Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff and Commies: The U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966

by Eric Thomas Chester

In April 1965, a popular rebellion in the Dominican Republic toppled the remnants of the U.S. backed Trujillo dictatorship setting the stage for the master tinkers of America's Cold War machine. In this groundbreaking study, Eric Thomas Chester carefully reconstructs the events that followed into a thriller of historical sweep, and creates a stunning portrait of how the U.S. government--from President Lyndon Johnson on down--used the Dominican Republic as a tool of its imperial arrogance.
Eric Thomas Chester explains how the U.S. intervention was in the tradition of gunboat diplomacy as well as a consequence of Cold War ideology, and the Cuban Revolution. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Haiti in 1934 and the initiation of Roosevelt's so-called "good neighbor policy," the United States had refrained from sending its own troops to intervene in Latin America. The 1965 invasion broke this pattern and reinitiated an era of direct armed intervention in Latin America. The result was that by early May, with more than thirty thousand troops deployed, there was a greater U.S. military presence in the Dominican Republic than in South Vietnam.
In this fascinating account, Chester makes extensive use of recently declassified diplomatic and intelligence documents to offer a nuanced and textured study of the workings of covert as well as diplomatic initiatives and provides a thorough analysis of U.S. Cold War foreign policy in the region.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Rhuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating update on the 1965 US invasion. The parallels between the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian uprising and US behavior in Santo Domingo were always obvious. What emerges in this retelling, with access to new sources, is the outright betrayal of social democrat Juan Bosch by those he thought his best North American friends: not only Lyndon Johnson, but former US Ambassador Martin and liberals like Justice Abe Fortas. Bosch spent the rest of his long life in exile, soured on democracy itself. One can understand why after the holy water of "free elections" sanctioned satellite ruler Joaquin Balaguer, installed by US bayonets. Johnson's outright lying as to the real events in the DR should have been a wake-up call as Vietnam's icy grip tightened over his administration. Yet as we know, a generation's worth of lies and interventions later, the self-deluded are the most deceived.