History is written by winners. So that this bio of Juan Bosch is full of the "leftish" anti-"populism" that permeates any biography of a Latin American popular leader written by an intellectual of the core countries. While alive, Bosch had to confront American armed invasion. When dead, he has to confront British slandering journalism. Such is life. But at least English speaking cdes. will have an idea of who this man was.
****************************************************************** Juan Bosch Democratic pioneer of the Dominican Republic James Ferguson Guardian Friday November 2, 2001 Juan Bosch, who has died aged 92, was the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic. The struggle for his restoration - he was ousted by a military coup in September 1963 after only seven months in power - led to civil war and an invasion by the United States, and gave him the symbolic stature of a radical at odds with the army, the church and the American embassy. In reality, however, he was a cautious social democrat, who aspired to modernise his country after the 30-year dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo ended in 1961. He will be remembered as a flawed political reformer who missed the opportunity to implement real change, but also as a writer and academic - an archetypal Latin American intellectual. The son of poor immigrant parents, Bosch had little formal education. He chose exile during the Trujillo years and, from 1937-62, made his reputation as a writer and teacher in Costa Rica, Venezuela, Cuba and the US, where he became involved with a network of other exiled Latin American social democrats. While in Havana, in 1939 he founded the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), which was to win the first free elections after Trujillo's assassination; in December 1962, it was elected with a landslide 64% of the vote. An essentially middle-class organisation, the PRD none the less appealed to the Dominican Republic's poor urban population with its modernising programme. Once in office, Bosch's liberal constitution and promise of land reform quickly earned the hatred of the Dominican oligarchy and those who had benefited from the Trujillo regime. Condemned as a communist, he also came under attack from the left of his party. His government, while honest, was considered inept and incapable of undertaking real reform. Poverty was untouched, while land reform proceeded sluggishly. The Kennedy administration in Washington, meanwhile, was wary of Bosch's rhetorical nationalism and his attempts to woo new foreign aid - for instance, when a high-profile trip to six European countries resulted in the announcement that Bosch had received pledges of assistance worth three times the level of promised US support. The White House was also suspicious of the political freedoms Bosch extended to the small but vociferous Dominican Communist party. Land reform, although extremely limited in implementation, was viewed as a threat to US business interests, while the decision to discontinue US training in counter-insurgency and riot-control procedures was not warmly received in Washington. Within six months of taking office, Bosch had succeeded in antagonising almost every important sector in Dominican society, while failing to mobilise those who had voted for him. An inconclusive quarrel with Haiti's President Fran�ois "Papa Doc" Duvalier led Bosch to threaten invasion, a futile gesture which increased hostility among Dominican military circles. The extent of US involvement in Bosch's overthrow has never been fully established, but he always maintained that he was the victim of a CIA destabilisation campaign. After the coup against him, Bosch sacrificed some popular support by remaining in Puerto Rico, while the so-called constitutionalist faction within the Dominican military attempted a counter-coup to restore his presidency. As military divisions spilled over into civil war, thousands of armed PRD supporters fought for his cause in the slums of Santo Domingo. Fearing a fullscale insurrection, President Lyndon Johnson ordered 23,000 US marines into the Dominican Republic in April 1965, a force that openly took the side of the anti-Bosch "loyalists". In the US-controlled elections which followed in 1966, a lacklustre and chastened Bosch lost heavily to his rightwing adversary, Joaqu�n Balaguer. He never won office again. Years of political marginalisation followed, as Balaguer strengthened his grip on the Dominican political system, and Bosch went into self-imposed exile in Spain. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, an estimated 1,000 PRD activists were murdered by a shadowy paramilitary group known as La Banda, ambiguously described by Balaguer as "uncontrollable elements" in the armed forces. Boycotting the 1970 elections, Bosch's party became demoralised and faction-ridden. Bosch's political ideas were, at best, unpredictable. He was, at times, a self-confessed Marxist, but often an anti-communist. In the 1970s, his idiosyncratic social democracy gave way to a concept of "dictatorship with popular support" and, in 1973, he broke with the PRD to form the Partido de la Liberaci�n Dominicana (PLD). The split was, in part, ideological - Bosch had wanted to boycott the 1974 elections and effectively renounce electoralism - and partly personal, since a more moderate faction, led by Jos� Francisco Pe�a G�mez, had successfully challenged his leadership. >From modest beginnings, the new party slowly won support, not least because of its formidable cell-structure organisation. From a mere 1% share of the vote in 1978, the PLD rose to win an official 34% in 1990, with many commentators believing that Bosch was deprived of victory by widespread fraud. By the 1990 election, however, Bosch had jettisoned what remained of his radicalism to become a born-again neo-liberal and champion of privatisation. He stood for the last time in 1994, but was forced into third place by his former PRD lieutenant, the charismatic Pena Gomez. Bosch's long periods in exile allowed him to develop his considerable talents as a writer. His works include a comprehensive history of the Caribbean, a biography of Juan Pablo Duarte, the founder of Dominican independence, and several collections of atmospheric and inventive short stories. This literary output won him a considerable following throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, though his work is largely untranslated into English. To many in his own country, however, Bosch remained a caudillo , or strongman - a charismatic, if mercurial, populist who taunted the so-called tutumpotes (his mocking term for the oligarchy) while retaining an enduring following among the poorest sectors of Dominican society. He is survived by his second wife, Carmen, and four children. � Juan Emilio Bosch Gavi�o, politician and writer, born June 30 1909; died November 1 2001 N�stor Miguel Gorojovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
