Juan Bosch

Juan Emilio Bosch Gaviño (La Vega, June 30, 1909 – Santo Domingo, November 1, 2001) was a short story writer, essayist, novelist, narrator, historian, educator, and Dominican politician. He was elected president of the Dominican Republic in 1962, a position he held for a brief period in 1963. His government was overthrown in a coup almost seven months after assuming the presidency. He is considered one of the most distinguished writers in Latin America, especially in the short story genre.

He was one of the leaders of the Dominican opposition in exile against the regime of Rafael Trujillo for more than 26 years, after having been an official of the dictator. In addition, he was the founder of two of the main Dominican political parties: the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) in 1939 and the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) in 1973.

Early Years

Juan Bosch was born in the city of La Vega on June 30, 1909. Son of Puerto Rican of Spanish descent Ángela Gaviño Costales, (whose father was Galician, born in La Guardia) and José Bosch Subirats, Spanish of origin Catalan, born in Tortosa. He lived the first years of his childhood in a small rural community called Río Verde, where he began his primary studies; He did his secondary studies at the colegio San Sebastián in La Vega, reaching only the third level of the baccalaureate. In 1924 he moved to Santo Domingo, where he worked in various commercial stores. Later in 1929 he traveled to Spain, Venezuela and some Caribbean islands.

He returned to the Dominican Republic in 1931. In 1933, he published Camino Real, his first book of short stories, and later published La mujer. Bosch was the creator and editor of the literary section of the newspaper Listín Diario , where he served as critic and essayist.

In 1944, Bosch formed, along with several prominent writers of the time, the group known as La Cueva.

During the first months of 1935 he was appointed to the General Directorate of Statistics. He organized, under the direction of Mario Fermín Cabral, the National Census of the Republic of that year. In 1936 he published the novel & # 34; La Mañosa & # 34;, about the Dominican civil wars of the XIX century, which was highly valued by critics.

Life in exile

Bosch was imprisoned for his political ideas, being released after several months. In 1938, knowing that the tyrant wanted to buy him a seat in Congress, Bosch managed to leave the country and settled in Puerto Rico.

In 1939, he moved to Cuba, where he directed an edition of the complete works of Eugenio María de Hostos, work that influenced his patriotic and humanist ideals. In July of that year, along with other political exiles, he founded the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano, the body most active against Trujillo outside the Dominican Republic.

Although Bosch sympathized with leftist ideas, he always denied any communist affiliation. He collaborated with the Cuban Revolutionary Party and had an important role in the elaboration of the Constitution that was promulgated in 1940 in Cuba.

In the years between 1940 and 1945, he stood out as one of the most notable writers of short stories in the region and actively worked in the formation of an anti-Trujillista front headed by the Dominican Revolutionary Party.

Bosch was one of the main organizers of the 1947 conspiracy that would depart from Cayo Confites, on the Cuban coast, to overthrow the Trujillo dictatorship. The expedition failed and Bosch had to flee to Venezuela, where he continued his campaign against Trujillo. Some time later he returned to Cuba, at the request of his friends in the Authentic Revolutionary Party, where he played a notorious role in the political life of Havana, being recognized as a promoter of social legislation and author of the speech delivered by President Carlos Prío Socarrás, when the body of José Martí was transferred to Santiago de Cuba.

In 1947, on a visit to Mexico, he was about to be the victim of an attack ordered by Trujillo. This plot was aborted by Joaquín Balaguer, who in the future would become his political archrival. Balaguer, who at that time was serving as ambassador to Mexico, warned the authorities of that country, giving them details of the tyrant's plan.

At the same time, his literary career was on the rise, obtaining important recognitions such as the Hernández Catá Prize in Havana, which was awarded to short stories written by Latin American authors. His stories had a deep social content. Some examples are "La Noche Buena de Encarnación Mendoza", "Luis Pie", "Los Maestros" and "El indio Manuel Sicuri", all of them described by critics as masterpieces of the genre.

When Fulgencio Batista led a coup against Prío Socarrás and assumed the presidency in 1952, Bosch was imprisoned by Batista's forces. After being released, he left Cuba and went to Costa Rica, where he dedicated his time to pedagogical tasks and his activities as a leader of the PRD. Together with the former president of Costa Rica, José Figueres, Juan Bosh created courses in Latin American studies sponsored by the CIA, although the result was the opposite of what the US agency had planned.

In 1959, with the advent of the Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro, there was a strong political, economic and social questioning in the Caribbean countries. Bosch, with accurate instinct, perceived the historical process that was beginning and wrote a letter to Trujillo on February 27, 1961, in which he told the dictator that his political role, in historical terms, had ended in the Dominican Republic..

Presidency

Bosch in his inauguration as president

After 23 years in exile, Juan Bosch returned to his country when Trujillo was assassinated on May 30, 1961. His presence in national political life, as the presidential candidate of the Dominican Revolutionary Party, was perceived as a change for the Dominicans. His direct and simple way of speaking, especially when addressing the lower layers of the rural and urban population, gave him great popular sympathy. Although he was the victim of a dirty campaign by the Church and conservative sectors that accused him of being a communist, in the elections of December 20, 1962, Bosch obtained a complete victory over his main opponent Viriato Fiallo of the National Civic Union.. They were the first free elections after the death of the dictator.

On February 27, 1963, Bosch and Segundo Armando González Tamayo took office as the new President and Vice President of the Dominican Republic, in a ceremony that included the participation of important democratic leaders and personalities, such as Luis Muñoz Marín and José Figueres. Bosch immediately carried out a profound restructuring of the country. On April 6, a new liberal constitution was promulgated that granted rights unknown to Dominicans. Among other things, it consigned labor rights and freedom of association, and took care of traditionally excluded sectors such as pregnant women, illegitimate children, the homeless, children, the family, youth and farmers, among others.

Bosch faced traditionally powerful sectors. His attitude against the latifundio brought him the animosity of the landowning sector. The Catholic Church believed that Bosch was trying to secularize the country. The industrialists were suspicious of the benefits that the new Constitution granted to the working class. The military, who previously enjoyed the freedom to do whatever they wanted, felt that Bosch was subduing them. Furthermore, the United States government was skeptical of the slightest hint of left-wing politics in the Caribbean after Fidel Castro openly declared himself a communist.

Incident with Duvalier

On April 19, 1963, a military conspiracy against François Duvalier, led by Lieutenant François Benoit, was discovered in Haiti. In this failed plot, Sergeant Paulin Montrouis, driver of Duvalier's children, Corporal Morille Mirville, Sergeant Luc Azor and a member of the National Security Volunteer (Tonton Macoute), Richemond Poteau, were murdered.

Though her children were unharmed, Duvalier reacted violently. Haitian police went in search of François Benoit, the main suspect in the attack. The Tonton Macoutes entered his residence, and not finding Benoit, murdered his father, Joseph Benoit, his mother, a visitor, and the three maids.

When the Tonton Macoutes suspected that Benoit was hiding in the Dominican embassy in Port-au-Prince, they surrounded the house of the Dominican ambassador and demanded the surrender of the soldier. After the siege of the Dominican Embassy, Bosch ordered the militarization of the border with Haiti and the Tontons gave up their siege when President Juan Bosch threatened to send the armed forces against them.

In a radio and television address, President Bosch stated: "The Dominican people already know that the embassy and the foreign ministry of our country have been violated by the Haitian police, this action is a slap in the face of the Republic Dominican, an affront that we are not willing to ignore. We have suffered with great patience the insults of the Haitian government, but those insults have to come to an end now. If they do not finish within 24 hours, we will put an end to it with the means that are within our reach. However, as the commanders of the Dominican armed forces expressed little support for an invasion of Haiti, Bosch backed down on his invasion idea and settled for OAS mediation.

Coup d'état

On Wednesday, September 25, 1963, after only seven months in office, Bosch was overthrown in a coup led by Colonel Elías Wessin y Wessin and replaced by a three-man military junta. Bosch returned to exile in Puerto Rico.

Bosch in April 1965

Less than two years later, growing discontent led to another military rebellion on April 24, 1965, demanding the restoration of Bosch. The insurgents were under the command of Colonel Francisco Alberto Caamaño. On April 28, the United States enters the fray sending 42,000 troops into the country.

An interim government was formed and new elections were set for July 1, 1966. Bosch returned to the country and ran as his party's presidential candidate. However, he campaigned somewhat less intensely, fearing for his safety and believing that he would be thrown out of office by the army again if he won. He was defeated by Joaquín Balaguer, who obtained 57% of the votes.

After the events: last years

During the latter half of the 1960s, Bosch moved abroad to Spain, where he remained a prolific writer of essays, both political and historical. He published some of his most important works during this time: Dominican Social Composition, Brief History of the Oligarchy in Santo Domingo, From Christopher Columbus to Fidel Castro, The Caribbean: Imperial Frontier and numerous articles of different types.

In 1970, Bosch intended to reorganize the Dominican Revolutionary Party, turning its members into active militants, scholars of the country's historical and social reality. His project was not accepted by the majority of the PRD members, because the majority of the members leaned towards a more social-democratic direction. Furthermore, given the military repression, and the lack of political equality between the PRD and the Social Christian Reform Party, Bosch abstained from the 1970 elections.

The differences and contradictions between Bosch and an important sector of the PRD, as well as the corruption that had begun to grow within the party, made him leave the organization in 1973, and thus the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) was founded. on December 15 of that same year.

He later ran unsuccessfully for president as a PLD candidate in 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990 and 1994, coming closest to winning in 1990, but there were serious accusations of fraud against Balaguer.

After placing third in the 1994 election, Bosch retired from politics. Already 85 years old and with obvious symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. In 1996 he was led to the virtual consolidation of the "Patriotic Front", an alliance between the PLD and its permanent opponent Balaguer, as part of the latter's plan to defeat the PRD in the upcoming presidential elections in this year.

Personal life

On June 19, 1934, Bosch married Isabel García Aguiar, with whom he had two children, León and Carolina.

During his exile, he remarried on June 30, 1943, with the Cuban Carmen Quidiello, with whom he had two children: Patricio and Bárbara.

Death and legacy

Don Juan, as he is fondly remembered by many, died on November 1, 2001, in Santo Domingo. As former president, he received the corresponding honors at the National Palace, and was buried in his hometown of La Vega.

To this day, he is remembered as a man of principle. Over the years, as his fortunes rose and fell, his political direction swung wildly. He described himself as a "non-communist" and friend of Fidel Castro, and he told an interviewer in 1988 that he had never been a Marxist.

His legacy in politics is more than relevant: his ideals are still valued when referring to good public administration. Many^[who?] believe that the Dominican Republic would have prospered, both economically and politically, without US help and that the Bosch government had been able to hold its own from the demonstrations and covert pressures of the Johnson administration, to carry out all the reforms it proposed.

Professor Bosch's contributions to literature through his short stories, novels, short stories, and essays made him a role model for generations of writers, journalists, and historians. At one point, Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez once said that Bosch had been one of his biggest influences.

Works

Stories

• The knife
• Women (1933)
• Camino Real (1933)
• La Bella Alma de Don Damián (1939)
• Two Water Weights (1941)
• Luis Pie (1942)
• Wonder (1946)
• In a Bohío (1947)
• Callejón Pontón (1948)
• La Guaira Girl (1955)
• Christmas stories (1956)
• Tales Written in Exile (1962)
• More Tales Written in Exile (1962)
• Tales Written Before Exile
• Tales (1983)
• Select Tales (1992)
• The Algarrobo
• Tales More than Complete
• All A Man
• Fragata
• Two friends
• A Child
• The Rio and its Enemy
• A Virtue Man
• The Diffon was alive
• Bad weather
• The Partner
• Captain
• The Last Monsters
• Rosa
• The Night of Incarnation Mendoza
• The Truth
• The Masters
• The indelible Blade
• The blood
• The enemy

Novels

• The Mañosa (1936)
• The Cobarde (1936)
• The bastard (1941)
• The Gold and Peace (1975)

Essays and Articles

• Indians, Historical notes and Legends (1935)
• Women in the Life of Hosts (1938)
• Holy, the Sower (1939)
• Judas Iscariot, Calumniado (1955)
• Sponge Poker in the Caribbean (1955)
• Cuba, Fascinante Island (1955)
• Notes About the Art of Writing Tales (1958)
• Trujillo: Cause of Unexamplested Tyranny (1959)
• Simon Bolivar, Biography for Schools (1960)
• Notes for an Interpretation of Costa Rican History (1962)
• David, Biography of a King (1963)
• Bolivar and the Social War (1964)
• Crisis of the Democracy of America in the Dominican Republic (1964)
• Pentagonism, Substitute of Imperialism (1966)
• Dictatorship with Popular Backup (1969)
• From Christopher Columbus to Fidel Castro (1969)
• Brief history of the oligarchy (1970)
• Dominican Social Composition (1970)
• The Caribbean: Imperial Frontier (1970)
• Three Conferences on Feudalism (1971)
• The Haitian Revolution (1971)
• From Mexico to Kampuchea (1975)
• Guerrillas and Electric Crisis (1975)
• From Concord to Corruption (1976)
• The Napoleon of the Guerrillas (1976)
• Travel to the Antipods (1978)
• The April Revolution (1980)
• Juan Vicente Gómez: Path of Power (1982)
• The War of Restoration (1982)
• Las Clases Sociales en República Dominicana (1982)
• Political Profile of Pedro Santana (1982)
• The Party: Conception, Organization and Development (1983)
• Capitalism, Democracy and National Liberation (1983)
• The Little Bourgeois in the History of the Dominican Republic (1985)
• The fortune of Trujillo (1985)
• Late Capitalism in the Dominican Republic (1986)
• Máximo Gómez: De Monte Cristi a la Gloria, Tres Años de Guerra en Cuba (1987)
• The State: Its Origins and Development (1987)
• Cultural and Literary Texts (1988)
• Dominican Dictators (1988)
• 33 Articles of Political Issues (1988)
• The Role of the Leader (1988)
• Considerations About the Policy: Vocation and Trade (1989)
• The Russian Revolution began in 1905 (1989)
• No All Revolutions Have had Program
• Complete Works I and II (1989)
• The PLD: A New Party in America (1989)
• Economic items I and II (1990)
• The UNCCD: Collection of Social Studies (1990)
• Complete Works III and IV (1990)
• Historical Issues I (1991)
• Brief History of the Arab Peoples (1991)
• Complete Works V, VI and VII (1991)
• Complete Works VIII (1992)
• Complete Works IX (1993)
• Ideology and Practice in Political Activity
• Practice and Strategy
• Opinions about Culture Politics
• Some Concepts About the State: How That Power Plant Works
• Las Luchas Obreras en los Estados Unidos
• In the Dominican Republic Social Democracy is a Political Scam
• Simon Bolivar of the Portent Struggles
• The Death of Trujillo: Unveiled Secret
• Haiti Through His History
• The Capitalist Crisis in the North American Economy
• The Dollars That Benefit Us Valen Every Less Vez

Conferences

• Three Conferences on Inflation.
• Mon Cáceres, the Tiranicida.
• Garcia Godoy and His Work.
• The PRD and the Class Struggle.
• Opinion about Two Novels by Gabriel García Márquez and one by Miguel Otero Silva.
• The Black Panthers: A Case of Political Sociology.
• Data for Sugar History in the Dominican Republic.
• Indispensable Prologue to A Brief History of the Oligarchy.

Acknowledgments and decorations

• In 1943, get the prize Hernández-Catá in Cuba for his story Luis Pie.
• In 1944, Obtains the Hatuey Extraordinary Prizegranted by the Sociedad Colombista Panamericana.
• In 1982, he was decorated by the Cuban government with the Order Felix Varela.
• In 1988, he is decorated by President Fidel Castro with the Order of José Martí. That same year he gets the prize best book of foreign storiesof the FNAC Foundation in Paris, for its book Vers le port d'Origine.
• In 1989, President Joaquín Balaguer imposed on him the decoration of the Order of Merit of Duarte, Sanchez and Mella, to the degree of Gran Cruz Placa de Oro. A year later Bosch returned it.
• In 1990, he won the National Literature Prize, which he shared with his political rival Joaquín Balaguer.
• In 1993, he was researched as Doctor Honoris Causa of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo. That same year it is invested as Doctor Honoris Causa in Letters by the City College, University of New York.
• In 1994, he was researched as a Doctor Honoris Causa in Humanities at the University of Santo Domingo. That same year it is declared by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies of the Dominican Republic Master of National Policy and Glory.
• In 1995, he received the award The Golden Girl. That same year he is invested as Doctor Honoris Causa of the Technological University of Santiago.
• In 1996, he received a plaque of recognition for his contributions to Dominican culture and for his exemplary citizenship, during the Casandra Awards ceremony of that year. In March of the same year the Ambassador of France to the Dominican Republic imposes on him Order of Merit in the grade of Comendador de Artes y Letras.
• In 1997, Vanguardia del Pueblo, organ of the PLD, gave it a plaque of recognition for its political and literary work. That same year a new kind of palm tree is baptized with the name of Coccothrinax Boschiana in his honor.
• In 1998, it is decorated by the French government with the Legion of Honor, to the degree of Grand Officer. In June it is investigated Doctor Honoris Causa in Humanities by universities Cybao Technological Catholic and Pedro Henríquez Ureña.
• In 1999, the senate of the Dominican Republic gave it a scroll that credits it as one of the largest Dominican leaders of the century.XX.. The Dominican Embassy in Quito, Ecuador inaugurates a specialized library with its name. In October the University, the National Library and the Chilean Writers Society pay a tribute for their contribution to Spanish language literature. In December the Latin American Federation of Journalists welcomes the proposal of the Association of Professional Journalists of the Dominican Republic to grant Juan Bosch the José Martí Award for Excellence of Dominican JournalismIn his mention Leading Writer of the Century.

Juan Bosch in the media

• In 2009, Dominican filmmaker René Fortunato filmed a documentary based on the seven months of Bosch's government. Juan Bosch: President of the Imperial Frontier.
• In 2010, René Fortunato publishes the book Revolutionary Democracywhich also deals with the government Juan Bosch.