Ulises Heureaux

Ulises Hilarión Heureaux Leibert (; October 21, 1845 – July 26, 1899) nicknamed Lilís, was president of the Dominican Republic from September 1, 1882 to September 1, 1884, from January 6, 1887 to February 27, 1889 and again from April 30, 1889 maintaining power between his terms.

Heureaux ruled the Dominican Republic as a dictator. Ulises's mother Josefa Leibert was born on the island of Saint Thomas. His father was Haitian mulatto and his mother was African. In the period following this restoration of independence, when revolutions were an annual occurrence, Heureaux emerged as one of the principal leaders of the Partido Azul. He had his own secret telegraph code, publicly documented comparatively recently, that he used to control his troops and police.

During the last two decades of the 19th century, sugar surpassed tobacco as the country's main export, as a result of an influx of Cuban sugar planters following the Ten Years' War. Lilís granted them large tracts of land in the southeastern coastal plain, where they built the nation's first mechanized sugar mills. His dictatorship undertook many ambitious projects to modernize the country, including the electrification of Santo Domingo, the construction of a bridge over the Ozama River, and the initiation of inland rail service on a single-track line linking Santiago to Puerto Plata.

Political demise and assassination

In order to enrich himself and his supporters, strengthen the bribe system, pay for the army, help set up sugar mills and finance infrastructural development, Lilís borrowed heavily from European and American banks, even as sugar prices underwent a steep decline. In 1888, he took out a loan of three-quarters of a million pounds sterling from the Amsterdam banking house Westendorp. The Westendorp Company went bankrupt in 1892, after its agent revealed fraud in the Customs Service, where Heureaux arranged preferential tariff treatment for some of his domestic creditors. A consortium of New York businessmen calling themselves the San Domingo Improvement Co. bought out Westendorp, taking over the claims of its European bondholders, in exchange for two loans, one of $1.2 million and the other of £2 million, to fund the countries external debt, to be secured with a lien over the nations customs fees. As the mounting public debt made it impossible to maintain his political machine, Heureaux increasingly relied on secret loans from the San Domingo Improvement Co., sugar planters and local merchants.

In 1897, with the country on the brink of bankruptcy, Lilís was reduced to printing five million dollars' worth of unsecured paper money, known as papaletas de Lilís, ruining many of the country's merchants. This helped trigger a new revolt among the Cibaeño tobacco planters and merchants, leading to his assassination in Moca on 26 July 1899. By the time of his death, the national debt exceeded $35 million, fifteen times the annual budget.

During his time in office, the country's economy came largely under the control of the United States. Upon his death, it was revealed that he had taken many secret loans from foreign banks for personal enrichment. The government declared bankruptcy, the economy crumbled and the American military intervened.