Rebellion of the Pilots

The Rebellion of the Pilots was a military uprising carried out by six members of the Dominican Military Aviation, now the Dominican Air Force, on November 19, 1961. The uprising put a definitive end to the rule of the Trujillo family over the Dominican Republic. It prevented Ramfis, José Arismendy and Héctor Trujillo from returning to power and restoring the regime led by Rafael Trujillo.

The timely rebellion prevented the elimination of the political class that opposed the Trujillo regime following the assassination of Rafael Trujillo.

Background

Assassination of Rafael Trujillo

"Memorial to the Heroes of the 30th of May", a 1993 sculpture by Silvano Lora along Autopista 30 de Mayo where Trujillo was shot

On May 30, 1961, Rafael Trujillo was shot and killed when his blue 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air was ambushed on a road outside the Dominican capital. He was the victim of an ambush plotted by a number of men, among them General Juan Tomás Díaz, Pedro Livio Cedeño, Antonio de la Maza, Amado García Guerrero and General Antonio Imbert Barrera. The plotters, however, failed to take control as General José Román betrayed his co-conspirators by his inactivity, and contingency plans had not been made. On the other side, Johnny Abbes, Roberto Figueroa Carrión, and the Trujillo family put the Military Intelligence Service (SIM) to work to hunt the members of the plot, and brought back Ramfis Trujillo from Paris to step into his father's shoes. The response by SIM was swift and brutal. Hundreds of suspects were detained and many were tortured. On November 18 the last executions took place when six of the conspirators were executed in the Hacienda María Massacre. Imbert was the only one of the seven assassins who escaped the manhunt. A co-conspirator named Luis Amiama Tio also survived.

Ramfis Trujillo in power

Rafael Trujillo's son, Ramfis Trujillo, inherited power with Joaquín Balaguer, the titular president of the Dominican Republic, as his puppet. The two initially took steps to liberalize the regime, granting some civil liberties and easing censorship of the press. Meanwhile, Balaguer revoked the nonaggression pact made with Cuba in January. These measures did not go nearly far enough for a populace who had no memory of the instability and poverty that preceded Rafael Trujillo, and wanted more freedom and a more equitable distribution of wealth. At the same time, the younger Trujillo's reforms went too far for the hard-line trujillistas led by his own uncles, Héctor Trujillo and José Arismendy Trujillo. As the Organization of American States (OAS) maintained economic sanctions imposed following Rafael Trujillo's attempted murder of Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, Ramfis Trujillo warned that the country could descend into civil war between left and right.

Although official and unofficial repression of the opposition parties (the Dominican Revolutionary Party and National Civic Union, as well as the communist Dominican Popular Movement) continued, Balaguer publicly condemned this repression and in September he pledged to form a coalition government. Héctor and José Arismendy Trujillo left the country in October but the opposition parties demanded that Ramfis Trujillo withdraw from the government as well. At the end of October, Ramfis Trujillo announced that he would resign if the OAS agreed to lift the economic sanctions. The OAS agreed on November 14 but Ramfis Trujillo's uncles returned to the country the following day, hoping to lead a military coup. Ramfis Trujillo resigned and went into exile on November 17 and rumours circulated that Military Aviation general Fernando Arturo Sánchez Otero would support revolutionaries aligned with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The United States now sent a small fleet of ships and 1,800 Marines to patrol Dominican waters. The American consul informed Balaguer that these forces stood ready to intervene at his request, and would be supported by forces from Venezuela and Colombia.

On the night of November 19, José Arismendy Trujillo, Tunti Sánchez, the head of Military Aviation, and the regional chiefs of the SIM met at the San Isidro Air Base. There they organized a plot, alternatively called Operation Green Light or the Slaughter of San Bartolomé, to assassinate the leaders of the National Civic Union (including Viriato Fiallo) and the 14th of June Movement as well as national leaders such as Balaguer.

Rebellion of the Pilots

Members of the plot

• 
  Lt. Col. Durán Guzmán
• 
  Lt. Col. Polanco Alegría
• 
  Brig. Gen. Rodríguez Echavarría

Manuel Durán Guzmán was born on September 28, 1924 in Villa Riva. He studied at the Padre Fantino Jesuit seminary in Santo Cerro as a young man, then ventured into a military career in 1945. He was the ideological leader and originator of the conspiracy. His plan was to carry it out in the months following Rafael Trujillo's death but he could not do so due to the high risk in those early days of being denounced and arrested.

Raymundo Polanco Alegría was Durán Guzmán's first contact. Originally from Santiago de los Caballeros and a member of Durán Guzmán's graduating class in 1948, Polanco-Alegría, of Almerian descent, was commander of the Ramfis Hunt Squadron and had under his command sixty aircraft of all types during the golden age of the Dominican Military Aviation. He was one of the great aces of the Dominican Military Aviation according to Ramfis Trujillo himself in the book Yo, Ramfis Trujillo.

Nelton González Pomares was another of Durán Guzmán's first contacts. He was the commander of the Hunting and Bombing Group.

Pedro Rafael Rodríguez Echavarría, brigadier general and commander of the Santiago Air Base, was convinced by Durán Guzmán to lead the plot due to the quality of his leadership, his prestige and his good relationships with other political and military leaders.

The uprising

The uprising began on the morning of November 19. The artillery and tank squadrons of the San Isidro Air Base, as well as other military installations that remained loyal to the Trujillo regime, such as the Mao and Puerto Plata fortresses, were bombed. González Pomares and Federico Fernández Smester led the attack on the San Isidro Air Base. These attacks succeeded in dissuading the remaining trujillista military forces from coming to the regime's defense and forced the remnants of the regime to flee the country.