Dominican Republic - Contest for Power, 1865-8
The Spanish left both economic devastation and political chaos in their wake. In the period from 1865 to 1879, there were twenty-one different governments and at least fifty military uprisings. A power struggle began between the conservative, cacique-dominated south and the more liberal Cibao, where the prevalence of medium-sized landholdings contributed to a more egalitarian social structure. The two camps eventually coalesced under the banners of separate political parties. The cibaenos adhered to the National Liberal Party (Partido Nacional Liberal), which became known as the Blue Party (Partido Azul). The southerners rallied to Baez and the Red Party (Partido Rojo).
The conservative Reds effectively employed their numerical superiority in the capital to force the restoration of Baez, who returned triumphantly from exile and assumed the presidency on December 8, 1865. However, he was unable to assert the kind of dictatorial control over the whole nation that he and Santana had once alternately enjoyed because power had been diffused, particularly between the opposing poles of the Cibao and the south.
After a successful uprising that forced Baez to flee the country in May 1866, a triumvirate of cibaeno military leaders, the most prominent ofwhom was Gregorio Luperon, assumed provisional power. General Jose Maria Cabral Luna, who had served briefly as president in 1865, was reelected to the post on September 29, 1866. The baecistas, however, were still a potent force in the republic; they forced Cabral out and reinstalled Baez on May 2, 1868.
Once again, his rule was marked by peculation and efforts to sell or lease portions of the country to foreign interests. These included an intermittent campaign to have the entire country annexed by the United States, which President Ulysses S. Grant also strongly supported. However, the United States Senate rejected the 1869 treaty calling for annexation, giving President Grant his first major legislative defeat. Grant continued efforts to annex Dominican territory until 1873. Baez, in turn, was again overthrown by rebellious Blues in January 1874.
After a period of infighting among the Blues, backing from Luperon helped Ulises Francisco Espaillat Quihones win election as president on March 24, 1876. Espaillat, a political and economic liberal and the first individual who was not a general to reach the presidency, apparently intended to broaden personal freedoms and to set the nation's economy on a firmer footing. He never had the opportunity to do either, however.
Rebellions in the south and east forced Espaillat to resign on December 20, 1876. Ever the opportunist, Baez returned once more to power. The most effective opposition to his rule came from guerrilla forces led by a politically active priest, Fernando Arturo de Merino. In February 1878, the unpopular Baez departed his country for the last time; he died in exile in 1882.
Both Santana and Baez had now passed from the scene. They had helped create a nation where violence prevailed in the quest for power, where economic growth and financial stability fell victim to the seemingly endless political contest, and where foreign interests still perceived parts of the national territory as available to the highest bidder. This divisive, chaotic situation invited the emergence of an able military leader and a shrewd, despotic political leader who would dominate the country over a seventeen-year period.
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