Ramfis Trujillo - Early Life

Early Life

Though Ramfis's paternity was a legitimately recognized by his father, it was rumored at the time that La Españolita (as María Martínez was affectionately called before she met Trujillo) conceived Ramfis with a Cuban man named Rafael Dominicis, who then disappeared (some say killed). The story goes that Dominicis was María Martínez's lover before she met Trujillo, thus explaining why Ramfis' physical features are more Caucasian than Trujillo's who was of part African descent from his grandmother's side. Some others say that the Cuban man was her first husband.

Jesús Galíndez in his famous book La Era de Trujillo testifies to the following:

"Ramfis", Rafael L. Trujillo Molina, Jr., the oldest son of Trujillo, was born in 1929 when his mother was married to a Cuban, who rejected him as his son. Subsequently, Trujillo recognized him as his own. While still an illegitimate child by an adulterous union and with his father still married to his second wife, (...). In 1935 Trujillo married the mother of "Ramfis", Maria Martinez Alba, and (he) became legitimized."

By the age 14, his father had made him a colonel, with equivalent pay and privileges. Some say he received this appointment aged just four and that he had become a brigadier general by the age of nine.

In the early 1950s, he married his first wife, Octavia Ricart, who bore him six children.

In the mid 1950s, he was sent to study at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. While there, and with Rubirosa as his liaison, Ramfis skipped class and took off for Hollywood. He had affairs with several Hollywood starlets, most notably with Kim Novak. Ramfis became notorious for buying luxury cars, mink coats, and jewelry for beautiful girls during his stay. Ramfis's flashy gift-giving made the national news and members of the United States Congress were openly questioned by the press about what real use was being made of foreign aid given to the Dominican Republic. At one point a bumper sticker began appearing on the cars of girls in Los Angeles that read: "THIS CAR WAS NOT A GIFT FROM RAMFIS TRUJILLO".

Since his attendance at the military school was erratic at best, he was denied his diploma after completion. This fact greatly infuriated, and at the same time, humiliated his father.

When he returned home, his wife Octavia filed for divorce. His unruly behavior, including gang rapes of young women and frivolously ordering murders, forced his father to send him to a sanatorium in Belgium. Ramfis apparently suffered from psychological problems, possibly the result of the pressure that his father constantly placed on him, as he intended to remake him into an image of his father. Dominican historian Bernardo Vega has documented Ramfis's history of mental hospital stays, and Robert Crassweller also wrote about it in his Trujillo's biography. Ramfis received electroshock treatments in Belgium as early as 1958; there were also stays in mental hospitals after that.

Not long after all this, he moved to Paris to resume his socialite lifestyle. Many of these actions have most historians convinced that Ramfis never wanted to be a ruler like his father and that he just wanted to live the carefree and bon vivant life of a playboy, shunning any sort of responsibility. Lita Milan (née Iris Lia Menshell) became his second official wife during these years. She was an American of Hungarian immigrant parents, who had a short but relatively successful film career in Hollywood, most notably in The Left Handed Gun, opposite Paul Newman. Because of her black hair and dark good looks, Lita was often cast as Latino and Native American girls. They had two children.