Tony Barreiro, Emilio de los Santos, and the Crisis of the Triumvirate: A Political and Anthropological Reading of Las Manaclas

This article analyzes the events at Las Manaclas in 1963 and their connection to the political crisis of the Dominican Triumvirate. Drawing on newspaper archives, eyewitness accounts, bibliographic sources, and diplomatic documents, the study examines the discrepancies between the official version—which presented the deaths of Manolo Tavárez Justo and other members of the June 14 Revolutionary Movement as the result of combat—and subsequent testimonies that assert they surrendered and were subsequently executed. The study interprets Emilio de los Santos’s resignation as the result of a convergence of factors: the institutional fragility of the Triumvirate, its dependence on the Armed Forces, the controversy generated by Las Manaclas, and the rejection of the violence used against the insurgents. Furthermore, the study analyzes the godfather-godson relationship between De los Santos and Tony Barreiro as a sociocultural dimension that may have intensified the moral impact of the episode, without considering it the sole cause of the resignation. It concludes that Las Manaclas deepened the loss of legitimacy of the government that emerged from the coup against Juan Bosch and highlighted the tensions between civil authority, military power, and state violence.