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which the wanted man was killed along with several non-combatants. So it was that on
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November 29 of 1916, under orders of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, U.S. Naval Captain
Harry S. Knapp read out the official proclamation of U.S. military occupation, stating that the
occupation was based upon Dominican violations of the 1907 treaty.
Knapp announced that the occupation, undertaken to ensure domestic tranquility, would
attempt to restore order to the country while maintaining Dominican sovereignty under the
tutelage of U.S. military forces. To this end, he also proclaimed that Dominican statutes and
civil courts would remain in place and under the jurisdiction of Dominican officials if they
did not “conflict with the objects of the occupation.” Knapp, as the first acting military
17
governor of the occupation, quickly appropriated all withheld Dominican funds from the
previous six and a half months, as well as all incoming customs revenue, to fund the military
government. From then until the end of his term as military governor in late 1918, he did
indeed attempt to retain Dominican civil courts, and even hired some Dominican citizens as
advisors. From the beginning, however, the occupation was plagued by problems stemming
from U.S. forces’ inabilities to speak or understand Spanish, their lack of knowledge about
the country and its people in general, and the ambiguity of U.S. State Department orders—
leading to a Marine presence that even within the capital city did not always directly follow
the designs of Governor Knapp, and often infringed upon Dominican law, custom, and civil
society.
In reality, the early years of the formalized occupation were rife with violence, including
popular rebellion in some provinces, reports of torture by a few Marine occupiers, arbi-
trary arrests, and, as of 1917, a strict censorship of the Dominican press, all of which led
18
to strong and diverse resistance. Early executive orders by Knapp’s government increased
resistance by limiting Dominican sovereignty even further; for example, on December 4,
1916 Knapp declared officially that no Dominican could hold the posts of “Interior” or “War
and Marine” in the Dominican Cabinet. Reports of torture by U.S. Marines against Do-
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minican citizens increased throughout the first years of the occupation as violence and resis-
tance mounted, and the Dominican citizenry openly protested in many areas (especially in
the east). The first major goals of the occupation would be to disarm the population, build
an infrastructure throughout the country—including roads, communication networks, and
hospitals—to link the provinces to the capital and administrative control, and create the new
Guardia Nacional; official Marine history states that training a Dominican military was the
Marines “second major responsibility” during the occupation, second only to building and
improving infrastructure. So difficult was basic administration and maintenance of control
20
in the first months of the occupation, however, that not until April of 1917—four and a half

16 For a more detailed account of the “Duarte Riot,” see Knight, 82.
17 Captain Harry S. Knapp, “Proclamation of the Military Occupation of Santo Domingo by the United States,”
in American Journal of International Law, 11:2, (April 1917), 95.
18 Sumner Welles, Naboth’s Vineyard: The Dominican Republic, 1844-1924, 2 vols. (New York: Payson and
Clarke, 1928), 800-801. Pedro Encarnación, La Transición del liderazgo politico dominicano: Crisis de Li-
derazgo, Opciones y Frustraciones. Santo Domingo: Editora de Colores, S.A., 1998, 79.
19 Welles, 797.
20 Fuller, 45.