peña gomez

Francisco Peña Gómez (1937-1998) was the leader of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), a three-time candidate for president of the Dominican Republic and former Mayor of Santo Domingo. He is considered, along with Joaquín Balaguer and Juan Bosch, as one of the most prominent Dominican political figures of the 20th century.

Dr. José Francisco Peña Gómez
Contents[hide]
1 Early Life
2 The April Civil War and Exile
3 Leadership of the P.R.D.
4 Last years
5 See also
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[edit] Early Life
Born to poor immigrants from Haiti on March 6, 1937 in Mao, Valverde, Dominican Republic, Peña Gómez was adopted as an infant by a Dominican peasant family when his parents were forced to flee to Haiti as the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo unleashed the small holocaust against Haitians that same year. The family raised Peña Gómez as their own child, and gave him their name. In one of the ironies that marked his public life and illustrated his appeal to the poor, Peña Gomez's running mate in 1994 turned out to be none other than Fernando Alvarez Bogaert, scion of the family that owned the ranch where he was raised.
As a result of his upbringing, Peña Gomez relied on his voracious intellectual appetite to supplement a tenuous early education. At 8, he worked in a grocery store and at a bar, and by the time he was a teenager, he had taken jobs as a shoemaker's and a barber's apprentice.
At 15, he became an instructor in a literacy program for poor children in his native province and later worked as a teacher in rural and night schools. By 1960, he had moved to Santo Domingo, where he enrolled in a broadcasting course and proved so natural a talent that a radio station quickly hired him to announce baseball games and other sports events.
Peña Gómez received a doctorate at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) in 1966 before going on to higher studies at the Sorbonne in Paris.

[edit] The April Civil War and Exile
Since 1961, Peña Gómez became a supporter of Juan Bosch, then leader of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). Bosch won the presidential elections of 1962, the first democratic president in 32 years, but his government was ousted in a military coup on September 25, 1963. In 1965, Peña rose to political prominence as he went on Radio Santo Domingo and called for a popular insurrection against the military coup and a return of Bosch. U. S. President Lyndon Johnson ordered a military invasion to prevent what he feared was a possible communist movement within the country. However, Peña Gómez used used his oratorical skills to the streets and the airwaves to head the opposition to that intervention. At the end, a forced negotiation led to Joaquin Balaguer's becoming president and the PRD's being cast into the political wilderness for the next 12 years. Repression was intense throughout that period.
Taking refuge in France, Peña Gómez studied political science and constitutional and labor law for two years at the University of Paris. Earlier, he had studied political science in courses at Harvard University and Michigan State University. In exile, he also was involved in efforts to obtain international condemnation of human rights violations in the Dominican Republic, forging relationships with groups that were important for the rest of his life.

[edit] Leadership of the P.R.D.
Prior to 1973, Juan Bosch and Peña Gómez had a falling out that resulted in Bosch's breaking with the party that he had founded and setting up a new one. In December, Bosch left to form the Dominican Liberation Party (P.L.D.). Under Peña's leadership, the P.R.D. won the presidential election in 1978 (Antonio Guzmán) and 1982 (Salvador Jorge Blanco), and he himself was Mayor of Santo Domingo from 1982 to 1986. This position automatically made him a strong contender for the presidency. But his party passed him by in 1986, with some of its leaders arguing that it would be impossible for a black man, especially one of Haitian descent, to become president. Thus, some argue that he did not support the PRD candidate Jacobo Majluta, when fraud allegations were made against Joaquín Balaguer, who returned to power against all odds.
In 1990, he won the nomination. With a severly weakened party, Peña ran for the presidency, coming in third behind Balaguer of the Social Christian Reformist Party (PRSC) and Bosch of the PLD.
By 1994, the PRD was as strong as ever. The presidential campaign was violent and dirty, and Peña lost to Balaguer in an extremely tight election marred by strong irregularities and fraud. Peña called a general strike which was widely supported by his followers and after international protest and intense negotiations, Balaguer announced that he would leave office prematurely in 1996 after serving seven terms in power.
In the 1996 poll, Peña won the first round of voting but fell short of the majority needed. In the second round of voting, Leonel Fernández, a lawyer representing the PLD, won a narrow victory due to an alliance between the PLD and the PRSC.

[edit] Last years
Peña first bout with pancreatic cancer followed soon after 1994. But the disease went into remission after treatment in the United States. Shortly thereafter, the cancer reappeared, and Peña Gómez spent most of the rest of his life shuttling back and forth between Santo Domingo and New York, where he underwent medical treatment. He finally passed away on May 10, 1998 in Cambita Garabitos, San Cristóbal, 10 days before the mayoral elections of Santo Domingo, in which he was running. Surviving are his wife, Peggy Cabral, and eight children and stepchildren.
Peña Gómez was the most popular leader in recent political history in Dominican Republic, and most beloved especially by the poor masses. At the time of his death, with his admirers converging on Santo Domingo from all corners of the country, the Dominican government had to agree that his body would be displayed at the national baseball stadium to accommodate the huge crowds that were expected.