Joaquín Balaguer
Joaquín Balaguer was president of the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years in three stretches over four decades, first as the puppet Trujillo installed in 1960 and who was still in the palace when the dictator was shot in 1961, then for the twelve years from 1966 that followed the American intervention, which the Dominicans call the twelve years and remember for the three thousand dead of the paramilitary Banda Colora and for the roads and the concrete, and finally from 1986 to 1996, blind and past eighty, elected three times in votes that were each less honest than the last until the powers made him cut the last term to two years. He was a poet and a historian who never married, lived with his sisters, and wrote a book blaming the country's troubles on the Haitians. He was born in Villa Bisono in 1906, took a doctorate in law in Paris, and served Trujillo from 1930 as a diplomat, a minister and the writer of his speeches. Trujillo made him vice-president in 1957 and president in August 1960 as the civilian face for the sanctions the OAS had imposed. After the assassination of May 1961 he tried to be the transition, loosened the police state and was driven out by the crowds in January 1962, and spent four years in New York. When the constitutional revolt of April 1965 to restore Juan Bosch brought in the Marines, Washington wanted a candidate against Bosch for the election of June 1966 and Balaguer, with the army, the church and the American embassy behind him and the country under occupation, won it by fifty-seven per cent to thirty-nine. The twelve years were built on sugar prices and American loans, on the murder of the left by the Banda, on public works in every town with his name on the plaque, and on elections in 1970 and 1974 that the opposition boycotted. He lost in 1978 to Antonio Guzman and the army stopped the count until Carter's government told it not to. He came back in 1986 at seventy-nine, built the Columbus Lighthouse for the five hundredth anniversary while the capital had blackouts, was reelected in 1990 by twenty thousand disputed votes over Bosch, and in 1994 by a margin the observers found had been manufactured against Pena Gomez, after which he agreed to a two-year term and no reelection. He chose the winner of 1996 by endorsing Leonel Fernandez against Pena Gomez, ran again in 2000 at ninety-three and came third, and died in Santo Domingo in July 2002. The crowds at the funeral were the largest since Trujillo's.
- Lived: 1906 CE – 2002 CE
- Nationality: Dominican
- Roles: president, politician, writer
