Johnny Abbes García (1924, Santo Domingo – 1967, Haiti) was the chief of the governmental intelligence office – the '' Servicio de Inteligencia Militar'' (Military Intelligence Service) – during the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...

. He ruled under Trujillo during the end of the Third Republic, and later served the

Duvalier dynasty The Duvalier dynasty (french: Dynastie des Duvalier, ht, Dinasti Duvalier) was an autocratic family dictatorship in Haiti that lasted almost twenty-nine years, from 1957 until 1986, spanning the rule of the father-and-son duo François and Jean- ...

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and s ...

Rise to power

Abbes was born in 1924 in Santo Domingo, the son of a

German American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...

accountant and a Dominican woman. As a young man he was interested in sports, and one of his first jobs was as a sports reporter. In the mid-fifties, he moved to

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, where he worked as an official in the Dominican embassy. He started to gather information on anti-Trujillo dissidents and relayed this information to the island. Abbes also studied the technical aspects of spying and intelligence gathering. In 1956 he returned to the Dominican Republic and, after Trujillo's half-brother Nene introduced him to the

dictator A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in time ...

, quickly rose to power.

Head of SIM

In 1958 he became the head of the newly created Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (SIM) and the chief planner of assassinations of the regime's adversaries abroad. SIM employed thousands of people and was involved in immigration, passports, censorship, supervision of aliens, and undercover work, including foreign operations. Thus he was instrumental in the two attempts to kill

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's then-president Rómulo Betancourt; first there was an attack on Betancourt in the streets of

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

to inject him with poison, later a

car bomb A car bomb, bus bomb, lorry bomb, or truck bomb, also known as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), is an improvised explosive device designed to be detonated in an automobile or other vehicles. Car bombs can be roughly divided ...

blew up his Cadillac in Caracas, killing the driver and a bystander, while Betancourt survived.

After Trujillo

After Trujillo's assassination in May 1961, Abbes moved quickly to hunt down the assassins. Trujillo's son, Ramfis Trujillo, returned from Paris, supposedly with the help of Abbes, and attempted to step into the place of his father, but his attempt ultimately failed, and he left the country, together with most members of the Trujillo family, later that year. Following the Trujillos' departure, President

Joaquín Balaguer Joaquín Antonio Balaguer Ricardo (1 September 1906 – 14 July 2002) was a Dominican politician, scholar, writer, and lawyer. He was President of the Dominican Republic serving three non-consecutive terms for that office from 1960 to 1962 ...

appointed Abbes

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, but Abbes soon left the post and spent several years in Europe. He returned to the Caribbean in 1966, moving to

, where he worked for then-President François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier as a security advisor. Abbes disappeared in June 1967. According to journalist Bernard Diedrich, Abbes and his wife had come under suspicion for plotting against Duvalier, but the reasons for his disappearance, and those responsible, remain unknown.

Mario Vargas Llosa Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (born 28 March 1936), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa (, ), is a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and former politician, who also holds Spanish citizenship. Vargas Ll ...

's historical novels '' The Feast of the Goat'', about Trujillo's Dominican Republican, and '' Harsh Times'', about Arbenz's Guatemala, devote much space to Abbes.

Sources and references

External links

''Los Rasputines''
- Mario Vargas Llosa, 1998.
Editions Normant
''La Môme Moineau'' - Michel Ferracci-Porri, novembre 2006 {{DEFAULTSORT:Abbes Garcia, Johnny Dominican Republic politicians Political repression Dominican Republic military personnel Dominican Republic people of European American descent Dominican Republic people of German descent 1924 births 1967 deaths Dominican Republic emigrants to Haiti