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THE ITALIAN LEGACY IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
222
1958, possibly through an old comrade-in-arms, Capozzi accepted a proposal to go to the Dominican Republic
for a well-paid job that would allow him to “continue feeling like a soldier.”
6
Officially, it was a contract with
the Dominican Navy’s hydrographic department; in reality, Capozzi was part of a group of a dozen Italian
veterans of Mussolini’s Social Republic hired by dictator Rafael Trujillo to form the first elite department of
the Dominican Armed Forces, destined to become a legend:
los hombres-rana
, the frogmen diver commandos
led by Navy commander Manuel Ramón Montes Arache.
In those years, several former Fascist Italian soldiers went to fight in the Congo as mercenaries, or enlisted
in the French Foreign Legion, and ended up waging war in Algeria and Yemen—an activity that did not go
unnoticed by the intelligence agencies. In May 1960, a confidential telegram from the British Embassy in Ciu-
dad Trujillo (the country’s capital, later renamed Santo Domingo) informed London that “frogmen are being
trained in the Dominican Navy by Italian civilian instructors who were hired privately. The Italian Govern-
ment is not particularly pleased but did not interfere with this employment. [...] the parallel rumors [is] that
the frogmen are to be used to wreck Venezuelan oil facilities and Venezuelan and Cuban shipping.”
7
Under
the command of Montes Arache and with the help of the Italian instructors, the frogmen quickly gained a
reputation for excellence. In a CIA report on the state of the Dominican Armed Forces, dated February 1961,
it is stated that the Dominican Navy frogmen are “a small, probably effective and possibly elite unit trained by
Italian instructors. It has potential capabilities for clandestine operations in the Caribbean area.”
8
Telegram from the
British Embassy
in Ciudad Trujillo,
May 12, 1960, with
details about the
training of frogmen by
privately hired Italian
instructors.
© Foreign and
Commonwealth Office of
the United Kingdom
Page from a secret
CIA document from
February 1961 about
the state of the
Dominican Armed
Forces, in which the
creation of the elite
unit of frogmen is
mentioned.
© CIA