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AMADEO BARLETTA
On May 21, under instructions, the U.S. minister visited Trujillo, who was accompanied by Brache. Trujil-
lo explained to the minister that “he was in the best position to satisfy the United States in any possible way,”
adding that the charges against Barletta would be dropped and that Logroño would be replaced as Minister of
Foreign Affairs. The minister reported, “When I left, Trujillo seemed to be extremely exhausted and showed
little evidence of his usual arrogance and severity. He seemed seriously concerned that the U.S. government
had taken the measures it took.” That same day, Trujillo also met with the Italian minister. Looking for a
scapegoat, the dictator immediately removed Logroño as foreign minister. Meanwhile, the tax “problems”
plaguing Compañía Tabaquera Dominicana were resolved by a “decision” from a superior court. Logroño
(an extremely obese man) fell into disgrace, and Barletta’s victory caused humorous commentaries among the
Dominicans: “Lard is down, and macaroni is up”; “The rope broke at its thickest point.”
In conclusion, Barletta was released from prison due to the pressure exerted by the United States and the
Italians, who used America’s influence. Sending a European warship to the Caribbean would also have been a
violation of the Monroe Doctrine.
In December, Brache resigned his position as minister and joined the opposition in exile. In 1936, Barletta
met with Brache in New York along with other exiled anti-Trujillo campaigners, such as Ángel Morales. In
1937, he returned briefly to the Dominican Republic. In December 1938, he left for Italy. By January 1937,
looking to secure better relations with Mussolini, Trujillo had established a Dominican legation in Rome. The
Italian community in the Dominican Republic congratulated him for the gesture. Trujillo addressed the com-
munity members publicly, qualifying them as the “sons of the noble homeland of Garibaldi and Mussolini.”
A December 1939 report issued by the U.S. naval attaché in Havana, which coincided with Barletta’s move to
Cuba, mentioned that while Barletta lived in the Dominican Republic, his sympathy for fascism and Nazism
was evident and that the attaché considered Barletta anti-American. Meanwhile in Havana, Barletta—who had
married Nelia Ricart, a member of one of the better families in Santo Domingo—became the representative
for General Motors. While in Cuba, however, he was blacklisted for being Italian and emigrated to Argentina
when the war began. He returned to Cuba after the war.
Paradoxically, four years after Barletta’s imprisonment and the declaration of war on the Axis powers, the
United States placed Barletta’s businesses in the Dominican Republic on a
Fascist blacklist. Unlike the Germans, no Italian was ever taken to a concentration camp in the United
States when the Dominicans declared war. Ironically, in 1943, when the United States was already at war with
Italy, Trujillo would use the Barletta case to “prove to the world” that he had been one of the first to “have
been attacked” by the fascists, whom he “had fought.”
In his Havana-based newspaper,
El Mundo,
Barletta would criticize Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959, a
development that led to false accusations against him of having done business with the American gangsters
who had controlled the Cuban casinos during the Batista dictatorship. Barletta finally left Cuba, arriving in the
Dominican Republic in 1963 during the rise to power of Juan Bosch in the first free elections since 1924. He
returned to his Dominican business concerns.
Barletta died in Santo Domingo in 1975. His headstone bears the Italian title: “Cavaliere del Lavoro” (Or-
der of Merit for Labor).
1
ENDNOTES
1
The Gentleman of Work (Cavaliere del Lavoro) was a title of
chivalry awarded to Amadeo Barletta by the Italian government
on June 6, 1955, through decree number 1329, in recognition for
his industrial activities in the region of Calabria (Editorial Note).