The Dominican Republic

Abstract

The overthrow of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1961 was followed by a period of considerable political instability, with much jockeying for power among different factions. In February 1963, in the first free elections for thirty-eight years, Juan Bosch, leader of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (its policies were in fact reformist rather than revolutionary, with much emphasis on land reform) was overwhelmingly elected president, receiving nearly twice as many votes as his nearest rival. But in September of the same year, after he had been in power for only seven months, he was overthrown by a military coup, led by the leaders of the armed forces. They in turn handed over to a three-man civilian junta, which increasingly came under the domination of Donald Cabral, the Foreign Minister.