ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on personal interactions in the civil-military process, an inevitable reality in the Dominican environment. The argument of some academic theorists and US policymakers about military establishments mobilized to perform nation building services was particularly irrelevant to the Dominican Republic under Joaquin Balaguer. Most of Balaguer’s generals were able to become multimillionaires through enterprises financed with government resources and through outright graft. Generals Neit Nivar Sei jas and Enrique Perez y Perez carried on a bitter personal rivalry throughout the Balaguer era while remaining loyal to the president. At the time of Balaguer’s inauguration on July 1, 1966, the Dominican armed forces were in the hands of officers who had fought against Constitutionalists and felt hatred toward the president’s major political foe, Juan Bosch. The president accused other military men of participating in the plot directed by Elías Wessin, but, Balaguer said, assistance had come from a “minority sector” of the armed forces.
