The Eternal President
Ferguson, James
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....
...At the age of 88, blind and unable to walk unassisted, Balaguer remains an enigma...
...intervention gave Balaguer the opportunity to relaunch his political career...
...While retaining many of the characteristics of the Trujillo period, Balaguer has also presided over the economic and social transformation of the Dominican Republic...
...On both occasions, observers complained of wide-scale irregularities, including vote-buying and intimidation...
...In 1960 he became titular president of the Dominican Republic, in reality a figurehead for the Generalisimo...
...Balaguer blamed "uncontrollable elements" within the military...
...In exile in New York, he formed the right-wing Reformist Party...
...Now, it seems, he has until May, 1996 to fend off mortality and to hold the Dominican Republic in its strange time-warp...
...He was at first a loyal servant of the dictator Rafael Trujillo who ran the country as his private fiefdom from 1930 to 1961...
...When in 1978, economic recession and popular disenchantment 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...
...His style combines paternalism and authoritarianism, and critics accuse him of tolerating enormous levels of corruption among his political and military backers...
...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...
...Subsequent election victories in 1970 and 1974 were helped by the internal discord and strategy of abstention of Bosch's PRD...
...Although by instinct a statist, he has allowed the gradual privatization of the vast state sector which had previously belonged to Trujillo...
...To a large extent, Balaguer is synonymous with the mix of anachronism and modernization which characterizes the Dominican Republic today...
...Given the unswerving loyalty of the Dominican military-aside from the occasional maverick general-to Balaguer, this has always been a puzzling version of events...
...Initially a diplomat in Spain and Colombia, Balaguer was appointed Trujillo's minister of education in 1950, foreign minister in 1953 and vice-president in 1957...
...The Columbus Lighthouse, built at vast expense to commemorate the quincentenary in 1992, was widely viewed as a monument to megalomania, and inspired violent protests among those evicted from the Lighthouse's site...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Where once a handful of old oligarchic families controlled the economy, a dynamic class of new entrepreneurs are involved in agribusinesses and service industries...
...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...
...Power, Dominicans say, is what keeps Balaguer alive...
...In part, he is the classic caudillo, distrusting would-be successors, personally making decisions at all levels, and encouraging a personality cult which portrays him as omniscient and infallible...
...Only strong pressure from the Carter Administration made sure that Balaguer conceded defeat, but not without extracting a Reformist Party Senate majority from Guzmbn...
...If Balaguer's 1986 election comeback was controversial, his victory over Juan Bosch in 1990 was even more so...
...This well-funded election machine allowed him to beat a demoralized Bosch in 1966...
...He has always controlled a disproportionately large presidential budget and has spent much of it on showcase public works...
...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...
...administration...
...The ploy failed, and a combination of popular and military unrest sent Balaguer into exile...
...The collapse of the brief democratic experiment of Juan Bosch, the ensuing civil war, and the 1965 U.S...
...The traditional sugarbased economy has been diversified into tourism, assembly plants, and a range of non-traditional exports...
...The Eternal President The late 1960s and early 1970s were also the period of systematic political violence and terrorism in the Dominican Republic...
...In the course of his extraordinarily 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...
Vol. 28 • November 1994 • No. 3
