Post-Trujillo Military
After Trujillo was assassinated in 1961, the military, as the nation's most powerful and best-organized interest group, claimed a major role in the political competition that followed. It soon became clear, however, that the factionalism encouraged by Trujillo prevented the military from acting as a unified institution. Instead, elements of the armed services allied with various civilian politicians. After Juan Bosch Gaviho of the center-left won the presidential election in 1962, portions of the military became alarmed over his reforms and his tolerance of leftists and legal communist parties.
In 1963 armed forces officers, led by Elias Wessin y Wessin (a colonel at the time), overthrew Bosch and replaced him with a civilian junta. Another faction of officers calling themselves Constitutionalists favored the return of Bosch. In 1965 this faction overthrew the Chilian 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. 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 of Joaquin 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 faced increasing national economic constraints that forced stringent limits on defense spending. Although force levels and personnel budgets were generally left untouched, aging equipment was not replaced. As a result, as of 1999 equipment in all three services was outmoded, in short supply, and of doubtful operational utility.
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