When Joaquin Balaguer was born on September 1, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, the Marines were occupying Cuba, and the Dominican Republic's Customs Service was under U.S. adminis- tration. In the course of his extra- ordinarily long political career, Balaguer has shown not simply an ability to survive setbacks and crises but also to keep pace with social and economic changes. To a large extent, Balaguer is syn- onymous with the mix of anachronism and modernization which characterizes the Dominican Republic today. He was at first a loyal servant of the dictator Rafael Trujillo who ran the country as his pri- vate fiefdom from 1930 to 1961. Initially a diplomat in Spain and Colombia, Balaguer was appointed Trujillo's minister of education in 1950, foreign minis- ter in 1953 and vice-president in 1957. In 1960 he became titular president of the Dominican Republic, in reality a figurehead for the Generalisimo. With the assassination of Trujillo in 1961, Balaguer attempted to hold on to power, distancing himself from others in Trujillo's clique and adopting a democratic facade. The ploy failed, and a combination of popular and mil- itary unrest sent Balaguer into exile. The collapse of the brief demo- cratic experiment of Juan Bosch, the ensuing civil war, and the 1965 U.S. intervention gave Balaguer the opportunity to relaunch his political career. In exile in New York, he formed the right-wing Reformist Party. This well-funded election machine allowed him to beat a demoral- ized Bosch in 1966. Subsequent election victories in 1970 and 1974 were helped by the internal discord and strategy of absten- tion of Bosch's PRD. The Eternal President The late 1960s and early 1970s were also the period of systemat- ic political violence and terrorism in the Dominican Republic. Between 1966 and 1971, more than 1,000 political activists, nearly all from the PRD, were murdered by a paramilitary force known as La Banda. Balaguer blamed "uncontrollable ele- ments" within the military. Given the unswerving loyalty of the Dominican military-aside from the occasional maverick gener- al-to Balaguer, this has always been a puzzling version of events. When in 1978, economic reces- sion and popular disenchant- ment led to the overwhelming election victory of PRD candidate Antonio GuzmBn, Balaguer came close to giving his blessing to a coup to nullify the result. Only strong pressure from the Carter Administration made sure that Balaguer conceded defeat, but not without extracting a Reformist Party Senate majority from Guzmbn. His two terms out of office enabled Balaguer to rebuild his political base and to incorporate Fernando Alvarez Bogaert's PRSC into his own ranks. If Balaguer's 1986 election comeback was controversial, his victory over Juan Bosch in 1990 was even more so. On both occa- sions, observers complained of wide-scale irregularities, includ- ing vote-buying and intimida- tion. Nevertheless, Balaguer was always able, with the support of the Central Electoral Junta (JCE) and the military, to outmaneuver his rivals and keep his grip on power. At the age of 88, blind and unable to walk unassisted, Balaguer remains an enigma. In part, he is the classic caudillo, dis- trusting would-be successors, personally making decisions at all levels, and encouraging a per- sonality cult which portrays him as omniscient and infallible. His style combines paternalism and authoritarianism, and critics accuse him of tolerating enor- mous levels of corruption among his political and military backers. He has always controlled a dis- proportionately large presiden- tial budget and has spent much of it on showcase public works. The Columbus Lighthouse, built at vast expense to commemorate the quincentenary in 1992, was widely viewed as a monument to megalomania, and inspired vio- lent protests among those evict- ed from the Lighthouse's site. While retaining many of the characteristics of the Trujillo period, Balaguer has also presided over the economic and social transformation of the Dominican Republic. Although by instinct a statist, he has allowed the gradual privatiza- tion of the vast state sector which had previously belonged to Trujillo. The traditional sugar- based economy has been diversi- fied into tourism, assembly plants, and a range of non-tradi- tional exports. Where once a handful of old oligarchic families controlled the economy, a dynamic class of new entrepre- neurs are involved in agribusi- nesses and service industries. Massive rural migration to the cities and a sizable Dominican population in the United States have also changed the country's social composition beyond recognition. Few expected Balaguer to return after his 1978 defeat, fewer expected him to run again in 1990, and almost nobody believed that he would try again in 1994. Power, Dominicans say, is what keeps Balaguer alive. Now, it seems, he has until May, 1996 to fend off mortality and to hold the Dominican Republic in its strange time-warp.
