11/10/14
Beth Counihan
Life in the Dominican Republic During Trujillo ‘s Era
My grandmother play one of the must important roles in my life. She have been with me since the first day of my life when I was born. She is a mother of 5 children, my 3 ankles, my aunt and my mother. Through her life she have always to put on us all the good values of our culture. She have been a strong mother who worked all her life to give her 5 children a better life than what she had. While an interview I did with her, she spoke to me about her mother, my great grandmother who died 8 years ago at age of 102 years old. She told me a little bit of her lives as children, they were 15 brothers and sister and always lived together till each one of them got marry and move to their own lives. Today there is only 7 of the left. While in this interview I asked my grandmother about the government during her childhood, she spoke to me about Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, a dictator who controlled The Dominican Republic for about 31 years. She told me how cruel he was and how strict everything was during that time “ Nuestras vidas eran como un infierno” (life was like hell), she described how this man always got what e wanted to get not matter what or who it was, “fue el tiempo mas duro que vivimos en Rep Dom nadie tenia control de nada solo el, “el chivo” ” ( this was the hardest time we lived in the Dom Rep nobody had control of anything but him, “The goat”).
Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was born in October 21, 1891 – May 30, 1961. Trujillo “El jefe” (The boss) was a Dominican politician and soldier who ruled the Dominican Republic from February 1930 until his assassination in May 1961. He officially served as president from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952, ruling for the rest of the time as an unelected military strongman under figurehead presidents. His 31 years in power, to Dominicans known as the Trujillo Era (la era de Trujillo) is considered one