# Palma Sola Massacre (1962)

URL: https://allhistories.com/dominican-republic/timeline/1962-palma-sola-massacre
Location: Las Matas de Farfán, Dominican Republic
Themes: main-event

In the San Juan valley of the south-west, a popular religious movement had grown up around the memory of Olivorio Mateo, known as Papá Liborio, a peasant healer and prophet killed by US Marines in 1922. After Trujillo's death, followers led by the brothers León and Plinio Ventura Rodríguez gathered at Palma Sola, near Las Matas de Farfán, where thousands of pilgrims came to pray, seek healing and await a promised redemption. Politicians, the press and the Church portrayed the community as fanatical and potentially subversive, and rumours spread that it was linked to Trujillo loyalists. On 28 December 1962, eight days after the election, troops and police surrounded the site. General Miguel Félix Rodríguez Reyes was killed in confused circumstances, and the security forces opened fire and burned the settlement. Official figures gave dozens of dead; other estimates run into the hundreds. The Palma Sola massacre was one of the bloodiest episodes of the post-Trujillo transition and has been described as an act of repression against poor rural believers. It remains a subject of investigation, commemoration and debate in Dominican historiography and folk religion. At this point in the timeline (28 December 1962), the Council of State were Council of State (Bonnelly) (18 January 1962 – 27 February 1963).

## Why it matters
Palma Sola showed the persistence of state violence after Trujillo and the vulnerability of the rural poor and their popular religious traditions.

Ruler at the Time: [Council of State (Bonnelly)](https://allhistories.com/dominican-republic/rulers/council-of-state-1962)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Palma Sola massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palma_Sola_massacre)
- [Wikipedia — Olivorio Mateo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivorio_Mateo)
- [Wikipedia (es) — Masacre de Palma Sola](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masacre_de_Palma_Sola)
- [Wikipedia — Bosch, Civil War And Balaguer (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Civil_War)