Peña Batlier, Manuel Arturo

He was born in the family of a lawyer and landowner of Canary origin, who moved from Cuba due to the difficult domestic political situation. Most of his life in his native San Carlos, which later became the quarter of Santo Domingo.

In 1923 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Santo Domingo with a doctorate.

Even in his youth, he became an opponent of the American occupation of the country, entered the circle of nationalistically minded intellectuals who demanded the return of the military governor and US marines to their homeland. In 1924 he was one of the signatories to the Declaration of Principles of the Nationalist Party. Ideologically, he took the path of understanding Dominican identity as a nation of Latin Americans and Catholics, rejecting any influence of foreign culture.

In January 1929, after the signing of the Vazquez-Borno Treaty, he became the leader of the Dominican working group on the demarcation of the border with Haiti, publicly resigning after General Rafael Trujillo came to power in 1930.

At first he distanced himself from the Trujillo regime, but in 1942 he delivered a speech praising the Trujillo Hall Treaty, the signing of which meant the financial independence of the Dominican Republic from the United States. Soon he became a significant figure in the Trujillo government and laid the ideological foundations for the regime. His nationalist ideology was crucial in maintaining a firm stance on Haiti.

From 1942 to 1943, he was deputy governor of the province of San Pedro de Macoris and headed the House of Deputies of the Dominican Republic.

In 1943-1946 served as Minister of Foreign Affairs. In this post, he achieved a radical change in foreign policy, moving from isolationism to active interaction of the country with other countries, to increase the role of the Dominican Republic in the international arena. Then, in order to normalize relations between the two countries, the leaders of the Dominican Republic and Haiti decided to raise the status of relations by appointing the heads of foreign affairs agencies as ambassadors.

In 1950, he was appointed Minister of the Interior and the Police, then became Minister of Public Works and Development. In 1952 he was accused of complicity in a conspiracy against Trujillo and subjected to humiliating interrogations.

After his death in 1954, a funeral was organized at the government level, and it was decided to name one of the streets of Santo Domingo in his honor.

He was a full member of the Academy of Historical Sciences of the Dominican Republic. He was one of the creators of the Trujillo collection.

• “For Piedas Ilyustres” (1925)
• "The History of Dominican Public Debt" (1926)
• "Historical and sociological background of the annexation of Spain" (1929)
• "The discovery of America and its relationship with the international politics of the era" (1931)
• The Devastations of 1605 and 1606 (1938)
• The Transformation of Political Thought (1942)
• “Contribution to the Campaign” (1942)
• The Meaning of Politics (1943)
• “Political Constitution and Constitutional Reforms” (1944)
• The Trujillo Collection (1944)
• “The History of the Dominican-Haitian Border Question” (1946)
• The New Homeland (1948)
• The Rise of Baoruko (1948)
• The History of Tortu Island (1951)
• The Basel Treaty and the Denationalization of Santo Domingo (1952)
• The Politics of Trujillo (1952)
• The Origin of the Haitian State (Posthumous Edition, 1954)

• González de Peña, Raymundo Manuel (2007). "Peña Batlle, historiador nacional." Clío (Academia Dominicana de la Historia) (174): 160-165. Consultado el 1 de julio de 2016.
• https://web.archive.org/web/20160627194617/http://www.camaradediputados.gob.do/app/cd_expresidentes_det.aspx?id=992
• https://web.archive.org/web/20160627193613/http://www.educando.edu.do/articulos/docente/manuel-arturo-pea-batlle