Customer Reviews

Trujillo: The Death of the Dictator

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As you'll know if you've been to Santo Domingo, Robert Crassweller's "Trujillo" has long been the best-known biography of the dead Dominican dictator, perhaps owing partly to its omnipresence in the island's hotel gift shops. But "Death of the Goat" by Bernard Diederich is in my opinion the best and most readable non-fiction work through which to explore Trujillo and his bloody regime.

"Death of the Goat" has as its focal point the assasination of Rafael Trujillo, that is, the end of a 30-year-long story: the preparations, the backgrounds of the assasins, the frantic attempts to hide once the deed was done. But while focusing on the deed Diederich does an outstanding job of explaining how things got to that point, and does so less with the formality of a historian than with the incisiveness of an investigative reporter. This book is especially valuable for the light it sheds on the six months after Trujillo's assasination. Far from bringing about an immediate collapse to the regime, the assasination ushered in a six-month reign of terror during which Trujillo's family, led by the bloodthirsty Ramfis, exacted horrifyingly gruesome revenge on anyone they believed to have been involved in the plot. The torture visited on men such as father and son Miguel Angel Báez and Miguel Angel Báez Diaz is painful to read about even today and definitely not for those with weak stomachs. The curtain did not really fall on the "Era of Trujillo" until his sons executed their last captives at Trujillo's hacienda in November 1961 and then fled the country with their father's body and a hefty chunk of their nation's wealth.

The insightful and shocking look Diederich provides at the period after the assasination is essential reading for anyone seeking knowledge of the modern Dominican Republic. Perhaps most unbelievable of all is the fact that Joaquín Balaguer, one of Trujillo's rubber-stamp "Presidentes", could through his silence collaborate with such atrocities and yet still be elected president time and time again, most recently in 1994. Also hard to comprehend is how one of Balaguer's political allies could be Donald Reid Cabral, whose brother Robert committed suicide after the plot rather than be taken alive by the remaining Trujilloites whom Balaguer was involved with. In Dominican politics, truth really IS stranger than fiction. Diederich shows us why.

My parents are from the Dominican Republic and all during my childhood I heard my father tell stories about the infamous dictator known as Trujillo. While reading this book and asking my parents questions about certain details, I can say that the author truly did describe the horrors lived during those thirty years while Trujillo governed the country. I enjoyed the book very much and would recommend it highly.

Ever since I can remember my grandmother has told me stories of my family's history much of it proud some of it shameful. But until now I had not really read a book that truly captured my mind and took me to the place and time where it all happened. I can honestly say that the accounts of Trujillo's terror are painfully true. After I read this book I lent it to my abuela who was happy that people could read about her family and her country's struggle for a type of freedom that we here in the United States take for granted. I recommend this book to all who would like to know more about the history of the Dominican republic.

THis is a great read. Popular history. A great book about an extraordinary act of heroism in which a small band of men killed a brutal dictator.

As one of the previous reviewers describe, read Crassweller's book about Trujillo to really get a good picture of how awful this Dominican dictator was to his people. For those interested in the assasination of the dictator, Diederich's book describes in minute detail of how the murder took place. Crassweller's book leaves much of this out. Trujillo was as bad to his people as Saddam is to the Iraqi people.
One good point of this book is the reader's knowledge that Diederich was there at the time in the country. This is no author piecing something together from written sources, but a news correspondent covering the Dominican Republic during the time of the incident. The book was very readable.

Fascinating!!! Very well written. A must read for all.