Biographies

Constitutional President of the Republic (1978-1982). He was born Silvestre Antonio Guzman Fernandez, on February 12, 1911, in La Vega, and died in Santo Domingo, on July 3, 1982. He committed suicide in the National Palace shortly before the conclusion of his administration.

He is the son of Silvestre Guzman Perez and Jimena Fernandez de Castro. He completed his primary and secondary schooling and business studies in La Vega, where he also learned music and became an aficionado of the piccolo. An autodidact, he completed Agronomy studies and field experience practices in the states of Florida and California, in the United States.

He stood out since his youth due to his work abilities and integrity. He was an adolescent when he functioned as the manager of the Curacao Trading Company in the city of Salcedo, position that he held later at the branches in Moca, La Vega, Barahona, San Francisco de Macoris and Santiago. 

In 1939 he married Ms. Renee Klang de Guzman, with whom he had three children.

He stood out as an entrepreneur, with the exportation of Dominican fruits to diverse markets, mainly the United States, and with rice crop in the northwestern region of the Dominican Republic. He was one of the pioneers of the massive harvest of cereal, one of the nutritional elements of greatest consumption in the country.

His incursion in industrial activity took place when he was 37 years old, and founded Productos Dominicanos C. por A.(Dominican Products, J.S.C.) company dedicated to the processing of rice and other products.

In 1963, during the presidential administration of Juan Bosch, he functioned as the Secretary of Agriculture. This appointment, during the government of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), marked his entrance to active political life. When a military coup overthrew President Bosch, Guzman joined the two main organisms of the PRD: the National Executive Committee and the Political Commission.

During the civil war of 1965, he stood out with his proposal, “The Guzman Formula”, which sought the ceasing of hostilities to arrive at free elections. He rejected a proposal to assume the provisional presidency of the Republic, to avoid any harm to popular will, and later, joined the Mediating Commission that ended with the swearing-in ceremony of Dr. Hector Garcia Godoy as the provisional president.

He was nominated for the first time as a PRD presidential candidate in 1974, during a time of great political tension in which the opposition to the government of Joaquin Balaguer closed ranks around the PRD in the “Agreement of Santiago”. Due to the ruling political situation, which did not guarantee respect to the free exercise of suffrage, the coalition withdrew from the elections.

In 1977, the PRD Ninth National Convention chose him as the presidential candidate. Victory took place on May 16, 1978, a period that is considered as a return to democracy. He was inaugurated on August 16, of the same year and immediately gave way to significant changes in the bureaucratic apparatus and military that controlled the country.  With the cancelation of military officials and high rank police officers, he initiated the arduous process of depolitization of the Armed Forces and the National Police Department.

In addition, before the end of his second month in the presidential office, he declared the Law of Amnesty, which allowed the release of hundreds of political prisoners and the return of a number of exiles from the regime of Joaquin Balaguer.

His suicide in the National Palace was linked to internal political disputes within the Dominican Revolutionary Party.