MILITARY AID OR KILLER DEAL: U.S. WEAPONS TRADE AND MILITARY TRAINING IN THE CARIBBEAN, 1790 - 2001 Guest Speaker: Dr. Humberto Garcia Muñiz

TABLE OF DICTATORSHIPS

This is what I call the table of dictatorships. You have Batista in Cuba, Dominican Republic -- Trujillo and Duvalier (Haiti). You see that Batista got most of it. Cuba in reality had the most professional army. If you read Mario Vargas Llosa´s last novel about Trujillo he says that it was the Dominican Republic. That is not true. The Dominican army was corrupt. Nepotism ran rampant. Ramfis, Trujillo´s son was appointed general when he was 5 years old -- that type of thing -- and he was always moving them. In reality, it was not the most professional army, The most professional army was the Cuban army but it faced a guerrilla force and nobody was prepared to fight guerilla warfare. They didn´t know about counterinsurgency.

<< back to lecture excerpt list