Antonio Guzman

Silvestre Antonio Guzmán Fernández (La Vega, February 12, 1911 - Santo Domingo, July 4, 1982), better known as Antonio Guzmán, was a Dominican agronomist, businessman and politician, president of the Dominican Republic from 1978 to 1982.

His government was characterized by a strong respect for public liberties, a condition practically non-existent in the Dominican history of the 20th century. Guzmán is considered the architect of the Dominican democratic consecration, when the alternation of political parties in the State was verified for the first time through electoral means.

Early years and business life

He was born on February 12, 1911 in La Vega. He is the son of Jimena Fernández de Castro and Silvestre Guzmán Pérez.

In his hometown he completed his primary, secondary and higher education. Also, he started out in music as a fan of the piccolo. He later carried out his self-taught studies and practical agronomy practices in Florida and California in the United States.

At the age of 17, he became the manager of the Curacao Trading Company in the city of Salcedo, a position he also held in the branches of Moca, La Vega, Barahona, and San Francisco de Macorís. and Santiago.

In 1939 he married Renée Klang Avelino, whose father was French and whose mother was Brazilian, with whom he had two children.

At the age of 31, being a prosperous commercial entrepreneur dedicated to the export of fruits, he was one of the pioneers in large-scale rice production in the northwest region of the Dominican Republic. At the age of 37 he founded Productos Dominicanos C. por A., which brought together several rice factories and exported coffee and cocoa.

Political career

The Constitutional Government of 1963, in recognition of his merits in the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) which he had joined in 1961, appointed him Secretary of State for Agriculture, entering Dominican political life.

In 1964, after the overthrow of Juan Bosch on September 25, 1963, it became part of the two main organizations of the PRD: the National Executive Committee and the Political Commission.

His citizen presence had enormous recognition in the days of 1965, in what was called "The Guzmán formula" through which, as a means of achieving a cessation of the hostilities of the April Revolution of 1965, and reaching free elections, he was offered the Provisional Presidency of the Republic, which he rejected. However, he took part in the mediation commission that culminated in the swearing-in of Héctor García Godoy as provisional president. Since then, political work occupied a prominent place in his life.

In 1974, a coalition of opposition parties called the Santiago Agreement nominated him as a presidential candidate for that year's elections. However, suspicions that Joaquín Balaguer (then president) would use fraud and would not know the results of being adverse to him, caused the Agreement to withdraw from the race.

Presidency

In 1977, the PRD chose him as its candidate for the Presidency, and he was victorious in the May 1978 elections.

With the determined support of the United States embassy, businessmen (a sector that, although a beneficiary of Balaguer's policies, had seen its extension over time as unsustainable) and with the majority vote of the Dominican people, Guzmán took office on August 16, 1978. He immediately made changes to the bureaucratic-military order, took measures against the corruption that had characterized the previous government and moved towards a new order of the Dominican state, eliminating the ghost of military riots and interruption of the democratic order.

A process of "depoliticization" began; of the armed forces and the National Police, which had been converted by Balaguer into instruments of repression, internal struggles and criminal and political intimidation, based on an attachment to the current president and his party, the Reform Party.

Important presidential measures

Before completing 60 days in power, he promulgated the Amnesty Law, which freed hundreds of political prisoners and allowed the return of dozens of political exiles from the previous regime.

It repealed a series of administrative measures that affected the enjoyment of individual freedoms, giving way to the establishment of a democratic environment in the country.

In a speech delivered on January 22, 1979, he outlined his economic policy, which focused on incentives for agricultural development and agroindustry, as the main source of employment in rural areas. He also promoted measures to protect small and medium-sized industries, the limitation of luxury imports, as well as incentives for export activity and an increase in the production of electrical energy.

Death

At dawn on Sunday, July 4, 1982, he committed suicide in the National Palace, with 43 days remaining until the end of his term. He died at the age of 71.