[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 105 (Monday, July 29, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1420-E1421]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      RECOGNIZING THE LIFE OF THE LATE PRESIDENT JOAQUIN BALAGUER

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, July 26, 2002

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the late President 
of the Dominican Republic, Mr. Joaquin Balaguer.
  President Balaguer passed away on July 14th in the national capital 
of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
  Mr. Balaguer was a long time friend of the United States. He held the 
presidency of the Dominican Republic from 1966 to 1978 and again from 
1986 to 1996.
  Mr. Balaguer was born in Navarette in the Dominican Republic. He is 
the son of a Puerto Rican father of Castilian descent and Dominican 
mother of Spanish blood.
  He wrote books, including volumes of poetry and political science. At 
the age of 14, he wrote a collection of poems called, ``Pagan Psalms.''
  After graduating from law school in Santo Domingo, he became a member 
of the foreign service, where he served in Madrid and Paris in the 
1930s.
  He earned his doctorate of law from the Sorbonne in Paris. He also 
taught law at the University of Santo Domingo before becoming vice 
president in 1957 and president in 1960.
  Mr. Balaguer served under dictator Rafael Trujillo as cabinet member, 
diplomat, vice president and President for over three decades beginning 
in the late 1930s.
  After General Trujillo was assassinated in 1961, Mr. Balaguer was 
thrusted into the leadership of the Dominican Republic. He quickly 
changed the name of the capital from Ciudad Trujillo back to Santo 
Domingo, the city's original name.
  He fled to exile in New York City after riots and political turmoil 
erupted in 1962. While living in New York City, he formed his lasting 
right-wing political party.
  He returned to the Dominican Republic only after U.S. President 
Lyndon B. Johnson sent 20,000 U.S. Marines to the island nation to put 
down a leftist mutiny within the army in April 1965.
  With the support of the U.S., he was elected president in 1966 in one 
of the Dominican Republic's first freely contested elections.
  He established, in just a few years of his election victory, the 
first solid middle class by implementing massive public work projects 
and economic reform, even though he was elected at a time when 60% of 
the nation was unemployed and two-thirds of its population was 
illiterate and its streets and towns were in ruins.
  His first term was viewed as ``pseudo'' dictatorial in that he led 
with a firm grip and used the country's military to rule the country at 
the same time he made weekly visits through the nations small villages, 
visiting residents and passing out medicine to the sick and toys to 
children and listening to the desires of all.
  Mr. Balaguer was defeated in presidential elections in 1978 after 
serving three terms. He remained leader of the political party he 
founded in the 1960's, now called the Social Christian Reform Party, 
and in 1986 won another bid to power.
  He won elections in 1990 and 1994. In 1996, under increasing pressure 
from the U.S. and international bodies due to suspected election 
irregularities, he agreed to resign.
  Mr. Balaguer remained an important figure in the political party he 
created until his death. Some herald him as the most influential 
Dominican.

[From the Washington Post, NewsBank NewsFile Collection, July 15, 2002]

         Joaquin Balaguer Dies at 95, Longtime Dominican Leader

                          (By Richard Pearson)

       Joaquin Balaguer, 95, the authoritative and paternalistic 
     president of the Dominican Republic for more than 20 years 
     between 1961 and 1996, died July 14 in the national capital 
     of Santo Domingo. He had been hospitalized since July 4 for 
     bleeding ulcers. He served briefly as president in the early 
     1960s, then held the office again from 1966 to 1978 and a 
     third time from 1986 to 1996.
       President Balaguer, who has been called one of Latin 
     America's caudillos, hardly projected the image of a 
     strongman. An award-winning poet, he had been a career 
     diplomat and law professor before entering the political 
     arena. He was a little over five feet tall, was lame and 
     nearly deaf, and wore thick glasses before going blind with 
     glaucoma in the 1980s.
       His mentor was the notorious military dictator Rafael 
     Trujillo, who ruled the country with an iron hand from 1930 
     to 1961. The future president held a variety of posts under 
     Trujillo, dealing largely with education, foreign affairs and 
     administration, before being elected vice president on a 
     ticket headed by Trujillo's brother, Hector, in 1956. In 
     1960, the brother stepped down, and President Balaguer took 
     office.
       Real power remained with Rafael Trujillo until his 
     assassination in 1961. After that, President Balaguer began 
     liberalizing the government with such changes as legalizing 
     political activities, promoting health and education 
     improvements and instituting modest land reforms. But without 
     the army backing of Trujillo, President Balaguer was too 
     closely identified with the late dictator's unpopular actions 
     to continue in office.
       He was forced into exile in New York. Juan Bosch, a 
     leftist, became president until overthrown by a military 
     coup. In 1965, Bosch's supporters took to the streets to 
     restore him to power. Chaos seemed to erupt in the nation of 
     8 million people, which shares its Caribbean island with 
     Haiti.
       The United States, fearing that a left-leaning Bosch might 
     help turn his nation into another Cuba, dispatched U.S. 
     Marines to the Dominican Republic, supposedly to protect U.S. 
     lives. Those who had begun protesting U.S. involvement in 
     Vietnam added

[[Page E1421]]

     this action to the list of mistakes made by the Johnson 
     administration.
       The Marines were replaced by an Organization of American 
     States presence, order was restored and President Balaguer 
     returned to his native land. He and his Social Christian 
     Reform Party won the 1966 presidential race, despite charges 
     of fraud, and went on to win two more consecutive terms.
       Newsweek, which characterized President Balaguer as 
     ``slight, ascetic and sad-eyed,'' reported in 1965 that he 
     was ``neither an orator, nor a schemer,'' adding that many 
     Dominicans considered him ``an honest, kindly reformer.''
       President Balaguer lost the 1978 and 1982 presidential 
     races, then was again victorious in 1986. He won reelection 
     in 1996 (defeating Bosch) and in 1994. Two years later, after 
     increasing criticism for vote fraud in the 1994 election, he 
     resigned. He was unsuccessful in a 2000 bid to return to the 
     presidency.
       President Balaguer received mixed marks as head of his 
     country. Soon after he took office the first time, critics 
     were stifled, many going into exile while others were 
     imprisoned or disappeared. Vote fraud and corruption seemed 
     constants in the Dominican Republic, regardless of who was 
     president.
       He instituted large-scale public works, including the 
     enormous 1992 Christopher Columbus Lighthouse. President 
     Balaguer also brought about modest reforms and made a weekly 
     habit of walking through his nation's small villages, 
     visiting residents and passing out toys to children and 
     medicine to the sick and listening to the desires of all.
       Through it all, he managed to largely keep in the good 
     graces of the United States, with the Dominican Republic 
     becoming a huge recipient of U.S. foreign aid.
       President Balaguer, whose only interests were collies and 
     antique cars, never married and had no children. He wrote 
     books, including volumes of poetry and political science. He 
     was fluent in English and French as well as Spanish.
       But politics became his life. He was head of his political 
     party until his death, continuing to broker political deals 
     and to counsel not only his party colleagues but other high 
     figures, including presidents, as well.
       In the 1980s, when foes tried to use his blindness against 
     him during a presidential run, he said, ``I will not be asked 
     to thread needles when in office.''
       Joaquin Balaguer Ricardo was born in the small town of 
     Villa Bisono, the only son of eight children. His father was 
     born in Puerto Rico of Castilian descent. His mother was a 
     Dominican of Spanish blood.
       The future president, who won a poetry award as a teenager, 
     graduated with a degree in philosophy and letters from the 
     Normal School in Santiago and was a 1929 graduate of the 
     University of Santo Domingo law school. He was a state 
     attorney in the land court before entering the foreign 
     service in 1932. He served in Madrid and then in Paris, where 
     he received a doctorate in law and political economy from the 
     University of Paris in 1934.
       In 1936, he was named undersecretary of state for the 
     presidency. In the 1940s, he served as ambassador to Colombia 
     and Venezuela. He entered the cabinet as secretary of 
     education and culture in 1949 and became secretary of foreign 
     affairs in 1954. He also taught law at the University of 
     Santo Domingo before becoming vice president in 1957 and 
     president in 1960.
       He defended the Trujillo years as a time when a strong hand 
     was needed to rule a backward nation not yet ready for 
     democracy.
       Yet in his 1988 autobiography, President Balaguer admitted 
     that his first presidency, when he was the figurehead chief 
     of state for the brutal and bloody Trujillo, was ``the 
     saddest and most humiliating'' time in his political life.
       President Balaguer also had at times deplored the 
     ``unavoidable excesses'' of his own security forces and 
     deplored corruption, though stoutly maintaining that 
     corruption stopped at his door.

     

                          ____________________