Rafael Trujillo

Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina (truːˈhiːjoʊ , rafaˈel leˈoniðas tɾuˈxiʝo moˈlina; 24 October 1891 – 30 May 1961), nicknamed El Jefe (el ˈxefe, "The Chief" or "The Boss"), was a Dominican dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic from August 1930 until his assassination in May 1961. He served as president from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952, ruling for the rest of the time as an unelected military strongman under figurehead presidents. His rule of 31 years, known to Dominicans as the Trujillo Era (El Trujillato or La Era de Trujillo), is considered one of the bloodiest and most corrupt regimes in the Western hemisphere, and centered around a personality cult of the ruling family. Trujillo's security forces, including the infamous SIM, were responsible for perhaps as many as 50,000 murders, including between 12,000 and 30,000 Haitians in the infamous Parsley massacre in 1937, which continues to affect Dominican-Haitian relations to this day. During his long rule, the Trujillo government's extensive use of state terrorism was prolific even beyond national borders, including the attempted assassination of Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt in 1960, the abduction and disappearance in New York City of the Basque-Dominican exile Jesús Galíndez in 1956, and the murder of Spanish writer José Almoina in Mexico, also in 1960. These acts, particularly the presumed murder of Galindez, a naturalized US citizen, the attempted murder of Betancourt, a staunch critic of Trujillo, and the murder of the Mirabal sisters, who were among his most notable opponents, in 1960, eroded relations between the Dominican Republic and the international community and ushered in OAS sanctions and economic and military assistance to Dominican opposition forces. After this momentous year, large segments of the Dominican establishment, including the military, turned against him. On 30 May 1961, he was assassinated by a group of conspirators led by the Dominican general Antonio Imbert Barrera.