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Updated: June 20, 2025
The new governors of the Cibao were Jimenistas, but most of the appointments Morales made in the south were Horacistas, and it began to be suspected among the Jimenez followers that he had designs on the presidency. When Jimenez arrived in Santiago he realized that his ambitions were again endangered and he and his friends grew restless.
On the death of Heureaux, Juan Isidro Jimenez, as president, and Horacio Vasquez, as vice-president, came into power. The rivalry between Jimenez and Vasquez caused a division between their respective followers, who called themselves Jimenistas and Horacistas, thus forming the principal parties which continue to the present time.
The best of these was the "Restauracion," which went on the rocks at the entrance to Macoris harbor in one of the first conflicts between the Jimenistas and Horacistas. The story goes that the steamer was about to attack Macoris, that the pilot, in sympathy with the opposition, grounded her with a view to having her captured, but that a sudden storm drove her to complete destruction.
The Horacistas distrusted him and forced him to dismiss his friends from the cabinet and to make distasteful appointments. Seeing that he was being reduced to a figurehead, Morales secretly tried to form a party for himself or make arrangements with the Jimenistas who for months had been conspiring and threatening to rise.
They were for the most part Jimenistas and "Lilicistas," or members of the old Heureaux party, and their candidate for the presidency would probably have been Jimenez; but in Jimenez' absence the presidency was offered to Figuereo and others, who declined, and was finally accepted by Alejandro Woss y Gil, who had only the week before been liberated from the same political prison.
Discontent grew general, and by the end of October, 1903, General Carlos F. Morales, governor of Puerto Plata, raised the standard of revolt and his troops marched on the capital. The revolution was supported by both parties, the Jimenistas and Horacistas, and was known as the "war of the union."
The friction became more severe until Morales, fearing that both his office and his life were in danger, on the day before Christmas, 1905, fled from the capital, while the Jimenistas rose in Monte Cristi and marched down to attack Santiago and Puerto Plata. It was the anomalous spectacle of a president leading an insurrection against his own government.
Each of the chiefs collected a group of friends about him and in this way originated the still existing political parties, Jimenistas and Horacistas, the respective followers of Jimenez and Horacio Vasquez. Several minor uprisings occurred but were suppressed by the government.
His designation did not please the Jimenistas, and the Horacistas also became hostile when it appeared that President Bordas contemplated forming a party of his own. His opponents promptly rose in the Cibao and took possession of the ports of Puerto Plata, Sanchez and Samana, which were thereupon blockaded by the government forces.
The government, or what remains of it under the present military occupation, is still constituted largely by followers of Jimenez and Velazquez. Though both Jimenistas and Horacistas claim to have the larger following in the country in general, it is probable that they are about equally matched, the Velazquistas holding the balance of power.
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