Page 283 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

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changes. Major land redistribution had been one of the most historically hated actions of the
occupying government of the Haitians from 1822-1844, which had since become legendary
(and infamous) among Dominicans. Therefore, when the military government attempted to
initiate even minor such changes, Dominicans often reacted violently and explosively.
Other methods of occupation not related to improving civil-military relations but deemed as
necessary by the military government often did not help matters, of course, and many evoked
reactions that the Marines did not expect due to their lack of knowledge of Dominican culture
and society. The most powerful and long-lasting of these struggles over military government
projects was disarmament. While Marines knew that such an action would meet resistance,
they underestimated the amount of resistance that it would provoke, as they did not understand
the importance and centrality of being armed in Dominican tradition. Marine reports for the
entire eight years demonstrate repeated amazement at the extent of resistance to this measure,
and the resistance to disarmament was one of the largest causes of Marine frustration that led
to incidents of Marine torture of Dominican citizens, and other violent or seemingly arbitrary
actions that led Dominicans to increasingly resist the occupation more generally. Not surpris-
ingly, such frustrations and the continuation of guerrilla warfare led to a tendency toward harsh
penalties toward arrested Dominican citizens and much more lenient treatment of Marines
and, to a lesser extent, sometimes Dominican Guardia members. One of the more damaging
36
regional incidents of the occupation, the “Higuey incident,” was made worse by this very fact.
In Higuey, in October and November of 1917, a large number of Dominicans began to protest
treatment of civilians by members of the Guardia who were in charge of prison workers.
37
The instances around which protests formed included torture of prisoners and suspects and
the practice of carrying Dominican dead to the cemetery on poles, “tied by hands in order to
secure their bodies to the pole,” which was highly offensive to the local population and justi-
fied in terms of the difficulty of carrying bodies across too long a distance. the Guardia men
38
involved were not prosecuted, however, the justification for which was summed up in Thad
Taylor’s report on the matter, in which he said “to try these guardias would create a diminution
of courage, and ill-will and a distressing moral effect on the personnel of the Guardia Nacional,
which would require considerable time and effort to overcome.” 39
The only major centrally imposed effort at the improvement of the U.S. military person-
nel’s relationship with the Dominican citizenry actually damaged the overall success of the
occupation. This effort on the part of the military government was initiated with the begin-
ning of the occupation, and was a significant portion of Knapp’s declaration of occupation:

This military occupation is undertaken with no immediate or ulterior object of destroying the
sovereignty of the Republic of Santo Domingo. . . Dominican statutes, therefore, will continue in
effect in so far as they do not conflict with the objects of the occupation or necessary regulations
established thereunder, and their lawful administration will continue in the hands of such duly au-
36 This is well-documented and widely agreed upon, including in Marine accounts.
37 Dominican Republic, Military Government, documents from October to November of 1919 in “Folder 1,”
Legajo 22, “Gobierno Militar,” AGN.
38 Thad Taylor, “Guardia Nacional Dominicana observations on prisons,” 26 October, 1917, Legajo 22, “Go-
bierno Militar,” AGN.
39 Ibid.