A resonant thought after reading The Feast of the Goat is the remarkable similarity of the characteristics and crimes of autocratic regimes. Trujillo's accomplishment was reducing the citizenry of the Dominican Republic to a state where -- in the view of Mario Vargas Llosa -- their only remaining hope of dignity was to die nobly. That horrendous state was the hallmark of all the worst regimes of the 20th century (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Pinochet, Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko, P.W. Botha -- the list is shamefully long, and this assembly is under-inclusive).
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