Page 284 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

786 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

thorized Dominican officials as may be necessary, all under the oversight and control of the United
States forces exercising military government. The ordinary administration of justice, both in civil
and criminal matters, through the regularly constituted Dominican courts, will not be interfered
with by the military government herein established; but cases to which a member of the United
States forces in occupation is a party, or in which are involved contempt or defiance of the author-
ity of the military government, will be tried by tribunals set up by the military government. 40

A number of problems quickly arose from this policy and the inconsistency of its appli-
cation, all highly detrimental to the success of the occupation overall, as well as to Marine
relationships with Dominicans. The policy was, from the start, not well defined. Too many
items were left open to interpretation or confusion, which became especially problematic
when the second military governor, Thomas Snowden, in 1919 removed Dominican advisors
from the military government. Even from the beginning, however, the questions of which
civil and criminal items would remain in the hands of Dominican officials was confused and,
more importantly, varied outside of the capital city, where individual Marines had to make
on-the-spot decisions regarding arrests. In many locations, what they saw as the incompe-
tence of the Dominican administrators—when there were any at all that they felt could be
trusted with matters of law—coupled with continued violence and resistance, led Marines to
conclude that such matters needed to be in the hands of the GND.
The language barrier, until 1922 (when the occupation withdrawal was beginning) was
also a serious problem. Even within the capital, the military government relied on Dominican
translators, but outside of the capital many areas were often administered with no transla-
tors at all. Under such circumstances, the reasons for confusion and inconsistency are quite
clear: the impossibility of cooperation with two separate civil and criminal sets of laws in
the provinces, when the two were conducted in two separate languages, guaranteed that
functions would overlap in moments when quick answers were needed. Because of this, the
question would become a serious issue detrimental to relationships between Marines and the
new military and the citizens of those provinces. Those Dominicans who knew the proclama-
tion—which was quickly translated into Spanish and disseminated throughout the provinces
in the first months of the occupation—complained that Marines (and the Marine-officered
GND) were overstepping the bounds laid out in the proclamation. To further complicate
matters, the original military government under Knapp was left to determine which forms of
governmental administration could be safely left in the hands of Dominican lawmakers. As
the social situation in the country did not show major improvement over the beginning of
the occupation, and resistance increased throughout the provinces, later military governors
thomas Snowden and Samuel Robison would approach the issue with decreasing trust in
any Dominican lawmakers or government officials. As late into the occupation as mid-1919,
Snowden responded to his frustration with the Dominican situation with rhetoric that fuelled
resistance every bit as much as violence had done. On June 8 of 1919, he gave a speech in
which he announced to the Dominican public that the occupation would continue indefinitely
due to Dominicans’ inability to govern their country. Dominican resistance to this announce-

40 Harry S. Knap, “Proclamation of the Military Occupation of Santo Domingo by the United States,” The
American Journal of International Law, 11:2, Supplement: Official Documents, (Apr. 1917), 95.