Jacobo Majluta Azar

Jacobo Majluta Azar (9 October 1934 – 2 March 1996) was Vice President of the Dominican Republic from 16 August 1978 to 4 July 1982. He was one of the generations of politicians in the Dominican Republic whose ambition was continually thwarted by the country's labyrinthine power struggles and sectarianism. Biography Born in 1934 into a merchant family of Lebanese origin, Majluta studied finance at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo before working as an accountant in the banking and state sectors. He married Ana Elisa Villanueva on April 17, 1962. The couple had one daughter, Consuelo Elena. Majluta joined the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) in 1961, in the wake of the dictator Leonidas Trujillo's assassination, and rose quickly, becoming the youngest minister in Juan Bosch's short-lived government of 1963. He was Minister of Finance. When it was overthrown by a military coup later that year, Majluta went into exile, returning to rebuild his political career and winning the PRD's vice-presidential nomination for the 1978 elections. In power, Majluta was out of sympathy with the PRD's more radical social-democratic wing. As head of CORDE, one of the large state-sector companies, he was also allegedly involved in corruption, although charges were never proven. His real concern, however, was to beat off the challenge of rival caudillos or strongmen within the PRD, and this struggle dominated the rest of his career.