Sugar and power: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Trujillos, 1958-196

This is an examination of the powerful impact that sugar had on US-Dominican relations between 1958 and 1962. It seeks to understand why Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy used sugar quota legislation to maintain US hegemony in the Dominican Republic and push Rafael Leonidis Trujillo Molina and his successors along the path toward democracy, and how the Dominican government used the communist threat to US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere to justify its desire for an increased share of the preferential US sugar market.;The first three chapters of this dissertation provide the background necessary to put the 1958-1962 period into historical perspective. Emphasis was placed on the role of sugar in the Dominican political economy since the colonization of Hispaniola and the political and economic aspects of US-Dominican relations from 1900 to 1957.;Drawing heavily upon US and Dominican government documents, this study argues that the Eisenhower administration initiated economic sanctions against Trujillo's authoritarian regime in an effort to gain hemispheric support against the Fidel Castro regime. Kennedy expanded those economic sanctions, especially as they pertained to Dominican participation in the preferential US sugar market, in an attempt to liberalize the Dominican political system and stave off the possibility of a Castro-like communist takeover of the Dominican Republic. After Trujillo's assassination on 30 May 1961, the Kennedy administration used threats and promises revolving around the sugar quota to push the dictator's successors along a path toward democracy. The democratic election of Juan Bosch on 20 December 1962 and the subsequent allotment of a generous sugar quota indicated the apparent success of US policy toward the Dominican Republic.