Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff and Commies: The U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966

by Eric Thomas Chester

Overview

In April 1965, a popular rebellion in the Dominican Republic toppled the remnants of the U.S. backed Trujillo dictatorship setting the stage for the master tinkers of America's Cold War machine. In this groundbreaking study, Eric Thomas Chester carefully reconstructs the events that followed into a thriller of historical sweep, and creates a stunning portrait of how the U.S. government—from President Lyndon Johnson on down—used the Dominican Republic as a tool of its imperial arrogance.
Eric Thomas Chester explains how the U.S. intervention was in the tradition of gunboat diplomacy as well as a consequence of Cold War ideology, and the Cuban Revolution. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Haiti in 1934 and the initiation of Roosevelt's so-called "good neighbor policy," the United States had refrained from sending its own troops to intervene in Latin America. The 1965 invasion broke this pattern and reinitiated an era of direct armed intervention in Latin America. The result was that by early May, with more than thirty thousand troops deployed, there was a greater U.S. military presence in the Dominican Republic than in South Vietnam.
In this fascinating account, Chester makes extensive use of recently declassified diplomatic and intelligence documents to offer a nuanced and textured study of the workings of covert as well as diplomatic initiatives and provides a thorough analysis of U.S. Cold War foreign policy in the region.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583670323
Publisher:	Monthly Review Press
Publication date:	03/01/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.87(d)

About the Author

Eric Thomas Chester was assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and, later, lecturer at San Francisco State University. In the 1960s, Chester was active in the civil rights movement and Students for a Democratic Society. He has worked as a cab driver, union organizer, and substitute teacher. He remains an activist in the trade union solidarity movement and the Socialist Party, and was the Socialist Party's vice-presidential candidate in 1996. He is the author of Socialists and the Ballot Box. His essays have appeared in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Critique, Z, Insurgent Sociologist, Resist, Public Finance, Changes, and Against the Current.

Editorial Reviews

Chester (former college economics instructor and current activist and author) makes extensive use of recently declassified documents to show how President Lyndon Johnson used the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department to suppress the 1965 popular rebellion in the Dominican Republic in order to insure an outcome favorable to US interests. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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