Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Martínez (5 June 1929-6 May 2007), also known as Ramfis Trujillo and
Rafael II, was the Emperor of
Hispaniola from 3 December 1973 to his death.
The son of military dictator/self-proclaimed monarch Rafael I Trujillo and his third wife, Ramfis was named after the high priest in Aida and was appointed Brigadier General by the age of nine. Sent to study to the US Army’s Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, he skipped classes and took off for Hollywood, becoming known for his playboy antics, buying luxury cars, mink coats and jewelry for Hollywood startlets, being denied his diploma after competion. For his father, who wanted his eldest son to become his heir and to marry into German and Spanish nobility, it was a scandal : he forced his son to marry his girlfried, upcoming actress Kim Novak, and placed his hopes upon his second son Radamés.
Nevertheless, like his Prime Minister, womanizing diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa, the Ramfis-Novak marriage proved a great glamour facade for the Trujillo regime, even at the height of the crisis between Hispaniola and the United States. Some historians even believed that Ramfis had been married with one Octavia Ricart, having six children : the marriage, if it even happened, was quickly erased from public memory and his children disappeared. Nevertheless, Ramfis had a long history of depression and mental hospital stays, and was known for his unruly behavior, that included gang rapes of young women in Hispaniola along with ordering murders. His wife, Princess Kim Novak, reportedly tried to flee the Banana Empire and was impeded by Hispanolan intelligence : she would only bear a son to Ramfis one year after Rafael I’s demise. Anyway, Ramfis became first-in-line again after his brother’s death during the 1965 coup attempt, and succeeded his father as Emperor in 1973, taking the regnal name of Rafael II.
Foreign observers had hoped the son would prove better than his father ; yet, he left his Prime Minister, Joaquin Balaguer, to deal with day-to-day governance (leading Balaguer to become one of the longest terms as Prime Minister in modern history, from 1965 to his death in 2002), while indulging in an orgy of repression, rape and murder that established himself as one of the most brutal dictators in the world. Tales abound of the Emperor murdering opponents by himself, while having their entire families tortured, raped and killed. He even strengthened the cult of personality around his father, establishing the country’s motto as “God and Trujillo” and even, at one point, imagining to establish a Church of Hispaniola that would have established his father as a modern-day Messiah. The sight of the imperial limousine became synonymous with terror in the streets of Ciudad Trujillo.
But the regime became even horrific with the proclaimation of “Hispanidad” in 1975 : taking into account the racialist thesis that had been discredited in Europe and America for a long time, Rafael II established his goal to “make Hispaniola as a pure, white and hispanic country by the year 2000”. Pushed by supremacism and hatred against the Haitian minorities, black-skinned Hispaniolans were deprived of their civil rights, either expelled to Haiti and the United States, killed or sterilized by force, in order to wipe out the entire “non-Aryan” population of Hispaniola. The country became synonymous with pure horror and racialism, lauded by small political groups only, even disgusting South Africa. In the same time, Rafael II pushed for “white” emigration into Hispaniola, even welcoming Jewish emigrants that were likewise hated by European racialists, this policy only had successes with a few extremists. Of course, wiping out Black Hispaniolans, that formed the majorty of the country’s manual labor, proved catastrophic for the country, that suffered deeply from the 80’s Depression and experienced famine after famine, followed by droughts and riots, that the Hispaniolan army (one of the largest in the world, in terms of per capita) throughly repressed ; it was only in 1994, after the most extremist followers of Rafael II conspired to have their womanizing monarch overthrown, that Rafael II ended the Hispanidad policy. It is estimated that the Hispaniola Genocide led to the death of 2 million people from 1975 to 1994, while Florida became home to a vast Hispaniolan diaspora. Focusing on the building of the Treaty of Havana Organization, the United States failed to address the issue. To this day, the once numerous colored population of Hispaniola remains a persecuted minority.
Rafael II died in 2007, aged 77 ; even if his cause of death remains a state secret, historians claim that Rafael II died as a result of AIDS, having ordered his minions to purchase at all cost a remedy for the then-incurable disease. His wife, Empress Kim, from whom he had been separated for the duration of his reign, was authorized by his son to immigrate to California, from which she refused to give any statement of his spouse’s legacy.
Rafael II’s remains were mummified and interred at the Trujillo Crypt. During the sack of the latter in 2017, rioters had his corpse disembowled, castrated, sodomized with sharp objects, urinated, spat and defecated on, dismembered and cremated ; the event was well-publicized. When a witnessing journalist asked a rioter if the body had been eaten, he was told that Rafael II was too rooten for that.