The Military After Heureaux
After Heureaux was assassinated in 1899, political factions again contested for power and for access to the national treasury. By 1904 the economy was in shambles, and foreign governments were threatening to use force to collect defaulted loans. Citing the need to avert European intervention, the United States assumed control of Dominican customs receipts in 1905. Amid continuing disorder, a force of 750 United States Marines landed in 1912, and in 1916 they were authorized by President Woodrow Wilson to take full control of the Dominican government.
The marines disbanded the regional militias and ruled the nation directly for eight years, acting as police in cities and in rural areas. As part of its effort to build effective institutions of government in the Dominican Republic, the United States formed a new Dominican Constabulary Guard of about 2,000 officers and men to replace the old national army. Up to this time, both the civilian and the military elites had been drawn from the same wealthy landowning class. Intense resentment among the elites against the United States presence, however, made it impossible to find recruits for the new constabulary among the landowning class. The ranks became filled by the lower strata of Dominican society and, as a result, the new force had neither ties nor debts to the traditional elite.
The most notable representative of the new military leadership was Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, who entered the Dominican Constabulary Guard in 1919 as a second lieutenant. By curtailing the power of regional caudillos, the constabulary gave the country a sense of political unity and provided the structure for the emergence of a new elite that would eventually control political life.
In 1924, after the Dominican Republic had adopted a new constitution and had elected a civilian president, the United States forces withdrew. The same year, the constabulary was renamed the Dominican National Police, a somewhat misleading title for what had become more a military entity than a law enforcement organization. By that time, Trujillo had risen to the rank of major and had assumed one of the nation's two field commands. He had also emerged as one of the most influential voices within the force, increasingly able to mold its development to suit his personal ambitions. In 1928 when the National Police was renamed the National Army (Ejercito Nacional), Trujillo became a lieutenant colonel and army chief of staff. In this role, Trujillo was already the most powerful individual in the nation even before his election to the presidency in 1930.
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