The luxurious dictator's houses Rafael Leónidas Trujillo who were abandoned in the Dominican Republic

More than six decades later, the residence that awaited the Dominican leader, once a symbol of opulence and power, continues standing, but in ruins.

His possible future, like that of other houses that belonged to Trujillo and that are abandoned today, divides opinions in the Dominican Republic.

A committee formed this August by representatives of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, the Duarte Institute and other citizen entities of the province of San Cristóbal, believes that, at least the house of Caoba, it must be converted into a museum of history of the region and democratic teaching.

This is also the opinion of the Dominican Ministry of Culture, and President Luis Abinader himself, who in 2024 spoke of promoting an initiative of this nature.

“Since the beginning of my management, I wanted the population to know the murders committed by Trujillo and when talking about a museum about this character I was criticized,” said the president last year, according to local media.

“However, I consider that it is necessary for people to know the atrocities that the population lived from 1930 to 1961,” he added.

While organizations such as the Dominican Resistance Memorial Museum and the International Museum Council believe that restoring the place, instead of demolishing it, would be to raise it to “National Heritage”, which would create a permanent memory about the eccentricities of the tyrant and not a questioning of its figure.

This dilemma, says architecture and heritage experts interviewed by BBC Mundo, reflects how Trujillo's memory still influences Dominican society.

While it is solved, it keeps the house of mahogany and other residences that belonged to the regime and the land where they are located.

During his extensive dictatorship, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo had multiple residences throughout the country, although it is complicated to accounts for precision.

And it is that the president used public goods as if they were his property.

“The line between the public and the private was almost imperceptible” under the regime, says Professor and Architect José Enrique Delmonte, who investigates the relationship between power and architecture in the era of Trujillo.

The expert adds that the number of houses and their geographical distribution intended to show that the ruler “had a permanent power in each community.”

However, in recent years, the constructions that cause a public debate are the three located in the province of San Cristóbal: La Casa de Caoba, Hacienda María and Ivory House, the last two in front of the beach.

All are surrounded by weeds, despised, lacking doors and windows or their inner decoration.

According to Delmonte, during the dictatorship “there was a clear link between the personality of Trujillo and the architecture that represented his regime.”

The buildings were characterized by their “magnificence, majesty, austerity and robustness.”

“The slogan of the single party – rectitude, freedom, work and morality – can be read in the most emblematic buildings of the totalitarian regime that Trujillo headed,” he says.

But the buildings in question, highlights the architect Carlos Báez, former president of the Society of Architects of the Dominican Republic and author of the book “Trujillo in 500 tweets”, which talks about public works built during the dictator's mandate, have “design styles mixed incoherently.”

And he adds that, although they reflect their ostentatious character, “it has no valid value or valid architectural expression.”

Even so, he believes that they could be reformed or transformed to comply with various uses, as happened with other properties when trujillismo fell and became owned by the State.

For example, the Ramfis stay and the Radamés Treasury, both in Santo Domingo, became the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Plaza de la Cultura respectively.

While the castle of the hill, a fourth property built in San Cristóbal that belonged to Trujillo, is in the present a school to train prison guards.

“Those who still remain without a certain use should be integrated into public services or academic institutions. After all, they were good -level buildings in their design and construction that are necessary for so many uses that the country requires,” says Delmonte.

In July, local media stressed that the Pro Museos Committee – which is part of the group that seeks to restore the Casa Casa – asked the Abinader Government to carry out budgetary assignments to convert the building into a “modern Museum dedicated to the conservation, investigation and exhibition of the rich history of San Cristóbal, since its foundation in the era of the colony to the present.”

They indicated that the enclosure would have permanent and temporary exhibition rooms, in addition to interactive audiovisual spaces, according to the newspaper Listín Diario.

Gamal Michelen, Deputy Minister of Cultural Heritage of the Dominican Republic, supports the restoration of residences. Although he did not offer more details, he said that as soon as in 2026 the Ministry of Culture of the Caribbean country could advance projects of this nature.

“You have to restore those properties, because the story is the one that happened, not what one would like to happen,” he said in an interview with BBC Mundo.

“I see them as heritage. I would have wanted that in this country I would not have lived a dictatorship, but it happened,” he added.

The government has not assigned funds for the works, but the official believes that, at least for the mahogany house, about US $ 1 million would be needed.

For Luisa de Peña, of the Dominican Resistance Memorial Museum (MMRD), the Casa Casa “should be demolished.”

“What is the meaning of these properties? They symbolize the opprobrium, sexual abuse and theft,” he says.

In the case of the Casa de Caoba, if it becomes a museum institution, the experience of children or students who inevitably visit it will be marked by the possible admiration towards the life forms of Trujillo, especially since many Dominicans lack their own home, said De Peña.

He also stressed that a museum elevates a space to cultural heritage, so they are held in “where an event occurred that should be commemorated”, such as the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum, in Poland, which was a concentration camp and now remembers the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

The MMRD, however, is not against a center on governance and democratic rights where the mahogany house is located, only that it is opposed to the original structure.

The architect Báez defends that he remains standing, but with a “iconoclasta” proposal, that “destroys what exists without demolishing it.”

“But I would never make a museum, because they tend to create recall myths. It could be, for example, an artistic manifestations center,” he said.

Both agreed that the Hacienda María could be a “commemoration” enclosure, because there were killed six of the seven men who planned the death of Trujillo.

They died with bullets at the hands of Ramfis Trujillo, son of the dictator.

While the Ivory House, which is, like the mahogany house, a construction of the time without remarkable elements, it could be a home for the elderly, women victims of abuse or other teaching center, they commented.

When he was in power, Trujillo censored the opposition, established a unique party, he ordered crimes such as the Perejil massacre – in which he ordered to kill thousands of Haitians – and the murder of the Mirabal sisters, activists who opposed his government.

He also encouraged a cult of his personality, even changing the name of the country's capital to Ciudad Trujillo.

In recent years, said Báez, extreme right groups in the country drive historical revisionism and try to “clean their memory.”

They allege, with false arguments, that some of their decisions, such as the slaughter of Haitians in 1937, responded to a need for “national security,” said the architect.

“They want to make us see that it was not so bad.”

After his death, in the Dominican Republic there was no truth commission, and the majority of those responsible for the crimes under his mandate did not face justice.

One of his former collaborators, Joaquín Balaguer, came to preside over the country three times.

“Some of the victims of his dictatorship are still alive,” says Peña.

“His memory is a shadow that prevents our development. There are those who want to live on their backs to a reality that weighs like a backpack of stones,” he continues.

Therefore, Delmonte insisted, any decision on the houses of Trujillo must be carried out with the intention of “strengthening the democratic spirit.”

“The materiality of architecture and its power of representation is immense and sometimes, uncontrolled. Let's not forget that the building is a resource of adhesion and memory that has accompanied political systems throughout history,” he said.

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