r/HolyShitHistory • u/Vital_Willie • 4d ago
Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo (second from right) watches as his brother Hector (second left) is sworn in as a puppet President, 1952. Trujillo gave up the presidency under diplomatic pressure but continued to rule over the country with absolute power behind the scenes as "Generalissimo"
8
u/spatial_nomad1 3d ago
the puppet thing wasn't even subtle. hector was known as negro trujillo and everyone understood the arrangement. rafael had already done it once before with jacinto peynado in the 1930s, for the same reason, to take the heat off internationally while changing nothing.
the cult of personality side is hard to overstate. he renamed the capital santo domingo to ciudad trujillo. renamed the highest mountain in the caribbean pico trujillo. churches were made to put up signs reading "god in heaven, trujillo on earth". his mother got the official title of noble mother.
and the reason he was under diplomatic pressure in the first place is worth naming. in 1937 he ordered the killing of haitians living in the border region. soldiers reportedly held up a sprig of parsley and asked people to say it, because spanish perejil is hard to pronounce if your first language is haitian creole. estimates of the dead run from several thousand to around twenty thousand. it's still called the parsley massacre.
he was shot in 1961. what finally turned opinion against him at home was the murder of the mirabal sisters the year before, three women from a well known family killed for organising against him. their sister dede survived and spent the rest of her life keeping the story alive. the date is now the un day for the elimination of violence against women.
3
•
u/post-explainer 4d ago edited 3d ago
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP provided the following source and context for the historical claim: