artis commented on dienasgramata's post:

[..] In the case of Trujillo, the foreign impact on his demise (both personal and political) was even more direct and dramatic. In fact, Howard Wiarda, probably the leading North American student of the Trujillo dictatorship, adjudges the pressures from the international environment to have been largely responsible for actions by the government that triggered (or at least greatly intensified) the forces that eventuated in the assassination of Trujillo in 1961 (uzsvars mans). Thus in the wake of diplomatic and economic sanctions imposed on the Dominican Republic in 1960 by the Organization of American States for aggressive acts against Venezuela (i.e., the attempted assassination of President Romulo Betancourt) Trujillo began to spend lavishly for arms, in turn imposing heavy taxes on many of those who had been his chief supporters. Moreover, according to Wiarda, "the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assisted in bringing together the conspirators and, in later stages, may even have provided encouragement and even arms to the assassination [of Trujillo].²⁸

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²⁸ Wiarda (1968: 171). The exact U.S. role in the assassination plot is unclear; thus there is some indication that the U.S. tried to abort the conspiracy at the last moment (see Diedrich, 1978). However, there still seems little question that the United States had withdrawn its imprimatur from Trujillo and that its actions played a major role in effecting his downfall. The primary U.S. motive seems to have been the desire to avoid "another Cuba" in the wake of reaction to a repressive dictatorship. Too, Venezuela was insistent on action against Trujillo if it was to join a united American front against Castro.

The Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes 
Author(s): Robert H. Dix 
Source: The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 4, (Dec., 1982), pp. 554-573 
Published by: University of Utah on behalf of the Western Political Science Association 
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/447341 
Accessed: 24/05/2008 08:34
Dokumenta lpp.: 15