Rafael Trujillo

Shot on 30 May 1961 near Ciudad Trujillo by conspirators including generals of his own regime, with material support from the CIA; the thirty-one year dictatorship ended with his death.

Overview

Trujillo had ruled the Dominican Republic since 1930 through terror, cult, and ownership of half the economy, naming the capital after himself and massacring Haitians at the border in 1937. Assorted generals and civilians, increasingly endangered by his paranoia, ambushed his Chevrolet on the road near San Cristobal with submachine guns; his son Ramfis briefly ruled and executed most of the conspirators before the family was expelled. Declassified documents show the CIA had supplied some weapons to the plotters after the regime relations with Washington soured. The dictatorship collapsed into factional crisis and civil war in 1965, ended by the United States intervention. His death became the model Latin American case of a tyranny devoured by its own servants.