Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
age of customs revenue, but also had been granted the right to
administer Dominican customs in order to ensure regular
repayment. Stung by the Jimenes government's resumption of
control over its customs receipts, the directors of the Improvement
Company protested to the United States Department of
State. The review of the case prompted a renewed interest in
Washington in Dominican affairs.
Cibao nationalists suspected the president of bargaining
away Dominican sovereignty in return for financial settlements.
Government forces led by Vasquez put down some early uprisings.
Eventually, however, personal competition between
Jimenes and Vasquez brought them into conflict. Vasquez's
forces proclaimed a revolution on April 26, 1902; with no real
base of support, Jimenes fled his office and his country a few
days later. However, conflicts among the followers of Vasquez
and opposition to his government from local caciques grew
into general unrest that culminated in the seizure of power by
ex-president Alejandro Woss y Gil in April 1903.
Dominican politics had once again polarized into two largely
nonideological groups. Where once the Blues and Reds had
contended for power, now two other personalist factions, the
jimenistas (supporters ofJimenes) and the horacistas (supporters
of Vasquez and Caceres), vied for control. Woss y Gil, a
jimenista, made the mistake of seeking supporters among the
horacista camp and was overthrown by jimenista General Carlos
Felipe Morales Languasco in December 1903. Rather than
restore the country's leadership to Jimenes, however, Morales
set up a provisional government and announced his own candidacy
for the presidency—with Caceres as his running mate.
The renewed fraternization with the horacistas incited another
jimenista rebellion. This uprising proved unsuccessful, and
Morales and Caceres were inaugurated on June 19, 1904. Yet,
conflict within the Morales administration between supporters
of the president and those of the vice president eventually led
to the ouster of Morales, and Caceres assumed the presidency
on December 29, 1905.
As a backdrop to the continuing political turmoil in the
Dominican Republic, United States influence increased considerably
during the first few years of the twentieth century. Pressures
by European creditors on the Dominican Republic and
the Anglo-German blockade of Venezuela in 1902-03 led to
President Theodore Roosevelt's "corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine,
which declared that the United States would assume the
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