Juan Bosch: Humanist, Writer, and Dominican Political Leader

Introduction

When Juan Bosch died on November 1, 2001, journalist Jose Monegro wrote: "Juan Bosch, a former president whose influence in Dominican politics stretched across half a century despite his only seven months in office, died yesterday. He was 92." Monegro's observation is an intriguing one, since it is seemingly a contradiction in terms — for how can a person who effectively led a nation for only seven months have succeeded in wielding political influence for over half a century?

One answer lies in Monegro's own subsequent explanation that Juan Bosch was a leader who played a central role in shaping the modern Dominican Republic, a teacher of politics to generations, and a prolific writer of works of fiction, history, and politics. There is, however, one other perspective that may better explain Bosch's much-acknowledged stature in Dominican history: Juan Bosch was first and foremost a humanist who ardently believed in human dignity and welfare. His humanism not only explains his interest in politics, education, and writing, but also explains his ardent belief in democratic principles. It is the objective of this paper to demonstrate that it was Juan Bosch's humanism that led to his achieving greatness as a politician, writer, teacher, and advocate of democracy.

Childhood Influences

Juan Bosch was born on June 30, 1909, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Catalan father in the town of La Vega in the Dominican Republic. La Vega was an agricultural town, but Bosch's father was a Spanish entrepreneur. Thus, the young Juan was exposed at an early age to both agricultural and working-class life. Although he received formal education first in Rio Verde and later at the Colegio San Sebastian de la Vega, he was mainly self-educated. Notably, he only finished high school, which makes his later achievements in the literary and political sphere particularly remarkable.

Juan Bosch may have later proved to be a significant political figure, but it appears he had a greater early interest in writing, beginning his literary career in adolescence. It is in those early writings that one finds significant evidence that Bosch may have been a born humanist: virtually all his adolescent stories focus on the forgotten inhabitants of the countryside. From this, it can be inferred that the plight of the Dominican peasantry aroused the adolescent Bosch's humanity and creative instincts. There was also one other significant influence — the U.S. military intervention of 1916 — which equally aroused his humanism and patriotism by embedding in his mind tragic images of anarchy and of the national flag being supplanted by the American flag.

The impact of the U.S. military intervention on Bosch is reflected in La Manosa, one of his better-known novels. As Doris Sommer points out, La Manosa (1936) is a child-centered novel that acts as a vehicle for social realignment: "Told in the autobiographical voice of the author as a little boy, the novel is about coming down with a fever that lasts throughout the book.... War and fever clearly go together in the uncomplicated child-size picture, and they ravage the future of both the boy and his country."

Juan Bosch's early childhood and adolescent experiences thus affected him deeply. These early influences also explain a great deal about his firm belief in democracy, which comes through clearly in a conversation he had with Robert Alexander in July 1964: "If Communism is the end result for most of Latin America, this is a dismal prospect.... There will be thousands killed...there will be no possibility of expression, of free speech, of any of the things which we all regard as essential. This will be a bad world indeed."

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