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madeo Barletta (1894-1975) was born in the small town of San Nicola Arcello in Calabria. In 1912,
when he was only 17 years old, he emigrated to Puerto Rico. Eight years later, in 1920, he moved to
the Dominican Republic, where he eventually became the representative for General Motors. Thus,
he created Santo Domingo Motors, and he was involved in a cigarette manufacturing concern as well.
According to the 1935 census, 391 Italians resided in the Dominican Republic at the time. Furthermore, it
was estimated that there were between 100 to 400 people of Italian descent. They were concentrated in Santo
Domingo, Santiago de los Caballeros, and Puerto Plata. Their support for Mussolini and Fascism was rather
lukewarm, even though the party had been locally organized in 1926. Amadeo Barletta was one of the party’s
main leaders.
A year after Trujillo’s rise to power in February 1930, Barletta promised to support the efforts of the Do-
minicans in exile who were hostile to the dictatorship so that they could obtain rifles—an objective, however,
which he failed to achieve.
In April 1935, Barletta was arrested, and on May 4, he was condemned to four years in prison. By then,
Trujillo had acquired the stake in the Compañía Anónima Tabacalera belonging to a German citizen bearing
the surname of Sollner. Barletta, who was the honorary consul of Fascist Italy, had been for some time a mi-
nority shareholder (45%) of another competing company, Compañía Tabaquera Dominicana. The controlling
shareholder was the Penn Tobacco Company of Philadelphia. In short, Barletta had involuntarily become
Trujillo’s business competitor, something Trujillo would never have tolerated. Trujillo soon dispatched an
emissary to Barletta, asking him to sell Compañía Tabaquera to its competitor, Tabacalera, for a heavily re-
duced sum. After refusing to do so, Barletta was imprisoned on charges of fomenting a plot against Trujillo, a
plot that had been discovered a few weeks earlier and which involved several businessmen. General Motors
sent a representative with the last name of Todd to see how the company could help Barletta in the wake
of a newly enacted law that effectively gave the government control of all of Barletta’s businesses. This law
decreed that the State would take over any company owned by a person accused of plotting against the presi-
dent. As the result of a boycott against Barletta’s cigarette company, it was impelled to suspend its operations.
It was also placed under investigation for allegedly having violated Dominican patent law. Antonio, Barletta’s
brother, moved to Haiti and from there informed Macario, the Italian minister in Havana, about these events.
Minister Macario, who also had consular jurisdiction over the Dominican Republic, left for Santo Domingo
immediately, but after several days he was not even allowed to visit Barletta in prison. Macario, Todd and the
representative from Penn Tobacco Company, attempted to communicate something to Barletta as he was
exiting the courtroom, but they only managed to receive a violent shove from a sergeant.
CHAPTER 17
Amadeo Barletta
By Bernardo Vega
Former Governor of Banco Central and former Dominican Ambassador to Washington
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