Argentina, Brazil and the conflict of Santo Domingo (1965)

Abstract

This article aims to summarize the positions assumed by the Brazilian and Argentine governments on the Conflict of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1965. Victorious in the February 1963 elections, which put an end to three decades of Trujillo dictatorship, Dominican President Juan Bosch, accused of pro-communist by the U.S. State Department, was shot down in September 1963. In April 1965, the military "constitutionalists" stood up in support of the return of the democratic president, obtaining a significant popular support. In response, the U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, with the excuse to avoid "another Cuba" in the Caribbean, unilaterally ordered the invasion of the Caribbean island to defeat the democratic forces. After this unilateral action, in the OAS, he called an emergency meeting of ministers of foreign affairs of the American countries, to creat an Inter-American Peace Force (FIP), in order to legitimize the invasion, making it an apparently multilateral action. In front of this situation, Brazil and Argentina had divergent positions on the creation of the Inter-American Peace Force. While in Brazil the dictatorial government of Castelo Branco not only supported but also led the military action in Santo Domingo, the Argentine government, led by Arturo Illia, at first supported the creation of the Inter-American Peace Force, but then refused to send troops to Santo Domingo. This episode showed that unlike what happened in the early 1960s, in the second half of that decade, Brazil and Argentina began to distance themselves in the field of the international relations.