ABSTRACT
The Dominican Republic became a police state, whose opponents were arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. Many in the new Johnson administration apparently came to view Bosch specifically and events in the Dominican Republic generally as parallel to their problems with Fidel Castro and events in Cuba, and they wanted to eliminate Bosch from the scene. Participation is regulated in the Dominican Republic by laws proclaimed in 1962. The Dominican Republic has a large rural sector, with relatively low levels of educational attainment and a large peasant class barely at the subsistence level. Party politics in the Dominican Republic has been dominated by Joaquin Balaguer for twenty-five years and he has served four terms as president. Local officials are also elected, but the elections are unimportant because the local officials have very limited powers in the Dominican Republic. Data on electoral participation levels since 1930 are inconclusive, largely because of the fraudulent records kept during the Rafael Trujillo period.
