be right that bring this sound like.
Speaker 1: Us, Yeah, that doesn't sound like the thing. We'll keep
Speaker 1: doing forever now because this and let's be fair here, we're,
Speaker 1: as we often are, just copying the British right, because
Speaker 1: they are the goats at this sort of thing. No
Speaker 1: one's ever been better at it.
Speaker 2: Did we have a revolution because we hated how they
Speaker 2: did this?
Speaker 1: Well, we thought that we could do a better job
Speaker 1: of doing it. Eventually it was the long con, and
Speaker 1: by god, did it work out, you know. So all
Speaker 1: of this stuff ends up being basically a big con
Speaker 1: to suck the wealth of the Dominican Republic out of
Speaker 1: its neck like you know, vampires, and no amount of
Speaker 1: throttling the customs houses was enough to actually pay down
Speaker 1: their debt, which by nineteen sixteen had ballooned to more
Speaker 1: than thirty million dollars, which was a lot of money
Speaker 1: in those days. Economic collapse brings about political unrest. The
Speaker 1: President of the Dominican Republic is assassinated in nineteen eleven,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen sixteen President Yemenez has a little civil
Speaker 1: war with the former Minister of War. The US government
Speaker 1: looks at all this unrest in the Dominican Republic, which
Speaker 1: we absolutely had not helped to cause, and are like, boy,
Speaker 1: they might not be able to repay all of this
Speaker 1: additional money that they now owe us in excess of
Speaker 1: the money that they ever borrowed from us. You know
Speaker 1: what we should do. You know, also nineteen sixteen, we're
Speaker 1: kind of worried if things get any more unstable, Germans
Speaker 1: could come in, right, the Germans could take over the
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic, and that'll be bad for everybody, mainly US.
Speaker 1: So we do a thing that we're going to do
Speaker 1: repeatedly from this point forward.
Speaker 2: Cant we yeah, uh, Pavid guy and back him.
Speaker 1: Not quite yet. First we send in the Marines.
Speaker 2: Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to read a quote from a write
Speaker 1: up by Thought Company summarizing US intervention here in the
Speaker 1: Dominican The US soldiers moved quickly to secure their hold
Speaker 1: on the Dominican Republic. In May, Rear Admiral William B.
Speaker 1: Caperton arrived in Santo Domingo and took over the operation.
Speaker 1: General Arius decided to oppose the occupation, ordering his men
Speaker 1: to contest the American landing at Puerto Plata on June first.
Speaker 1: General Arius went to Santiago, which he vowed to defend.
Speaker 1: The Americans sent a concerted force and took the city
Speaker 1: that wasn't the end of the resistance. In November, Governor
Speaker 1: Juan Perez of the city of San Francisco di Maceroy
Speaker 1: refused to recognize the occupation government hold up in an
Speaker 1: old fort. He was eventually driven out by the Marines.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we take over. And if you're
Speaker 1: anywhere kind of from your late twenties on, you and
Speaker 1: most of us have watched the US and vaden Ocaia
Speaker 1: by a couple of countries, and what happens in the
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic is more similar to like what we do
Speaker 1: in Iraq than what goes on in Afghanistan. Right, we
Speaker 1: set up a military government and we have the Marines
Speaker 1: start training and equipping a local military so that we
Speaker 1: can leave and have a country that will be, in
Speaker 1: our eyes kind of a pliant client state. Right, that's
Speaker 1: the goal here, right, so that we can get some
Speaker 1: fucking money out of them again, right, Like that's what
Speaker 1: we're doing in this case. Now, this concludes the historical
Speaker 1: background portion of the story. So as we've left off
Speaker 1: the historical background, the US Marines are occupying the country
Speaker 1: and we are trying to get it into a stable
Speaker 1: enough position that we can continue sucking on it like
Speaker 1: the vampires we are. So let's move back over to
Speaker 1: our bastard for the week. Finally, Raphael Truhio, because he
Speaker 1: is going to be one of the young Dominican men
Speaker 1: that the US Marines pick out of poverty and obscurity
Speaker 1: and are like, here's a gun we.
Speaker 2: Need you to keep.
Speaker 1: Thinks, don't do anything bad with it.
Speaker 2: Pick a random guy and be like, hey, don't fuck
Speaker 2: over the entire don't be a megalomaniac that takes over
Speaker 2: an entire country.
Speaker 1: Here's a bunch of dudes with guns.
Speaker 2: Be cool, be cool, be chill, do the right thing,
Speaker 2: just like us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just like us, like we always do with our guns. So.
Speaker 1: Raphael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was born in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic,
Speaker 1: on October twenty fourth, eighteen ninety one. He was the
Speaker 1: fourth of eleven children, most of whom survived to adulthood.
Speaker 1: So his parents were doing something right. You know, that's
Speaker 1: not bad in this period of time for somebody coming
Speaker 1: out of poverty. Now, despite an impressive name, he did
Speaker 1: not come from impressive surroundings. His hometown was a small
Speaker 1: village on the Southern Coast, and his father, Pepito, is
Speaker 1: generally described like one biographer literally just calls him a
Speaker 1: non entity. He is not a big deal, you might say,
Speaker 1: and he's not really around a lot. You get the idea, now.
Speaker 1: Trujillo would later commission court biographers to tell a very
Speaker 1: different version of his upbringing, one that is more rarefied
Speaker 1: and that paints his family is coming from the upper
Speaker 1: middle class. This is not accurate, right, this is him.
Speaker 1: He's kind of insecure about his origins and he will
Speaker 1: he will exaggerate them as a as a you know,
Speaker 1: an adult in power. Most there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: great context as to his early life, his childhood, but
Speaker 1: all of the credible biographers that I've read tend to say, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were pretty poor, right, Like, they were not unusually poor.
Speaker 1: They were not like, you know, the worst off, but
Speaker 1: they were not They did not come from the upper
Speaker 1: middle class. The Truiello children went shoeless because there was
Speaker 1: no money in the family for shoes. His dad was
Speaker 1: a minor postal clerk and often went without income because
Speaker 1: he had sold his salary for a short term loan,
Speaker 1: which is a thing that a lot of men who
Speaker 1: work for the government do right, You'll basically be like,
Speaker 1: I need money, now, I will give you, you know,
Speaker 1: interest basically, and so you get my salary for a
Speaker 1: period of time. It's a really it winds up being
Speaker 1: a pretty abusive situation. I probably don't need to explain how,
Speaker 1: but like a lot of guys get trapped in this
Speaker 1: in this period of time.
Speaker 2: Why do you think he didn't like, not even you
Speaker 2: just describe, but like, why why didn't he exaggerate like
Speaker 2: how poor he was or talk about how poor he was?
Speaker 2: Because I feel like that's a typical right wing tactic
Speaker 2: of like, you know, I came from nothing and now
Speaker 2: I'm this guy.
Speaker 1: It is in our culture, right, he has a it's
Speaker 1: really important for him to feel like and to seem
Speaker 1: like like it's going to be important to him to
Speaker 1: act as if he is coming like a gentleman, right,
Speaker 1: that he is coming from kind of this more upper class,
Speaker 1: not like super rich, but that he's coming from something.
Speaker 1: You know, he he will always be kind of insecure
Speaker 1: about his surroundings. It is worth noting that's very much
Speaker 1: a thing in American right wing politics. It's not always
Speaker 1: the case, right, and in this in the Dominican culture,
Speaker 1: Like that's just not a thing trueho feels would benefit him.
Speaker 1: Or it's unclear to me because I'm not obviously I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert. It's unclear to me if it's more
Speaker 1: that he didn't think it would benefit him, or that
Speaker 1: he just legitimately had hang ups right, Like he's just
Speaker 1: actually kind of ashamed of his humble circumstances and didn't
Speaker 1: want to be honest about them.
Speaker 2: Does it mean it's a dom story, like he grew
Speaker 2: up from nothing?
Speaker 1: Ye?
Speaker 2: I think yeah, like is a big part of like
Speaker 2: this legend built around him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. It is interesting that Truillo's not going
Speaker 1: to really take that tactic. But the the like true
Speaker 1: hel biography that I read that was like done by
Speaker 1: like basically was telling the version of his story that
Speaker 1: he wanted told. Talk like makes a big deal about
Speaker 1: how they were like you know, middle class to upper
Speaker 1: middle class. His family was doing well, whereas his more
Speaker 1: credible biographers are like, no, they were as poor as
Speaker 1: everyone around them was. So, yeah, they were poor enough
Speaker 1: that like because his dad is regularly going without income
Speaker 1: because he's sold his salary for a loan. His older
Speaker 1: brothers have to do cattle wrestling to make ends meet,
Speaker 1: which is also really common. A lot of people would
Speaker 1: will do this because there's both wild cows and just
Speaker 1: like farms outside of the city. So you bust in
Speaker 1: one night, you cut down a fence, you steal a
Speaker 1: cow or two. That's food, that's money. You know.
Speaker 2: I thought you met like wrestling cows.
Speaker 1: No, that would that would do They would not have
Speaker 1: like it would be cool if you could do it.
Speaker 1: I have known a lot of cows in my life
Speaker 1: and none that I would want to wrestle with. It
Speaker 1: would be pretty rad if you could do it. So
Speaker 1: one of the few privileges he enjoyed as a little
Speaker 1: kid was that his grandmother, Ersina, was very well educated,
Speaker 1: and she ensured that Raphael and his siblings learned to read. Later,
Speaker 1: he would attend grammar school, but his attendance was a
Speaker 1: regular since he he very nearly died of diphtheria as
Speaker 1: a little kid, so he doesn't get to do a
Speaker 1: lot of school. And aside from these broad strokes, we
Speaker 1: you don't know a lot about his childhood. It's pretty
Speaker 1: likely that he's dropped out of school by the fourth grade,
Speaker 1: so most of the education that he does get comes
Speaker 1: from his grandma, who I think was pretty much self taught,
Speaker 1: just like a very smart person, and who sees it
Speaker 1: as important that he learned to read and that his
Speaker 1: siblings learned to read. And one of Trujillo's better biographies,
Speaker 1: Trujillo Little Caesar of the Caribbean, German Ornez writes quote,
Speaker 1: but if the children did not learn much as school,
Speaker 1: at school, the dusty street was separated. In those days,
Speaker 1: the monotonous rows of San Cristobal shacks provided them with
Speaker 1: an excellent schooling in lawlessness. To survive the rowdyism of
Speaker 1: the neighborhood kids, a boy had to be tougher than
Speaker 1: the others, or, at least, as in the Trujillo's case,
Speaker 1: he had to belong to a large, clannish family. In
Speaker 1: frequent street brawls, the solid front of the Trujillo boys
Speaker 1: proved good enough to lick all opposition, a fact they'd
Speaker 1: never forgot later in life. From such an environment, Rafael
Speaker 1: emerged as a resourceful, headstrong character. As a boy, Trujillo
Speaker 1: was always in trouble. Recall one of his neighbors always
Speaker 1: trying to cheat someone always bragging about how he would
Speaker 1: one day make big money without much effort. I do
Speaker 1: think that's cool that, Like he had a lot of brothers,
Speaker 1: so they kind of worked as a gang together. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna get into a fight, like, at least
Speaker 1: I've got siblings, I could Collin. I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's like when you're a girl with
Speaker 2: like brothers, like you have someone to bag you up.
Speaker 2: Greguez would just having a bunch of brothers starting.
Speaker 1: To gang, yeah, getting in trouble. Yeah, in this case,
Speaker 1: kind of a literal gang. Although because they're poor, the
Speaker 1: thing that he becomes kind of a gangster about is
Speaker 1: very silly. So his nickname around town is Chapeta, which
Speaker 1: is kind of the colloquial term for bottle caps. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that literally, but it's like what people call
Speaker 1: bottle caps. And he gets that nickname because he collects
Speaker 1: bottle caps and for some unknown reason he became like
Speaker 1: an obsessive order of caps from sodas and beers. He
Speaker 1: hated the nickname, but like he got the nickname because
Speaker 1: not only did he collect these, but he would like
Speaker 1: beat people up to take their bottle cap, Like he
Speaker 1: would get his brothers to get back. He was like
Speaker 1: running a bottle cap racket so that he could.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he just like hoarded them like he wasn't
Speaker 2: selling them or anything.
Speaker 1: That part is unclear to me. He probably, I assume
Speaker 1: he traded when he couldn't fight for them. But he's
Speaker 1: he's very into collecting bottle caps and he's willing to
Speaker 1: do violence in order to expand his collection, which is
Speaker 1: pretty funny.
Speaker 2: From imagining him being like a funko pop, like beating
Speaker 2: people up for funko pops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a little bit like that. It's less
Speaker 1: sad than a funk o pop because bottle caps are
Speaker 1: objectively better than funko pops.
Speaker 2: You can do something with a bottle cap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all you can do with a funko pop.
Speaker 1: Has become aware of the fact that you've lost control
Speaker 1: of your life. So at age sixteen, he started to
Speaker 1: work as a telegraph operator, a job he got thanks
Speaker 1: to his uncle. And again, his father's kind of a
Speaker 1: non entity. So it's his two uncles, Teodulo and Plinio,
Speaker 1: who taught him how to be a man. And these guys,
Speaker 1: each of these guys is like half of a good
Speaker 1: con man. Right, Plinio is like charming and intelligent, like
Speaker 1: he's he's good at like talking to people. He's got
Speaker 1: a lot of social intelligence. And Teodulo is a drunken
Speaker 1: a womanizer who like writes poetry in prose, but is
Speaker 1: all as seen as like so he's this like he's
Speaker 1: too drunk to be like a really good con man.
Speaker 1: He's kind of just like like they're each half of
Speaker 1: a good con man. So as a young adult, he
Speaker 1: gets offered a job working security at one of the
Speaker 1: local sugar plantations. Like all but one sugar company in
Speaker 1: the Republic, Rafael's employers were American. It's likely that his
Speaker 1: charming because we control all of the big business in
Speaker 1: the American rehol right right, Like we've taken over these
Speaker 1: sugar companies in part is like a well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you let American companies in to dominate this this industry,
Speaker 1: you know, that's how we can take out some of
Speaker 1: this debt that somehow still keeps ballooning every year. So
Speaker 1: like all but yeah, so his employers here, he's working
Speaker 1: for the Americans, and his it's pro probably Teodulo, his
Speaker 1: uncle who gets him this job because he's just like
Speaker 1: drinking with the dude who's doing the hiring, but we
Speaker 1: don't really know. Most casual summaries of Raphael's past will
Speaker 1: describe him as working as a security guard for the
Speaker 1: Sugar Company. This is inaccurate. Truhello was an informer for
Speaker 1: the sugar company. His job was to make friends with
Speaker 1: labor organizers who were like getting ready to organize unions
Speaker 1: and like go on strike and then help take them out.
Speaker 1: So that is his job. He is a spy, like
Speaker 1: to crack down on the labor movement for these American companies,
Speaker 1: and he loves this gig.
Speaker 2: That is such an early reason to hate someone in
Speaker 2: this story.
Speaker 1: It is a real piece of shit.
Speaker 2: Jes yeah, immediately, Yeah thought that ud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's very funny because like he loves this because
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, I get to pick my own hours,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have a boss breathing down my neck.
Speaker 1: All I gotta do is fuck over these laborers. Future
Speaker 1: state propaganda will note that his strength of character got
Speaker 1: him an award from Milli Management, but the reality is
Speaker 1: that he helped catch and hang several men who are
Speaker 1: looking to start labor unions. Like he is killing people
Speaker 1: for the sugar company, and that's how Americans got cheap
Speaker 1: sugar in the early nineteen hundreds. Everybody so good, good stuff.
Speaker 1: So tragically, and this is sad cat. His promising career
Speaker 1: murdering union organizers is cut short because he rapes somebody.
Speaker 2: Damn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a real justice yeah, justice for Raphael Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: cancel culture has come for the murdering rapists. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: we don't exactly know, like I hate to just like
Speaker 1: drop he's a he probably committed rape, but there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of detail because all of the criminal records
Speaker 1: from the period of time where he's probably getting in
Speaker 1: trouble burned down mysteriously after he takes power. So this
Speaker 1: is based primarily on other people's recollections. But it seems
Speaker 1: like he probably went to jail for this for a
Speaker 1: period of time. Yeah, it's a little unclear. He is
Speaker 1: going to be a prolific rapist and sexual assault throughout
Speaker 1: his entire adult life. And it's it's interesting because if
Speaker 1: you when you read these there's a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of the first biographies I read about this guy are
Speaker 1: written in like, you know, the the sixties or whatever,
Speaker 1: and they they will describe it as like a ladies
Speaker 1: man with a wandering eye, and their critical biographies, but
Speaker 1: the men writing them like just don't see the fact
Speaker 1: that he's don't see what he's doing as serial sexual assault.
Speaker 1: And then when you get more modern coverage of true Heo,
Speaker 1: it becomes very clear like, oh, yeah, he was like
Speaker 1: a terrible, terrible rapist, like he was.
Speaker 2: Popular with the names.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know the dames really like this man.
Speaker 2: No, they liked him.
Speaker 1: You get that a lot move on with dictators from
Speaker 1: this period of time when you read early books about them.
Speaker 1: But you know who isn't problematic kat.
Speaker 2: The ads and sponsors that sell you boys with rope.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, here's some ads. We're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Raffaeultruheo, who has probably gone to jail for rape
Speaker 1: at this period of time after murdering union organizers for
Speaker 1: a gig. So he gets out of jail and at
Speaker 1: this point he's kind of starting to get confident in
Speaker 1: his own abilities. One presumes spending some time in jail
Speaker 1: connects him to more criminals, and he sort of after
Speaker 1: this period becomes kind of a gangster, right, definitely a gangster,
Speaker 1: kind of a low level gangster. He runs a forgery racket,
Speaker 1: he does some cattle rustling, and more than anything else,
Speaker 1: he becomes a pimp. Right, he is a very successful
Speaker 1: pimpsus his I probably shouldn't say this, but like you
Speaker 1: get the feeling he treats the the women that he
Speaker 1: is working with the way he used to treat bottle caps,
Speaker 1: including these, stealing from them from other pimps using violence.
Speaker 1: That's the feeling one gets. Again, there's not terrible tremendous
Speaker 1: detail about it, right, but he is a very successful pimp,
Speaker 1: and knowing what we know about him, that's probably an
Speaker 1: ugly story, right, I think that's fair to say, given
Speaker 1: everything we know about this guy's background. And this is
Speaker 1: where are two stories, the history of the Dominican Republic
Speaker 1: up to this point in the US occupation and the
Speaker 1: life of Rafaeltruhio intertwine in nineteen sixteen, when the US
Speaker 1: comes in, Trueheo is about twenty four years old, and
Speaker 1: despite how his career as a spy for the sugar
Speaker 1: companies had ended, he left with some connections and a
Speaker 1: good recommendation. The Marines have now invaded the Dominican Republic
Speaker 1: and their mission is to maintain domestic tranquility, and this
Speaker 1: is code for make the company stable enough for American
Speaker 1: investors to profit. One local historian would like it was
Speaker 1: the landing of the American Marines which brought Truheo his
Speaker 1: opportunity to rise from obscurity, and this is certainly true.
Speaker 1: Prior to our involvement, Raphael was the organized crime equivalent
Speaker 1: of a minor casiqu right. He probably first interacts with
Speaker 1: the Americans through getting arrested for forgery. He might have
Speaker 1: also gotten arrested for cattle wrestling. He probably goes to
Speaker 1: jail again. We don't know, because in nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 1: a mysterious fire destroys the Supreme Court building with all
Speaker 1: of the criminal records in it. What is likely true
Speaker 1: is that he runs into a little bit of trouble
Speaker 1: with the new regime because he's a criminal and his
Speaker 1: uncle Tao Dulo is able to smooth it over. Tiodulo
Speaker 1: has made friends with an American customs officer, a guy
Speaker 1: named James MacLean, and McLean is one of these Americans
Speaker 1: who's been in the country the longest. He's like working
Speaker 1: in as one of these you know, because we take
Speaker 1: over their customs like stations, so he is there before
Speaker 1: the Marines arrive, and when the Marines arrive, they're like, well,
Speaker 1: this guy knows the country and he's one of us,
Speaker 1: so let's give him a job now that we're running
Speaker 1: things right. And Taodulo drinks with MacLean. The two of
Speaker 1: them are hardcore alcoholics and they are just getting wasted
Speaker 1: together all the time. So when the military government comes in,
Speaker 1: they make McLean a colonel because they're like, well, this
Speaker 1: guy knows the country, and Taodula's like, hey, can you
Speaker 1: give a job to my nephew, Like he's a good kid,
Speaker 1: you know, he only occasionally commits horrible crimes. Albert Hicks,
Speaker 1: an American journalist working in the country at the time,
Speaker 1: describes McLean as a man who, quote, when sufficiently sober,
Speaker 1: found a profound satisfaction in the company of Harlot's, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, probably another reason why he likes Trujio, because
Speaker 1: Trujio is a pimp in this period of time.
Speaker 2: So question the guy that wrote the general the biography
Speaker 2: of this guy who said he didn't do any atrocities,
Speaker 2: does he mention any atrocities, even like in a positive way.
Speaker 1: Of Truio, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, later on, I didn't.
Speaker 2: Commit anything like this, but I okay, yes, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a common common story for guys and dictatorships. So
Speaker 1: Hicks goes on to claim that Tiadulo introduced his nephew
Speaker 1: Trujeo to MacLean during a drinking session and quote Raphael immediately,
Speaker 1: recognizing a job he could fill, played the pimp to
Speaker 1: the chief of the constabulary. So McLean gets made like
Speaker 1: the head of the police basically just because he's an
Speaker 1: American who lives in the country. And Truio's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you want some you want some ladies, Like I'm a pimp.
Speaker 1: I can satisfy your needs, you know, And this gets
Speaker 1: him in good with the Americans, and you know, he
Speaker 1: moves on quickly from giving McLean prostitutes to supplying prostitutes
Speaker 1: to American Marines, which is a great way to get
Speaker 1: the Marines to like you historically. Now, once MacLean is
Speaker 1: kind of hooking Trujeo up with the occupation authorities, Truio
Speaker 1: starts finding other ways to police American officers. He starts
Speaker 1: acting as an informer to basically go into communities that
Speaker 1: are like resisting the American occupation that are like harboring insurgents,
Speaker 1: and he'll make friends in there, and then he'll go
Speaker 1: back to the Americans and be like, here's who you
Speaker 1: go massacre, right, these are the people who like, are
Speaker 1: are you harboring these folks? W are who are resisting
Speaker 1: the regime? And he soon as a result of this,
Speaker 1: falls in with the absolute bloodiest of the Marines that
Speaker 1: are in the country. A guy named Captain Murcley, So
Speaker 1: this is Merclay, is an American who is running the
Speaker 1: pacification campaign in the east of the Dominican Republic. And
Speaker 1: he makes trueO his right hand man, and together the
Speaker 1: two of them cut a bloody swath across the countryside.
Speaker 1: Murclay is so out of hand that the US Senate
Speaker 1: eventually investigates him and finds that he has quote a
Speaker 1: policy of repression that has been carried out by the
Speaker 1: forces of the occupation and is inherently unwise, which reacted
Speaker 1: primarily upon peaceful civilians, and as the result of which
Speaker 1: many atrocities were undoubtedly committed. So like, this guy gets
Speaker 1: so out of pow that the US Senate in like
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen is like, we can't have you occupying the
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic your two fucking nuts? Now, this passage from
Speaker 1: the biography tru Heio, Little Caesar of the Caribbean, gives
Speaker 1: us more context as to what he was doing with Mercley.
Speaker 1: Another competent observer, the historian and economist Melvin M. Knight, says,
Speaker 1: in Americans in Santo Domingo, a number of Dominicans. We
Speaker 1: may be certain that nobody knows exactly how many were
Speaker 1: put to death offhand by the Marines, and some were
Speaker 1: tortured without ever having their day in court at all.
Speaker 1: In fairness, however, it must be said that Captain Merkley's
Speaker 1: end was appropriate to his corrupt practice. The assassinations by
Speaker 1: Captain Merkley were repudiated by his superiors, and he committed
Speaker 1: suicide while awaiting for trial, asserts Knight. Knight's version is
Speaker 1: supported by Sumner Wells in his aforementioned book. Nevertheless, if
Speaker 1: Merkley himself paid dearly for his cruelty and sadism, his
Speaker 1: methods unfortunately did not disappear. With him and young Trujillo.
Speaker 1: He left behind a keen, proficient disciple who was carried
Speaker 1: on the sadistic tradition long after his teacher's name is
Speaker 1: no longer remembered. So he gets his boss, Mercley, and
Speaker 1: they massacre and torture probably hundreds of people to try
Speaker 1: to pacify the eastern chunk of this of the Dominican Republic.
Speaker 1: The Senate gets involved and is like, wow, you need
Speaker 1: to come back here and stand trial because what you
Speaker 1: have been doing is so out of hand. And Merkley
Speaker 1: fucking kills himself leaving. Trueheo to be like, well, it's
Speaker 1: sad he's dead, but at least he taught me how
Speaker 1: to be a real piece of shit. So yeah, a
Speaker 1: proud chapter in US Marine Corps history right there.
Speaker 2: He's like, time for me to take up this torch.
Speaker 1: It's my time now, Yeah, it is his time. And
Speaker 1: he has been a freelancer for the US Marines up
Speaker 1: to this point, but once Mercley commits suicide, he decides
Speaker 1: I need a more formal job. And it just so
Speaker 1: happens that during this period, the US occupation government has
Speaker 1: decided we need to set up a permanent military force.
Speaker 1: The Dominican Constabulary geared it keep the interior pacified. Once
Speaker 1: the Marines leave in December of nineteen eighteen, Rafael is
Speaker 1: accepted into this program. He gets commissioned as an officer,
Speaker 1: and he rises very quickly through the ranks due in
Speaker 1: part to the fact that Colonel MacLean is running the constabulary,
Speaker 1: so like he's basically bribing his boss with prostitutes in
Speaker 1: order to get promoted to the point where he's running
Speaker 1: the constabulary. So he goes from second loot yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Any there are more allegations of rape and extortion against
Speaker 1: Hi during this period of time. He gets court martialed
Speaker 1: for rape, but like nothing happens to him. He keeps
Speaker 1: getting promoted because he's providing prostitutes to the Marines, so
Speaker 1: they don't want him out of there. And he's kind
Speaker 1: of he has this reputation of being because he's worked
Speaker 1: with Mercley and he knows how to like kill a
Speaker 1: shitload of people. He's like the guy if you're having
Speaker 1: trouble in an area, if like there's you know, uprisings
Speaker 1: or whatever, He's this guy you can send in because
Speaker 1: you don't want to do it yourself. You saw what
Speaker 1: happened to Merkley, right, It's bad business for the Americans
Speaker 1: to go committing massacres directly. But you can send this
Speaker 1: guy in with some dudes, with some Dominicans and he'll
Speaker 1: fucking kill people, right, and then you can you don't
Speaker 1: have to get in trouble yourself and commit suicide after
Speaker 1: a senate investigation. So, prior to US or military involvement,
Speaker 1: most of the military power in the Dominican Republic had
Speaker 1: been in the hands of these kind of local warlords
Speaker 1: who'd maintained private militias and sometimes sent the scraps of
Speaker 1: their militias down to the central government when they had
Speaker 1: a war to fight with Haiti or whatever. And officers,
Speaker 1: inasmuch as they existed, had always been members of a
Speaker 1: small wealthy class in the country. The Americans wanted to
Speaker 1: change this, in part because the Kadillos were their enemies, right.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to like these guys to continue to
Speaker 1: have all the military power. So one of the first
Speaker 1: things we do is we disarm the countryside. So we
Speaker 1: take weapons both from the militias that these guys have
Speaker 1: had and from peasants. We wind up confiscating about three
Speaker 1: million firearms, which is enough to arm every man, woman
Speaker 1: and child in the country three times over. And that
Speaker 1: gives you an idea of how hard it was to
Speaker 1: control this place. They have three guns for every person
Speaker 1: in the country out in the just out in the sticks,
Speaker 1: you know, very heavily armed little land. Before we come
Speaker 1: there and we take all of their guns and we
Speaker 1: dump them into the sea, and then we build roads
Speaker 1: so that this new constabulary that we're training can access
Speaker 1: all these isolated areas of the rural interior.
Speaker 2: And like, we dump three million guns into the sea.
Speaker 1: Yep, cool, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's how
Speaker 1: we that's how we handle this. Now that number is
Speaker 1: probably exaggerated, right, Like this is coming from that dude
Speaker 1: who winds up running the secret Police, So I don't
Speaker 1: know that he's a credible source on how many guns
Speaker 1: the US took. But we send in the Marines, We
Speaker 1: take all of the weapons in the countryside, and we
Speaker 1: shove them into the ocean.
Speaker 2: Right, Honestly, it's not our worst plan.
Speaker 1: It's not the worst thing we're going to do here,
Speaker 1: although we are doing it so that we can enforce
Speaker 1: a dictatorship that sends money to us. So we disarm
Speaker 1: the countryside, we send in the Marines, they build all
Speaker 1: these roads so that we can, you know, stop any
Speaker 1: sort of resistance to this new regime we're trying to
Speaker 1: put in place. And you know, this this military force
Speaker 1: we're building, we call it a constabulary because its goal
Speaker 1: is primarily policing, and we don't want it to become
Speaker 1: like another militia like all of the other ones that
Speaker 1: have run the country. So we avoid hiring from the
Speaker 1: groups who had traditionally run the Dominican military, right and
Speaker 1: particularly who had provided officers for the Dominican military, and
Speaker 1: instead we start promoting as officers the absolute dregs of
Speaker 1: Dominican society, poor peasant type people. Now, the Marines are
Speaker 1: always good at finding the absolute dregs of society, That's
Speaker 1: what they do. And one of the guys that they're
Speaker 1: going to pick is like, oh, this dude is like
Speaker 1: exactly who should be running this policing force is Rafael Druhio.
Speaker 1: And to talk about how that happened, I'm going to
Speaker 1: read a quote from the book The Dictator's Seduction by
Speaker 1: Lauren Derby. Widespread resistance to becoming part of the United
Speaker 1: States led force meant that recruiters were forced to enlist
Speaker 1: what a witness described as the worst rascals, thieves, and
Speaker 1: assassins in the country. If the military had previously been
Speaker 1: a millions of social assent for the respectable poor, it
Speaker 1: was now open to the anonymous crowd. Trujillo and the
Speaker 1: other young officers pulled from the ranks of the obscure
Speaker 1: never forgot that the United States was their benefactor. In
Speaker 1: his book, Arturo Espiallet describes how Trujillo and his fellow
Speaker 1: News soldiers pacified the interior with the Marines and the
Speaker 1: impact that it left on them. It may be considered
Speaker 1: a left handed compliment to the Corps, but Trujillo always
Speaker 1: thought of himself as basically a Marine Corps officer and
Speaker 1: damned proud of it. It was typical, for instance, that
Speaker 1: of the forty to fifty decorations conferred upon him during
Speaker 1: his long career, Trujillo was proudest of a faded, threadbare
Speaker 1: medal attesting to his service with the Marines. So that
Speaker 1: is interesting. This guy who's going to become a dictator
Speaker 1: considers himself a United States Marine.
Speaker 2: Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we could talk a little bit about our
Speaker 1: buddy Smedley Butler, the Marine who would become one of
Speaker 1: the most decorated soldiers in US history and later write
Speaker 1: that he had never been anything but a gangster for capitalism.
Speaker 1: This is the period that that's going down in, right Like.
Speaker 1: This is why Smedley feels that way because one of
Speaker 1: the long term results of US occupation is that the
Speaker 1: Marines trained true hero and make him basically a made
Speaker 1: man to enforce this regime that exists to send money
Speaker 1: to US companies, and he is going to be a
Speaker 1: pretty brutal dictator using the things that he's learned from
Speaker 1: the Americans. The US occupation of the Dominican Republicans in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty four and policing authority is handed over to
Speaker 1: the constabulary as at the same time as the Marines leave,
Speaker 1: the United States takes over as the largest foreign exchange
Speaker 1: producer in the country, and they start flooding the Dominican
Speaker 1: Republic with duty free US goods. Now, if you're contact
Speaker 1: with the phrase duty free is in an airport, that
Speaker 1: may sound great, right, you get all the cheap cigars
Speaker 1: and liquor you could want, But this is actually a
Speaker 1: real problem because when you are forcibly making it that
Speaker 1: like your country gets to sell duty free products in
Speaker 1: another country what that means is that US products are
Speaker 1: able to undercut every single national industry. So all of
Speaker 1: the Dominican people's money is flowing back to the United States,
Speaker 1: but local Dominican companies are not, Like the government is
Speaker 1: not drawing taxes on those transactions, and local Dominican companies
Speaker 1: can't make money because they are never going to be
Speaker 1: as cheap as mass produced US products that are being
Speaker 1: sold duty free in the Dominican Republic. So it kind
Speaker 1: of inherently cripples the economy. Like we leave and say,
Speaker 1: by the way, we're making it impossible for you guys
Speaker 1: to ever get on your own feet. Fuck you you
Speaker 1: know USA number one and they were here, Yeah, yes, yes, exactly, Yes.
Speaker 1: This is just you know, this is an this is
Speaker 1: an escalation from controlling like the customs ports. So this
Speaker 1: all necessity that the government take on more debt in
Speaker 1: order to survive, and we all know historically how that
Speaker 1: goes for countries on the island of Hispaniola. Now, the
Speaker 1: interim president of the Dominican Republic had been a guy
Speaker 1: named Horatio Vasquez who adopted Rafael as a pupil and
Speaker 1: put him in charge of the constabulary. And again This
Speaker 1: is supposed to be a policing force, but as soon
Speaker 1: as the Americans leave, Rafael spends his first few years
Speaker 1: running it, turning it from a policing force into a
Speaker 1: proper army. He puts his own picked men in positions
Speaker 1: of command, and in nineteen thirty he's in a situation
Speaker 1: where he feels like he can carry out a coupdettas
Speaker 1: against the president. Now, part of how he does this
Speaker 1: is he makes a deal with Like in many countries
Speaker 1: where the US is set up a leadership, there are rebels,
Speaker 1: right and as soon as the US leaves, these rebels
Speaker 1: start fighting the central government. The rebels in the Dominican
Speaker 1: the most powerful faction is under a guy named Rafael Urina. Now,
Speaker 1: in exchange for putting Urina in power, Truhillo agrees that
Speaker 1: you know, basically true. He agrees, I will stop the
Speaker 1: military from fighting the rebels so that you guys can
Speaker 1: take over the government, and then you have to carry
Speaker 1: out new elections, and I have to be allowed to
Speaker 1: run for president in the new election. So they work
Speaker 1: this out amongst themselves to make it seem like there's
Speaker 1: been a legitimate rebellion against Vasquez and now they're having
Speaker 1: a free election and that Trohillo is going to win it.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be a free election. Right, This
Speaker 1: all works like Gangbusters. The rebels march on the capitol,
Speaker 1: Trujillo doesn't stop them. Vesquez steps down as president, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there's an election and Urina and Trujillo run on a
Speaker 1: joint ticket and Trujillo becomes the president. So you know
Speaker 1: that's how that shit goes. Good? Stuff worked, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does, It does work more or less. Well, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: what followed is the kind of dictator, fake presidential election
Speaker 1: stuff that we're used to on this podcast. Right, he
Speaker 1: is the president, the military threatens to murder or at
Speaker 1: least allow the murder of anyone who runs against him.
Speaker 1: So he gets ninety nine percent of the vote in
Speaker 1: this election. He in fact, gets more votes than there
Speaker 1: are voters in the Dominican Republic, which we as the
Speaker 1: United States, who are basically keeping an eye on everything
Speaker 1: to make sure that the money keeps flowing. Like the
Speaker 1: US ambassador is like, yeah, this is a scam election,
Speaker 1: Like he absolutely has just made himself dictator, and everyone
Speaker 1: in Washington is pretty much like it's fine, Like he's
Speaker 1: basically a marine, right, like we can trust him to
Speaker 1: do the shit that we want him to do.
Speaker 2: Support our veterans.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, he's a vet, you know. So while Raphaeltruhio's
Speaker 1: rise to power is more or less standard strong man
Speaker 1: coup stuff, how he actually performs while in office is
Speaker 1: pretty ingenious and in consolidating power and exercising it, TRUEHEO
Speaker 1: is going to kind of prove himself to be something
Speaker 1: of a visionary when it comes to being a dictator.
Speaker 1: But that's all coming in part two, along with unfortunately
Speaker 1: a genocide cat. You got anything to plug before we
Speaker 1: roll out here?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Go follow me on TikTok, at katamboo and YouTube where
Speaker 2: I do wrong form content. I had a very dumb
Speaker 2: video probably coming out the end of the month or
Speaker 2: next month. So follow me there and then there are
Speaker 2: once again a billion other platforms. Just hook me up,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, find Kataboo on Twitter or not Twitter, well on Twitter,
Speaker 1: but on TikTok and the YouTube's avoid Twitter. It's a
Speaker 1: bad place. Now, They're all bad places. I guess. There's
Speaker 1: not any good places on the internet except for this podcast,
Speaker 1: which you can get ad free by subscribing to cooler
Speaker 1: Zone Media. That's the episode.
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