The Two Caudillos
Ferguson, James
In the end it was their common enemy and perennial nemesis, Jos Francisco Pefia G6mez, who brought Joaquin Balaguer and Juan Bosch together in a final, ironic act of reconciliation. The meeting...
...And to avoid the threat of widespread armed confrontation between their supporters, they have entered into a series of informal agreements dating back to the 1960s, which led to Bosch accepting self-exile in 1966...
...Balaguer was more adept at neu- tralizing would-be successors and coopting rivals...
...Manipulative and unaccountable, he took credit for successes but rarely accepted blame...
...If the newly elected "modernizers" wish to move their country out of its anachronistic political culture, this is the pervasive legacy that they will have to abandon...
...The intense fac- tionalism of Dominican party politics reinforced this megalomania and led to a dramatic series of splits and alliances...
...But while Bosch defined himself squarely in terms of opposition to Trujillo, Balaguer emerged from the wreckage of the dictatorship, able to reassure the country's power brokers-the military, the church, competing economic elites and the United States-that business would continue as usual...
...A cursory read- ing of Balaguer's racist La Isla al Revis, however, reveals his intellectual shallowness...
...For Balaguer, it raised the specter of inquiries into corruption and human rights violations, as well as the abrupt dismantling of the anillo palaciego, the "palace ring" of cronies and support- ers...
...Convinced that running against Balaguer was futile, Bosch boycotted the polls in 1970 and 1974...
...Even by the standards of Dominican politics, in which individual ambition and opportunism have typically outweighed party allegiance, this unholy alliance seemed cynical...
...A generation of Dominicans were alienated or excluded from politics by the Bosch-Balaguer dominance and the cult of the leader...
...They share a similar background...
...But when he finally lost the PRSC candidacy to Peynado, the party itself no longer mattered and he did not even deign to cast his vote...
...It also typified the personalism and cynicism which have run through Dominican politics during the Balaguer-Bosch decades...
...Popular legend has it that despite their history of official antagonism, the two caudillos have always expressed mutual respect and admiration...
...Over-cautious in power, intemperate in opposition, he managed to antagonize radicals and conservatives alike...
...The reverse side of personalismo in both men has been a changeable, unpredictable, repertoire of ideology...
...As Fern ndez trailed Peha G6mez-the real winner of the 1994 election-in the first round, it seemed pos- sible that the two caudilos' shared nightmare, a Peha G4mez presidency, might materialize...
...While Balaguer created an aura of omni- science, mixing authoritarianism with paternalism, Bosch proclaimed his own infallibility...
...For 30 years, Bosch and Balaguer had been locked in a bitter and intractable struggle...
...The final reconciliation of June, 1996 closed an overlong chapter of Dominican history...
...Bosch's weakness was precisely the lack of such skills...
...In 1990, when he was extolling the virtues of privatization and foreign BY JAMES FERGUSON investment, Balaguer skillfully tarnished him with blame for the chaos of the 1960s...
...demanding total allegiance from his party cadres...
...ect, the real diftween the two ere as much tacategic as politi!r's genius lay in defusing opposition, balancing opposing economic and political forces, and using the divide-and-rule principle...
...Balaguer was usually the winner, beginning in 1966 when the United States ensured that he defeat a muted Bosch in post-invasion elections...
...For decades, personalism, clientelism and deal-making eclipsed democratic development...
...That he should ultimately have welcomed Balaguer's support may therefore seem perverse, but he reasoned that only with Balaguer's support could he ensure Fernandez's victory and, above all, keep Pefa Gomez out of the presidential palace...
...Bosch's promise of "starting from scratch" in the aftermath of Trujillo's death may have rallied popular support, but it threatened vested interests and worried an already nervous U.S...
...The 1996 presidential campaign was the first in thtee decades in which both men had been forced to watch as mere observers...
...In the meantime, Balaguer was able to shrug off his image as Trujillo's puppet and forge several complementary identities-the defender of Dominican nationhood, the economic modernizer and the benevolent patriarch who brought water and electricity to grateful villages...
...Both were born into middle-class white families of recent Hispanic migrants, and both have established reputations as literary figures and historians and often operate within a world of bookish gentility...
...State Department...
...Balaguer, er hand, recogimportance of ntry, made a of handing out and improving structure...
...In 1990, having painstakingly built up the PLD, Bosch was again cheated of political power by what had then become his opponent's well-rehearsed process of electoral fraud...
...Balaguer could one day be an exemplary anticommunist, and an advocate of closer ties with Cuba the next...
...He was continually outmaneuvered by Balaguer, and became the peren- nial runner-up...
...Balaguer, in contrast, offered a sort of continuity, distancing himself from the excesses of the trujillata but promising its beneficiaries more of the same...
...He might defend the state sector as the "national patrimony" while simultanec privatization po diction in mixin tough austerity position was fir...
...mation of his Ih there was no disc ence between t he la ft, re jei rat e common claim to personal authority...
...For Bosch, it threatened the triumph of an old adversary, and recalled the bitter struggles of the 1970s for con- trol of the PRD...
...Unceremoniously dumping his own party's candidate, Jacinto Peynado, Balaguer embraced his old enemy in a last and successful bid to frustrate Pehia G6mez...
...Using state resources as if they were his private domain, he oversaw highprofile public works, providing housing, schools and clinics in return for politAlthough Bosch ed a sweeping orm in 1963, litlized...
...Time , conservative ittees voted for some elements elites came to he latter-day more rememearlier pledges alization and ghts and opted Balaguer...
...Even when Bosch had jettisoned any residual radi- calism, Balaguer's propaganda machine was able to paint him as an unstable extremist...
...Both leaders saw their parties as personal vehicles, molded in their image and subservient to their will...
...In this respect, Bosch and Balaguer were both products of the Trujillo dictatorship and its culture of authoritarianism...
...Balaguer was precluded from running as the price paid for his dubious "vic- tory" in 1994, and Bosch was sidelined by age, ill1 health and the rise of his prot8g6, Fernandez...
...And in terms of winning votes-fairly as well as unfairly-Balaguer consistently outplayed Bosch...
...They have much more in common than background and tastes...
...The trademark of the Balaguer- Bosch period was the primacy of the leader, e jefe, and the cult of personality which both men cultivated...
...Many of his traditional support- ers were left demoralized by this rightward trajec- tory...
...When the (then) left-leaning Bosch lost control of the PRD to Pehia G6mez in the 1970s, he simply resigned and formed his own party-the PLD-rather than suffer the indignity of playing a supporting role...
...Both, too, have managed to avoid allegations of personal corruption and thereby have been able to claim the high moral ground of Dominican politics...
...Bosch moved from the social-democratic nationalism of the 1960s, through an idiosyncratic Marxism to the born-again neoliberalism of his last electoral campaign...
...His promise of "social peace" led to the murder of thousands of Bosch supporters in the barrios of Santo Domingo by the paramilitaries of La Banda...
...The meeting of the two veteran caudilos in June, 1996 to launch the so-called National Patriotic Front and ensure the victory of Leonel Fernandez symbolized the end of 30 years of political rivalry...
Vol. 30 • March 1997 • No. 5
