The Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (SIM) (English: Military Intelligence Service) was the main

secret police image:Putin-Stasi-Ausweis.png, 300px, Vladimir Putin's secret police identity card, issued by the East German Stasi while he was working as a Soviet KGB liaison officer from 1985 to 1989. Both organizations used similar forms of repression. Secre ...

force and

death squad A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings, massacres, or enforced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in w ...

during the later part of the dictatorship of

Rafael Trujillo Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina ( ; ; 24 October 1891 – 30 May 1961), nicknamed ''El Jefe'' (; "the boss"), was a Dominican military officer and dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic from August 1930 until Rafael Trujillo#Assassination, ...

to keep control within the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

Operation

Around 1957 the Department of State for Security, headed by General Arturo Espaillat was dissolved, replaced by SIM and its sister agency, the Servicio Central de Inteligencia (SCI). Under the leadership of

Johnny Abbes García Johnny Abbes García (27 March 1924, Santo Domingo – 30 May 1967, Haiti) was the chief of the governmental intelligence office – the '' Servicio de Inteligencia Militar'' (Military Intelligence Service) – during the dictatorship ...

, SIM employed thousands of people and was involved in immigration, passports, censorship, supervision of aliens, and undercover work. At the Palace of Communications some fifty people intercepted and recorded domestic and foreign phone conversations. Its secret activities used murder, kidnapping, extortion and terror to achieve its goals. Money was spent to lobby American legislators. In the population members of SIM were known as "caliés" (Thugs), they patrolled the streets in their black VW beetles called "cepillos" (brushes). Infamous detention centers were La Nueve (The Nine) and La Cuarenta (The Forty) where prisoners were tortured and killed. SIM was dissolved in 1962, after the fall of the Trujillo regime.

Directors

Famous operations

* 1956: Murder of Jesús Galíndez * 1958: Murder of Octavio de la Maza * 1959: Attempt to invade

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

* 1960: Murder of the Mirabal sisters * 1960: Attempt to assassinate

Rómulo Betancourt Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello (22 February 1908 – 28 September 1981; ), known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was a Venezuelan politician who served as the president of Venezuela, from and again from Second presidency of Rómulo ...

* 1961: Murder of assassins of Trujillo

Cultural references

SIM and its leader

are frequently mentioned in

Mario Vargas Llosa Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025) was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists a ...

's historical novel '' The Feast of the Goat'' and in

Julia Alvarez Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is an American New Formalist poet, novelist, and essayist. She rose to prominence with the novels '' How the García Girls Lost Their Accents'' (1991), ''In the Time of the Butterflies'' (1994), and ''Yo! ...

's novel ''

In the Time of the Butterflies ''In the Time of the Butterflies'' is a historical fiction novel by Julia Alvarez, relating a fictionalized account of the Mirabal sisters during the time of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. The book is written in the ...

''.

References

{{reflist, colwidth=30em Rafael Trujillo 1950s in the Dominican Republic 1960s in the Dominican Republic Government agencies established in 1957 Government agencies disestablished in 1962 Defunct intelligence agencies Dominican Republic intelligence agencies Secret police Anti-communist organizations