Becoming the Dictator’s Agents: Dominican Counterintelligence in Mexico City and the Spanish Exiles’ Sabotage of the 1949 Luperón Expedition

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article reveals how prominent Spanish exiles became agents for Dominican official Joaquín Balaguer’s counterintelligence operation in Mexico City and played a central role sabotaging the 1949 Luperón expedition. According to participants’ memoirs and existing literature, when the Legión Caribe and Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo planned to invade the Dominican Republic and overthrow dictator Rafael Trujillo, Spanish exiles contributed to the effort. Trujillo’s foreign policy targeted any and all opponents as so-called communists, so Balaguer worked with Mexican officials such as ex-President Emilio Portes Gil to build a formalized operation that ultimately incorporated some Spanish exiles as Trujillo’s agents. Most notably, it was José Antonio Palós Palma, who joined the Mexican guerrillas in the 1970s, and Alberto Bayo, who famously trained Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara in guerrilla warfare in the 1950s, who facilitated the tragic end of the Luperón expedition.