Essay: Juan Bosch and Joaquin Ricardo Balaguer

After the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic, the country was in turmoil. People were scrambling for power, and the civil war became even more heated. However, through through the hell that was the Dominican Republic sprang two men. These two men, Juan Bosch and Joaquin Ricardo Balaguer, would be the main politicians and leaders of the country until the 21st century. These two politicians despised each other, but were able to unite in the end. They were the men who shaped the Dominican Republic into the country that it is today.
Juan Bosch was born on June 20, 1909 in La Vega to José and Angelina Gaviño Bosch. The middle-class family was surrounded by poverty, which greatly impacted young Juan to help his fellow Dominicans. In 1928, Bosch went to college in Santo Domingo, where he studied literature. Post-college, Juan became a successful writer with his first book Camino Real, and later becoming a notable author after writing La Mañosa, which had revolutionary ideas. This book was one of many that expressed political ideas that were rare at the time, as Trujillo’s reign as dictator was tightening. Bosch was thrown in jail in 1934 for expressing his unwanted political views. Several months later, Juan Bosch was released. Only two years later, Bosch decided to leave the country in order to escape Trujillo’s grasp. Juan would not return for twenty years, traveling the Americas and living in Cuba for twelve years.
Joaquin Ricardo Balaguer was born in Villa Bisono on September 1, 1907 to a Puerto Rican merchant. Ricardo was a bright child child, publishing a book of poems at age 14 and studying law at Sorbonne in Paris. After becoming a lawyer, the young Balaguer entered politics,  and became the ambassador to several Latin American countries shortly after. During the 1940s and 1950s, Joaquin was part of cabinet of Trujillo, holding many different positions such as vice president in 1957 and figurehead president of the Trujillo dictatorship in 1960. When Trujillo was assassinated in 1961, Joaquin Ricardo Balaguer was forced into hiding in New York and Puerto Rico.
While Balaguer rose to power and lost it, Bosch was living in Cuba, where he founded the Dominican Revolutionary Party and continued to write books and also was an adviser to Cuban president Carlos Prío Socarrás. However, when Fulgencio Batista rose to power in 1952, he ordered the arrest of Juan Bosch for extradition to the Dominican Republic. Bosch fled to Chile, where he continued to write. In 1959 after the a revolution destroyed the Batista regime, Juan returned to Cuba. Unfortunately, Bosch fled to Venezuela a year later after the Cuban Revolution took a course he didn’t like. Bosch continued to write in Venezuela until 1961 when he returned at long last to the Dominican Republic after the assassination of Trujillo.
Having returned to his homeland, Bosch began to build support for his party, the Dominican Revolutionary Party, which promised jobs for the 300,000 unemployed and funding of social services. Bosch ran for president and was elected on December 20, 1962 as the Dominican Republic’s first democratically elected president. However, the president was disliked by the landowners for helping the peasants, the army for putting them on too tight of a leash, the Catholic Church for being too secular, and the US because they feared a leftist such as Bosch would turn the country communist. Only seven months into his presidency, Bosch was overthrown by the military leaders with the help of the US. Again, Juan Bosch had to flee the country to Puerto Rico.
After Juan’s presidency, a military regime took over, which was brought down by a revolutionary group called the “Constitutionalists” in 1965. The Constitutionalists attempted to bring Bosch back to the Dominican Republic, but as president, but the US sent marines to repress the rebellion. Fortunately, in 1966, the very next year, democratic elections were held, and Juan Bosch returned to the Dominican Republic to run. However, another man, who had returned during the civil war just a year earlier, Joaquin Ricardo Balaguer, was also running for president. Balaguer had returned to the Dominican Republic, and began his campaign by forming the Social Christian Revolutionist Party. Joaquin had won the people’s vote early on, while Bosch led a quiet campaign for fear of the military overthrowing him again. Balaguer won the election, and was inaugurated in 1967. For the next 12 years, Bosch and Balaguer were the main contenders for president, but Balaguer won each time. However, the 1970 and 1974 elections were both unfair, as Balaguer was accused of voter fraud in the 1970 election and changed voting rules in 1974 in order to stay in office. This caused outrage amongst Bosch supporters, which led to the boycott of the polls in the 70s.
During Joaquin Ricardo Balaguer’s time as president, he led the country to moderate economic growth, with the peasants gaining more land, worker’s being payed more, and allying closely with the United States. However, at the same time, Balaguer’s administration was accused of human rights abuses and throw political opponents in jail. In 1978, Joaquin Ricardo Balaguer lost the election to Antonio Guzman Fernandez, and he stepped down from office even though the military was willing to refuse the results.
After Juan Bosch and his supporters boycotted the polls, Juan formed a new party, the Party of Dominican Liberation. This party was small at first, but was later the main opposition against Balaguer’s Reformist Party in 1982 where Salvador Jorge Blanco defeated Balaguer. In 1986, Balaguer ran for president and won. During the next four years, he investigated corruption from the previous president and worked to slow down inflation. In 1990, the two rivals, Bosch and Balaguer, faced off for a final time in a race for presidency. While Juan Bosch was definitely the popular vote, Joaquin Balaguer won through alleged voter fraud. Bosch did not run again after this election. Balaguer won the 1994 election and was again accused of voter fraud. Balaguer held new elections two years into his presidency, where he was forced to sit on the sidelines due to his alleged voter fraud of previous elections.
However, this was not the end of the two rival politicians. In 1996, the two main candidates were Leonel Fernández and José Francisco Peña Gómez. Fernández was a friend of Bosch’s, so Bosch wanted Fernández to win. Peña was another rival of Balaguer’s, and Peña had run against Balaguer in the 1994 elections, where Balaguer won through voter fraud. Because of this both Bosch and Balaguer came together to form the National Patriotic Front, in order to make Leonel Fernández president. This alliance symbolized the end of thirty years of rivalry, and showed the amount of influence these two men had on their country.
It seems funny that, in the end, what brought these two men together was a mutual rival. Bosch wanted his friend Fernández to win, and Balaguer wanted to keep Peña from investigating corruption. However, the impact these two men made on their country is so great it still affects the Dominican Republic to this day. They formed the main parties of the country, and will remembered as the founders of the modern Dominican Republic.
Juan Bosch.” World History: The Modern Era. ABC-CLIO, 2016. Web. 28 Feb. 2016.
Joaquin Ricardo Balaguer.” World History: The Modern Era. ABC-CLIO, 2016. Web. 28 Feb. 2016.
Ferguson, James. “Two Caudillos.” James Ferguson,. NACLA Report on the Americas, 6 May 1997. Web. 28 Feb. 2016.