Juan Bosch

Juan Emilio Bosch Gaviño (30 June 1909, La Vega – 1 November 2001, Santo Domingo) was a politician, historian, short story writer, essayist, educator, and the first cleanly elected president of the Dominican Republic for a brief time in 1963. Previously, he had been the leader of the Dominican opposition in exile to the dictatorial regime of Rafael Trujillo for over 25 years. To this day he is remembered as an honest politician and regarded as one of the most prominent writers in Dominican literature. He is the founder of both the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) in 1939 and the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) in 1973.

In 1934 he married Isabel García and had two children with her: Leon and Carolina. As Trujillo's dictatorship was getting stronger and meaner, Bosch was jailed for his political ideas, being released after several months. In 1938, knowing that the tyrant wanted to buy him with a position in the Congress, Bosch managed to leave the country, settling in Puerto Rico.

Contents [hide]

1 A long exile

2 Presidency and opposition

3 Coup d'état

4 Death and legacy

5 Bibliography

6 External links

[edit] A long exileBy 1939 Bosch had gone to Cuba, where he directed an edition of the completed works of Eugenio María de Hostos, something that defined his patriotic and humanist ideals. In July, with other Dominican expatriates, he founded the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), which stood out as the most active front against Trujillo outside the Dominican Republic.

Bosch heavily sympathised with leftist ideas, but he always denied any communist affiliation. He collaborated with the Cuban Revolutionary Party and had an important role in the making of the Constitution that was promulgated in 1940.

Bosch married for the second time, this time a Cuban lady, Carmen Quidiello, with whom he had two more children, Patricio and Barbara. At the same time, his literary career was ascending, gaining important acknowledgments like the...