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This thread is dedicated to all of the more embarrassing lunatics that Western democracies have found expedient to install/support at some time or other. Please feel free to bring your favourites out so that we can make an informed decision as to which one was the most crap.
My first selection is going to be Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina (1891-1961) who ruled the Dominican republic from 1930 to his death.
A petty criminal in his youth, he became involved in more organised crime as a partisan conducting robberies in support of the future president Horacio Vasquez. After the American intervention in the Domican Republic, Trujillo was considered ideal material for their newly-created National Guard, and he was installed as one of the first lieutenants, rising swiftly under their patronage. By the time US troops left in 1924, Trujillo was Chief of the National Police.
Supported by the US legation, a military-civilian movement was organized in Santiago to overthrow President Vásquez's government, under Rafael Trujillo, then Chief of the Army and Brigadier General, as the military power behind the coup. Elected as president in 1930, Trujillo embarked on a campaign of tyranny, typified by the murder of Virgilio Martinez Reyna and his wife. Martinez Reyna, a prominent supporter of the former Vice-president José Dolores Alfonseca, had advised Alfonseca to get rid of Trujillo when he was gaining power. A group of Trujillo's assassins arrived at his house on June 1st, 1930, and after shooting him butchered his body with machetes. They also shot dead his wife, who was heavily pregnant at the time- leaving her to bleed to death with two shots to the belly.
He pursued an official campaign of persecution against Haitians, consisting of racist propaganda and violence, culminating in a massacre of around 15,000 in 1937. If that troubled the US, they were reassured by his support during WW2 coupled with his rabid opposition of communism (farmers asking for pay rises tended to be branded commies and shot on the spot). Alhough he has been labelled a fascist, he doesn't appear to have had any real ideological leanings other than being a puffed-up gangster who built a ludicrous personality cult around himself. As well as a multitude of statues and busts, he commanded signboards to be put in churches that read "God in the sky, Trujillo in the Earth." His daughter Angelita was designated "Queen" of the "International Fair of Peace and Fraternity of the World" in 1955, while his barely-literate wife was declared a writer and philosopher.
In later years, Trujillo became increasingly paranoid and his regime became more isolated. This isolation compounded the dictator's paranoia, causing him to commit atrocities such as the kidnap and murder of the Spaniard Jesús de Galíndez, a professor in the Columbia University in New York. The final straw was his attempt to assassinate Venezuela's president Rómulo Betancourt, which lost his US support. Trujillo was gunned down by assassins in 1961, and rumours persist that the CIA may have been involved to some extent, in the hope of bringing in a less overtly deranged regime to do business with.
So what are your favourites?
My first selection is going to be Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina (1891-1961) who ruled the Dominican republic from 1930 to his death.
A petty criminal in his youth, he became involved in more organised crime as a partisan conducting robberies in support of the future president Horacio Vasquez. After the American intervention in the Domican Republic, Trujillo was considered ideal material for their newly-created National Guard, and he was installed as one of the first lieutenants, rising swiftly under their patronage. By the time US troops left in 1924, Trujillo was Chief of the National Police.
Supported by the US legation, a military-civilian movement was organized in Santiago to overthrow President Vásquez's government, under Rafael Trujillo, then Chief of the Army and Brigadier General, as the military power behind the coup. Elected as president in 1930, Trujillo embarked on a campaign of tyranny, typified by the murder of Virgilio Martinez Reyna and his wife. Martinez Reyna, a prominent supporter of the former Vice-president José Dolores Alfonseca, had advised Alfonseca to get rid of Trujillo when he was gaining power. A group of Trujillo's assassins arrived at his house on June 1st, 1930, and after shooting him butchered his body with machetes. They also shot dead his wife, who was heavily pregnant at the time- leaving her to bleed to death with two shots to the belly.
He pursued an official campaign of persecution against Haitians, consisting of racist propaganda and violence, culminating in a massacre of around 15,000 in 1937. If that troubled the US, they were reassured by his support during WW2 coupled with his rabid opposition of communism (farmers asking for pay rises tended to be branded commies and shot on the spot). Alhough he has been labelled a fascist, he doesn't appear to have had any real ideological leanings other than being a puffed-up gangster who built a ludicrous personality cult around himself. As well as a multitude of statues and busts, he commanded signboards to be put in churches that read "God in the sky, Trujillo in the Earth." His daughter Angelita was designated "Queen" of the "International Fair of Peace and Fraternity of the World" in 1955, while his barely-literate wife was declared a writer and philosopher.
In later years, Trujillo became increasingly paranoid and his regime became more isolated. This isolation compounded the dictator's paranoia, causing him to commit atrocities such as the kidnap and murder of the Spaniard Jesús de Galíndez, a professor in the Columbia University in New York. The final straw was his attempt to assassinate Venezuela's president Rómulo Betancourt, which lost his US support. Trujillo was gunned down by assassins in 1961, and rumours persist that the CIA may have been involved to some extent, in the hope of bringing in a less overtly deranged regime to do business with.
So what are your favourites?
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