91Â鶹¹ú²ú¾«Æ·×ÔÅÄ

Between 1930 and 1961, the Dominican Republic endured one of the most oppressive regimes on the Latin American continent: the dictatorship of Rafael L. Trujillo. Thousands of Dominicans lost their lives, were imprisoned and tortured by the henchmen who served the tyrant. Many survivors were maimed, bore scars on their bodies, or suffered from mental illness. During that long period of oppression and death, the Trujillo government extended its policy of state terrorism beyond its borders. Notorious examples of its scope are the attempted assassination of Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt (1960), the kidnapping and disappearance in New York City of the Spanish citizen Jesús de Galíndez (1956), the murder of the writer José Almina, also Spanish, and the crimes committed against Cubans, Costa Ricans, Nicaraguans, Puerto Ricans as well as against citizens of the United States. Perhaps the most tragic event during this period was the genocide committed against Haitian residents in the Dominican Republic. Trujillo personally ordered the massacre that killed more than ten thousand souls.

The heritage documents record these atrocities and contain evidence of the Dominican resistance movement and the struggles for democracy, freedom and respect for human rights. Foreign idealists died fighting alongside Dominicans, giving rise to international solidarity during the long battle for justice and peace on Dominican soil. The counterpart of this international solidarity was the widely documented network of complicity between the Dominican despot and the dictatorships of Machado and Batista in Cuba, Duvalier in Haiti, Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela, Somoza in Nicaragua, in addition to the close ties with Francisco Franco of Spain. The documents offer evidence of the many assassinations ordered by Trujillo against his opponents in Cuba, Haiti, Mexico and the United States. These conspiracies were effectively investigated by subsequent governments in each of these countries. The universal character of this legacy becomes evident in the documents of the solidarity missions organized between 1947 and 1959, with the participation of Venezuelans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Costa Ricans, Spaniards, Nicaraguans, and citizens of the United States, many of whom became targets of the repression and were assassinated in Dominican territory.

This nomination was Inscribed on the Memory of the World International Register and on the Regional Register for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2011.