Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic: National Security
junta. In the following days, civil war erupted as the armed
forces split into warring camps. The majority within the armed
forces united behind Wessin y Wessin (by this time a general)
and attacked the new government with armored and air support.
The Constitutionalists armed their civilian supporters in
order to defend the capital (see Democratic Struggles and Failures,
ch. 1).
United States intervention in the conflict halted the fighting,
but subsequent efforts to reunify the armed forces were
only partly successful. The agreement to reintegrate those
officers who had supported Bosch was never fully implemented,
and only a few gained readmission. Politically, the outlook
of the officer corps remained right of center after the civil
war.
Although the armed forces continued to be a significant factor,
their influence on national political life steadily declined.
This decline began during the administration ofJoaquin Balaguer
Ricardo (1966-78; 1986-96), who made effective use of
some of the same tactics employed by Trujillo to maintain control
over the military, including the encouragement and
manipulation of factionalism within the officer corps and the
frequent shuffling of top assignments. He also increased the
number of general officers from six in 1966 to forty-eight by
1978. At the same time, Balaguer gave senior officers a stake in
his regime by appointing many to positions in government and
in state-run enterprises. He also extended valuable sugar-growing
concessions for government mills.
The process of reining in the military advanced significantly
during the terms of Balaguer's successors, Silvestre Antonio
Guzman Fernandez (1978-82) and Salvador Jorge Blanco
(1982-86), each of whom made an effort to institutionalize the
armed forces and to remove the powerful group of officers
who had supported Trujillo and Balaguer. The partial success
of their efforts was demonstrated in the period from 1984 to
1985, when the armed forces leadership repeatedly and publicly
supported Jorge Blanco's government in the face of social
unrest provoked by adverse economic conditions. Although
Jorge Blanco had not been the military's preferred candidate
in the 1982 elections, the leadership chose to support him as
constitutional head of state rather than to take power itself.
Military capability in the years after the 1965 civil war
declined to an even greater extent than did the armed forces'
national political role. After that time, each administration
219