U.S. Role in Dominican Republic spurs NACLA founding
By Fred Rosen
In April 1965, President Lyndon Johnson sent some 22,000 U.S. Marines to the Dominican Republic to crush a military and popular uprising that sought to restore the constitutional rule of President Juan Bosch. A social democrat with leftist alliances, Bosch had been elected in December 1962, just a year and a half after assassination had ended the 30-year rule of U.S.-installed dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. The center-left government of Bosch was overthrown by a rightist military coup in September 1963. The Johnson administration, fearful of a Caribbean regime with friendly ties to the Cuban Revolution, had sent an unmistakable message to any independence-minded governments: The Caribbean still belongs to us. The marines, whose presence was officially sanctioned by the Organization of American States (OAS), would occupy the country, “keeping order” until the June 1966 elections between Bosch and Joaquín Balaguer, an old Trujillo crony and favorite of the United States.
In April 1966, two months before the scheduled election, Fred Goff, a young activist working for the San
