Juan Bosch
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Juan Emilio Bosch y Gaviño (30 June 1909, La Vega – 1 November 2001, Santo Domingo) was a politician, a writer, and an educator, the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic after the assassination of dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in 1961. He founded the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) in 1939 and the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) in 1973. He was a well-known writer, mostly producing short stories and tales, several of whose works have been published in other languages.
Born to a Puerto Rican mother and a Catalan father [1] in the town of La Vega, Dominican Republic, he spent most of his early years exiled in Cuba beginning in 1937 where he wrote many books that politically attacked the brutal regime of Rafael Trujillo. Bosch returned following Trujillo's assassination in 1961 and was elected as the 41st president on December 20, 1962 running as the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) candidate. He took office in February 27, 1963.
Conservative military officers – along with the Policía Nacional (Police) – still loyal to the wealthy oligarchy left by Trujillo and opposed to Bosch's supposed socialist policies, launched a successful coup d'état seven months later (September 25, 1963). The military-imposed government was a Triumvirate conformed by Emilio de los Santos, Ramón Tapia Espinal and Manuel Tavares Espaillat.
In 1965, perredeistas (pro-Bosch PRD members) who referred to themselves as Constitutionalists overthrew the Donald Reid Cabral government and installed Rafael Molina Ureña as provisional president. Both civilians and junior military officers took part in the revolt. However, their actions provoked a counter-response from the dominant conservative wing of the military, who called themselves Loyalists, and a civil war broke out. On April 25, 1965, the Loyalists launched a failed assault against the Government using tanks and the air force offensively against the new government, but the Constitutionalists remained in power.
On April 28, the United States intervened in the civil war and dispatched 42,420 troops to the island in Operation Powerpack. Just as Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deñó (the leader of the Constitutionalists) said, "war would be already over if the U.S. had not intervened." U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson justified the invasion based on his belief that the PRD was filled with communists. An interim government was imposed, and elections were held on July 1, 1966 that saw Bosch defeated by Joaquín Balaguer of the Reformist Party (now PRSC), who garnered 57% of the vote. Balaguer's candidacy was bolstered by fear of resurgent violence should Bosch win, as well as support from the powerful remains of the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (of which Balaguer was a lifelong supporter), conservative sectors including peasants, religious women, and businessmen.
As a rival of Joaquín Balaguer, Bosch remained an important figure in Dominican politics, later forming his own party Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) in 1973. He ran unsuccessfully for president as the PLD candidate in 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, and 1994. The stigma left by Johnson and his U.S. intervention forces, which invaded on the grounds that he was a communist", endured for the rest of his political life, although it should be noted that the fiscal policies pursued during his presidency can best be described as neo-liberal and even anti-communist. Indeed, Communist movements were banned in the new democracy.
To this day he remains a liberal and anti-imperialist icon in the Dominican Republic, where both the PRD and PLD claim to be the heirs to his ideology and vision.
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| Preceded by Rafael Filiberto Bonnelly |
President of the Dominican Republic February 1963 – September 1963 |
Succeeded by Military Triumvirate |
