Cuba was not the only troubled island nation in Latin America in the 1960s. Many countries experienced a shift toward the political left and were disrupted by a series of coups and assassinations, one of these nations is the Dominican republic. The Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, assassinated in 1961, was succeeded by Juan Bosch, the first president to be democratically elected in the Dominican Republic in more than 30 years. After a coup toppled Bosch in 1963, his followers, some of whom were Communists, started an uprising to return him to power. Hoping to prevent a communist takeover like the one in Cuba, President Lyndon Johnson of the United States in 1965 sent tens of thousands of marines to support the Dominican Republic’s military regime.
After 1965 the Dominican Republic made much political and economic progress. Throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s, the island was stable. Although the economy remained heavily dependent on the export of sugar, efforts to diversify the economy through the development of light industry and tourism met with some success.
In the 1990s, however, the Dominican Republic faced considerable political and economic upheaval. An energy shortage-the nation’s utilities were able to meet only 50 percent of demand-disrupted business and industry. Both unemployment and inflation soared.
By the mid-1990s, conditions had improved somewhat. Tourism was up, and inflation-once as high as 100 percent annually-was down to 9.5 percent in 1995. However, the unemployment rate was still about 30 percent, and millions of people lived in poverty. Democratic elections held in 1996 proceeded without incident, but the government faced continuing economic problems and
antigovernment unrest.
Some More Stories:
