Callaloo

Callaloo 23.3 (2000) 1112-1146

The Dictator's Seduction
Gender and State Spectacle during the Trujillo Regime

Lauren Derby

In 1955, a Free World's Fair of Peace and Confraternity was held in the Caribbean-island nation of the Dominican Republic to celebrate the twenty-fifth year of the regime of strongman Rafael L. Trujillo (1930-1961). ¹ A full year of trade fairs, exhibits, dances and performances culminated in a floral promenade that showcased the dictator's daughter, sixteen year-old María de los Angeles del Corazón de Jesús Trujillo Martínez, better known as Angelita, who was crowned queen during the central Carnival parade. One-third of the nation's national budget was spent on this gala affair, a good portion of which was invested in Italian designer Fontana gowns for chic Angelita and her entourage of 150 princesses. Queen Angelita's white silk satin gown was beyond fantasy proportions: it had a 75-foot train and was decorated with 150 feet of snow-white Russian ermine--the skins of 600 animals--as well as real pearls, rubies and diamonds. The total cost of the gown was U.S.$80,000, not an insignificant fortune at the time. In full regalia, her costume replicated that of Queen Elizabeth I, replete with erect collar, and adorned with a brooch and scepter that totaled another $75,000 (Crassweller 294; Ferreras, Trujillo 80; Ornes 219). For $1000, two imperial hairdressers were flown in from New York to set the royal coiffure. A full army of street sweepers scrubbed by hand the central malecón or boardwalk of the capital city of Ciudad Trujillo (Trujillo City, orig. Santo Domingo), the civic promenade where Angelita's float would process, to protect Her Majesty's snow-white robe. Her royal entry was made on a mile of red carpet, and in the company of hundreds of courtiers. A new western extension of the city was even built for the fair, that became municipal office space after the event. This national extravaganza surpassed all other events of the regime in its excesses of magisterial pomp and spending. The fair framed the dictator's daughter as a charismatic center of national value and the numenous totem of the regime, the nation and even, the "free" (sic) world (Geertz "Centers").

The symbolic climax of the "Year of the Benefactor," dedicated to Trujillo, the fair was intended to highlight the achievements of the regime by placing them on display. And in this nationalist mythology, signs of progress equaled the regime, which equaled the man himself. As Trujillo stated, the Free World's Fair of Peace and Confraternity was

the patriotic achievement of the Era which national gratitude has baptized with my name. There it is, objectively materialized in each one of the exhibitions of this Fair, the period that I have presided over and that I offer today, at the end of twenty-five [End Page 1112] years, to the judgment of the people who entrusted their destiny to me in 1930 in a gesture of deep faith in my patriotism and in my acts, that rewards my long vigils and my fever for work during these twenty-five years in which was forged this prodigious reality. That work is my only crown, and with it I submit myself today to history. (Crassweller 295)

The 1955 World's Fair, la Feria, however, was convened not merely to represent the "prodigious reality" of Trujillo's rule. Filtered through Angelita's aura of perfection, the event was a particularly grandiloquent manifestation of the larger-than-life ceremonial regime that was the era of Trujillo. On the cusp of an epoch in which nations were judged by their ability to represent their virtues at trade exhibits and world fairs, ² la Feria was proof that a man with a big vision could make even a small country look great. But why was it not the figure of the dictator that came to stand for the regime? Why was the dictator's daughter the emblematic icon of...