Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff and Commies : The U. S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966

by Chester, Eric Thomas

• ISBN13: 9781583670323
• ISBN10: 1583670327
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Monthly Review Pr

Summary

In April 1965, a popular rebellion in the Dominican Republic toppled the remnants of the U.S. backed Trujillo dictatorship setting the stage for the master tinkers of America's Cold War machine. In this groundbreaking study, Eric Thomas Chester carefully reconstructs the events that followed into a thriller of historical sweep, and creates a stunning portrait of how the U.S. government--from President Lyndon Johnson on down--used the Dominican Republic as a tool of its imperial arrogance.Eric Thomas Chester explains how the U.S. intervention was in the tradition of gunboat diplomacy as well as a consequence of Cold War ideology, and the Cuban Revolution. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Haiti in 1934 and the initiation of Roosevelt's so-called "good neighbor policy," the United States had refrained from sending its own troops to intervene in Latin America. The 1965 invasion broke this pattern and reinitiated an era of direct armed intervention in Latin America. The result was that by early May, with more than thirty thousand troops deployed, there was a greater U.S. military presence in the Dominican Republic than in South Vietnam.In this fascinating account, Chester makes extensive use of recently declassified diplomatic and intelligence documents to offer a nuanced and textured study of the workings of covert as well as diplomatic initiatives and provides a thorough analysis of U.S. Cold War foreign policy in the region.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Maps	xi
Prologue The Dominican Crisis: An Overview	1	(11)
Prelude to Revolution	12	(34)
The Uprising Triumphant	46	(25)
Intervention and Quarantine	71	(35)
Applying Pressure	106	(27)
Tightening the Screws	133	(18)
The Bundy Mission: Negotiating an Agreement	151	(19)
The Bundy Mission: Undermining an Agreement	170	(29)
The Bunker Mission	199	(20)
The 1966 Election: Fraud and Intimidation	219	(33)
Rationales for Intervention	252	(20)
Epilogue Inpasse, Integration, and Diaspora	272	(11)
Appendix The 1966 Election: A Detailed Analysis	283	(7)
Notes	290	(42)
Biographical Glossary	332	(9)
Organizational Glossary	341	(3)
Bibliography	344	(4)
Index	348