Johnny Abbes García

Johnny Abbes García (1924, Santo Domingo – 1967, Haiti) was the chief of the governmental intelligence office – the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (Military Intelligence Service) – during the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. A man of violence and a murderer, he ruled under Trujillo during the end of his era, and later served Duvalier in Haiti.

Rise to power

Abbes was born in 1924 in Santo Domingo, the son of a German American accountant and a Dominican woman. As a young man he was interested in sports, and one of his first jobs was as a sports reporter. In the mid-fifties, he moved to Mexico, where he worked as an official in the Dominican embassy. He started to gather information on anti-Trujillo dissidents and relayed this information to the island. Abbes also studied the technical aspects of spying and intelligence gathering. In 1956 he returned to the Dominican Republic and, after Trujillo's half-brother Nene introduced him to the dictator, quickly rose to power.