[DR1] Adriano Tejada and "La Fiesta del Chivo"

Newspaper editor Adriano Miguel Tejada, lawyer, political scientist and journalist, has written about the movie "The Feast of the Goat" in his A.M. column in today's Diario Libre. As an astute student of Dominican politics over the past century, Tejada notes that Trujillo's generation, those that were "born and raised" during the thirty-year dictatorship of the regime are "alive and kicking" if we consider that the life expectancy is a little more than 70. Tejada says that since it has been 76 years since 1930, nobody should be surprised at the interest that Dominicans are showing at anything that "smells" of Trujillo. Moreover, Trujillo was not just a dictator. He was a man who dominated all aspects of life in the Dominican Republic. It has been estimated that for every peso spent by Dominicans, 65 cents went into Trujillo's pockets by way of the various businesses he controlled. The editor points out that Trujillo's propaganda machine was overwhelming, and it became customary to praise his name even when sneezing. As a result, Trujillo's life and his regime have left an impression that still affects the daily life of Dominicans. This leftover rubble from the Trujillo regime is what explains, in part, why, 45 years after his assassination the nation still has not been capable of changing some of the basic institutions. According to Tejada, the current constitution is a poor copy of the 1955 version, written at the height of the dictatorship. The police are the same and there hasn't been any way to change them. What we have lost, he says, is the control and the sense of order of that era, which has brought us these problems. The country has been democratized, but it has continued living in the dictatorship, with the solutions provided by the dictatorship. Tejada ends by saying that the Goat was killed 45 years ago, but his bleats are still alive in the ears of Dominicans.

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