The chameleon

This is the second consecutive piece on tyranny inspired by the novel 'The Feast of the Goat'  (2000), by the Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa. 

One of the remarkable depictions In 'The Feast of the Goat' [see first post] is the puppet president, Balaguer, portrayed at first as a bureaucrat, an abstemious non-entity who became a real head of state, three times over.  

The title of the book comes from a Dominican merengue (music and dance), Mataron al Chivo (They killed the Goat) written after the generalissimo's murder. A chivo is a young goat, as opposed to a cabra, which is an adult. Trujillo was called the Goat for his sexual appetite and the associations with machismo, considered an admirable trait in that time and place. Trujillo himself liked the nickname:

 RB: Was is clear to you from the first that a woman would have to play a central role? 

 MVL: Well, yes, because, after all, women were brutalized by the machismo of Dominican socie to be called "The Goat," with everything that attitude towards women, which were shared by his opportunities. (Exhilaration & Completeness: An Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, 2007, in Salmagundi, No. 155/156)

Goat though was also a derogatory term used by his opponents instead of the official Generalissimo, El Benefactor de la Patria (Benefactor of the Country) and the more usual, informal El Jefe (the boss).

If Trujillo was the Goat, Balaguer was the Chameleon.

The book does not refer to Balaguer's darker side, being almost at pains to paint him as moderate, clever, almost ascetic. Yet for someone who served in Trujillo’s government for so long, it is hardly surprising when Listín Diario, one of the Dominican Republic’s main papers, and its oldest, reported in 2013 that there were 11,000 victims of torture, murder, disappearances and more during the middle term alone (1966-78) of Balaguer’s time in the presidential office. 

Balaguer was fiendishly clever and a consummate diplomat, some would say hypocrite.  He had to be fickle to survive such thuggery and changes of regime.  

His mutability was copied by some of his more astute colleagues, like the fictional “Constitutional Sot”, Trujillo’s legal advisor and propagandist with a keen intellect and a nose for a change in the wind:

"Permítame congratularlo, señor presidente, exclamó, accionando como trepado en la tribuna. Siempre pensé que el régimen debía abrirse a los nuevos tiempos. Desparecido el Jefe, nadie mejor que usted para capear el temporal y conducir la nave dominicana hasta el puerto de la democracia. Cuente conmigo como su colaborador más leal y dedicado."

“‘Allow me to congratulate you, Mr. President’, he exclaimed, gesturing as if he were on a speaker's platform. ‘I've always believed that the regime ought to open up to modern times. With the Chief gone, no one better than you to weather the storm and steer the Dominican ship of state into the port of democracy. You can count on me as your most loyal and dedicated collaborator.’”

Vargas Llosa had three conversations with Balaguer:

 ''He was so clever to evade difficult questions. He was -- how do you say it? -- an anguila, an eel. I said to him: 'Dr. Balaguer, you are a cultivated man. How could you serve a gangster with such loyalty and competence for 31 years?' He answered that he wanted to be a politician and could only do so in the Dominican Republic by working for Trujillo, but vowed not to participate in sexual orgies with Trujillo and not to steal one dollar. Proudly he said he kept his vow.” New York Times

The capricious mob

It wasn’t just Balaguer who was fickle and hypocritical, although these seem to be considered assets in a politician. When Trujillo was killed, great masses of the public came to pay homage to the man who had terrorised and murdered them: 

"La multitudinaria cola de miles y miles de dominicanos de todas las edades, profesiones, razas, y clases sociales, esperando horas de horas bajo un sol inclemente para subir las escalinatas de palacio, y en medio de exclamaciones histéricas de dolor, desmayos, alaridos, ofendas a las luases del vudu, rendir su último homenaje al Jefe, al Hombre, al Benefactor, al Generalísimo, al Padre."

“The line of countless thousands of Dominicans of all ages, professions, races, and social classes, waiting hours on end, under a merciless sun, to climb the stairs of the palace and, with hysterical exclamations of grief, with fainting and screaming, an offering to the loas of Voodoo to pay their final homage to the chief, the man, the benefactor, the generalissimo, the father.”

Six months later the tide of public opinion turned. 

Depending on the context and their own implicit guilt, the mob too will bend with their leader in a symbiotic movement, or turn against. When the British public turned against Boris Johnson and his government, they were angry at the arrogance of the politicians’ failing to follow the COVID rules they themselves had set while people whose relatives were dying alone did follow them.  

But in the case of the Dominican Republic, many people had supported or felt forced to support the dictatorship, because their jobs or lives or those of their family depended on it. So when, finally they were led into enlightenment, and when, more particularly, the dangers of Trujillo’s avenging son and uncles and their control of the army was no more, there was a collective turning against the former leader, a wave which Balaguer readily caught or rather, created.

"Al día siguiente de la partida de los Trujillo, se dio una amnistía política. Comenzaron a abrirse las cárceles. Balaguer anunció una comisión para investigar la verdad sobre lo ocurrido con los <ajusticiadores del tirano>. Las radios, diarios y la televisión dejaron desde ese día de llamarlos asesinos; de ajusticiadores, su nuevo apelativo. Pasarían pronto a ser llamados héroes. Y no mucho después, calles, plazas y avenidas de todo el país empezarían a ser rebautizadas con sus nombres."

“The day after the Trujillo brothers left the country, a political amnesty was declared. The jails began to open. Balaguer announced a commission to investigate what had happened to ‘the executioners of the tyrant’. From that day on, radio, television, and the newspapers stopped calling them assassins; executioners, their new designation, would soon become heroes, and not long after that, streets, squares, and avenues all over the country would begin to be renamed for them.”

Trujillo’s killers were hunted down, denounced, tortured, murdered.  Two of them survived in hiding for six months.  And yet suddenly they became heroes to the same populace  who had queued and wailed for hours over their previous leader's assassination.  One of those 'executioners' went on to lead the country. 

Balaguer the dealmaker

Balaguer was able to steer the country towards democracy even while Ramfis, Trujillo’s son, was hunting down and torturing the perpetrators. Balaguer couldn't get rid of the sons and uncles because they were too powerful.  To do otherwise was to risk his own death and a coup. Instead, he gradually evolved what seems to have been a deal with Ramfis: you do your thing [“get revenge”], I’ll do mine [democracy] on the perhaps initially unspoken and gradually crystallising understanding, that once all Trujillo’s executioners had been killed, that would be the end of Ramfis & Co in the Dominican Republic.  Thus Balaguer arranges the exit of the Trujillo family by a combination of appealing to their greed and letting Ramfis execute revenge while reasoning with the older son’s diabolical intelligence towards a pragmatic solution.