The University of Texas at Tyler Libraries

Item type Current location Call number Status Date due Barcode
Book University of Texas At Tyler
Stacks - 3rd Floor 		E183.8.D6 H35 2000 (Browse shelf) Available 0000001445402

Includes bibliographical references (p. [145]-157) and index.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Hall focuses on the role that the US sugar quota played in the binational relations between the Dominican Republic and the US, especially between 1958 and 1962. American purchase of Dominican sugar at favorable prices contributed both to Trujillo's personal enrichment and to his stranglehold on Dominican politics after 1930. As the tide turned against Latin American dictators, US Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy hoped to force Trujillo from office by reducing his quota or by imposing additional taxes on it. In contrast, the US Congress often defended Trujillo, persuaded, in Hall's term, by Trujillo's generous "bribes." The offhanded reference to "bribery" does not elaborate on the form the payments took or on whether such practices were illegal under US law at the time. The author's strict focus on sugar as the fulcrum of diplomacy frequently minimizes Trujillo's larger Caribbean role. The 1960 attempt on the life of Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt is mentioned, but there is no discussion of Trujillo's earlier attacks on the region's democracies. Hall clearly and succinctly analyzes an important binational relationship, but there is little here that would surprise most scholars of Latin America. General readers; undergraduates. J. Ewell; College of William and Mary

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Michael R. Hall teaches Latin American and Diplomatic History at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia. He served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic from 1984 to 1987.

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