When Joaquin Balaguer was
born on September 1, 1906,
Theodore Roosevelt was in the
White House, the Marines were
occupying Cuba, and the
Dominican Republic’s Customs
Service was under U.S. adminis-
tration. In the course of his extra-
ordinarily long political career,
Balaguer has shown not simply
an ability to survive setbacks and
crises but also to keep pace with
social and economic changes. To
a large extent, Balaguer is syn-
onymous with the mix of
anachronism and modernization
which characterizes the
Dominican Republic today.
He was at first a loyal servant
of the dictator Rafael Trujillo
who ran the country as his pri-
vate fiefdom from 1930 to 1961.
Initially a diplomat in Spain and
Colombia, Balaguer was
appointed Trujillo’s minister of
education in 1950, foreign minis-
ter in 1953 and vice-president in
1957. In 1960 he became titular
president of the Dominican
Republic, in reality a figurehead
for the Generalisimo. With the
assassination of Trujillo in 1961,
Balaguer attempted to hold on
to power, distancing himself
from others in Trujillo’s clique
and adopting a democratic
facade. The ploy failed, and a
combination of popular and mil-
itary unrest sent Balaguer into
exile.
The collapse of the brief demo-
cratic experiment of Juan Bosch,
the ensuing civil war, and the
1965 U.S. intervention gave
Balaguer the opportunity to
relaunch his political career. In
exile in New York, he formed the
right-wing Reformist Party. This
well-funded election machine
allowed him to beat a demoral-
ized Bosch in 1966. Subsequent
election victories in 1970 and
1974 were helped by the internal
discord and strategy of absten-
tion of Bosch’s PRD.
The Eternal President
The late 1960s and early 1970s
were also the period of systemat-
ic political violence and terrorism
in the Dominican Republic.
Between 1966 and 1971, more
than 1,000 political activists,
nearly all from the PRD, were
murdered by a paramilitary force
known as La Banda. Balaguer
blamed “uncontrollable ele-
ments” within the military. Given
the unswerving loyalty of the
Dominican military-aside from
the occasional maverick gener-
al-to Balaguer, this has always
been a puzzling version of
events.
When in 1978, economic reces-
sion and popular disenchant-
ment led to the overwhelming
election victory of PRD candidate
Antonio GuzmBn, Balaguer came
close to giving his blessing to a
coup to nullify the result. Only
strong pressure from the Carter
Administration made sure that
Balaguer conceded defeat, but
not without extracting a
Reformist Party Senate majority
from Guzmbn. His two terms out
of office enabled Balaguer to
rebuild his political base and to
incorporate Fernando Alvarez
Bogaert’s PRSC into his own
ranks.
If Balaguer’s 1986 election
comeback was controversial, his
victory over Juan Bosch in 1990
was even more so. On both occa-
sions, observers complained of
wide-scale irregularities, includ-
ing vote-buying and intimida-
tion. Nevertheless, Balaguer was
always able, with the support of
the Central Electoral Junta (JCE)
and the military, to outmaneuver
his rivals and keep his grip on
power.
At the age of 88, blind and
unable to walk unassisted,
Balaguer remains an enigma. In
part, he is the classic caudillo, dis-
trusting would-be successors,
personally making decisions at
all levels, and encouraging a per-
sonality cult which portrays him
as omniscient and infallible. His
style combines paternalism and
authoritarianism, and critics
accuse him of tolerating enor-
mous levels of corruption among
his political and military backers.
He has always controlled a dis-
proportionately large presiden-
tial budget and has spent much
of it on showcase public works.
The Columbus Lighthouse, built
at vast expense to commemorate
the quincentenary in 1992, was
widely viewed as a monument to
megalomania, and inspired vio-
lent protests among those evict-
ed from the Lighthouse’s site.
While retaining many of the
characteristics of the Trujillo
period, Balaguer has also
presided over the economic and
social transformation of the
Dominican Republic. Although
by instinct a statist, he has
allowed the gradual privatiza-
tion of the vast state sector
which had previously belonged
to Trujillo. The traditional sugar-
based economy has been diversi-
fied into tourism, assembly
plants, and a range of non-tradi-
tional exports. Where once a
handful of old oligarchic families
controlled the economy, a
dynamic class of new entrepre-
neurs are involved in agribusi-
nesses and service industries.
Massive rural migration to the
cities and a sizable Dominican
population in the United States
have also changed the country’s
social composition beyond
recognition.
Few expected Balaguer to
return after his 1978 defeat,
fewer expected him to run again
in 1990, and almost nobody
believed that he would try again
in 1994. Power, Dominicans say, is
what keeps Balaguer alive. Now,
it seems, he has until May, 1996
to fend off mortality and to hold
the Dominican Republic in its
strange time-warp.
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