Después de Trujillo

Narrated by Dominicans, Después de Trujillo tells the story of the violent dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo through the marks it left on the landscape. A mix of interviews, archival materials, and new footage, tracks the regime’s quests to tame the nation, and surveys sites where past trauma lives on. Myriad voices—from historians and architects, to activists and torture victims—guide this journey through monuments, memory gardens, and contemporary ruins, moving from the cyclone that devastated Santo Domingo as Trujillo came to power through to the modern architecture erected to consolidate his rule, and the testimonies of resistance that led to his demise. Amid the remanents of dictatorship that live on after Trujillo, questions arise as to how Dominicans manage this violent legacy. Can built environments and natural ecologies attest to the experience of dictatorship? Or, do they help it to be forgotten instead?