Caudillos and Gavilleros versus the United States Marines: Guerrilla Insurgency during the Dominican Intervention, 1916-1924

Abstract

F ROM 1917 to 1922, the peasants of the eastern region of the Dominican Republic successfully waged a guerrilla war against the forces of the U.S. militaiy government. This conflict stands, along with the campaign against Augusto Cesar Sandino in Nicaragua in the later 1920s, as the major military involvement of the United States in Latin America in the twentieth century. And it deserves a significant place in the series of guerrilla wars which the United States has fought, from the Philippines at the turn of the century to Vietnam. Yet the record of the Dominican conflict has largely been buried or lost. No one has yet made a comprehensive study of the 1916-1924 seizure of the Dominican Republic by the United States despite its importance as a lengthy episode in Dominican history and as a major example of the implementation of Wilsonian diplomacy in Latin America. The program of the military government, the impact of the occupation on Dominican life, and the nature of the Dominican reaction, including the guerrilla war, remain largely undocumented.1