UN General Assembly
1961

6. After the fall of the man who for thirty years personified the Dominican State, we established in our country a regime which is based on the rule of law and which has gradually been modelling its institutions on the pattern of representative democracy. Instead of the single party, as we find in countries where political activity is reduced to directives handed down by a totalitarian authority, various competing parties have emerged, parties in which the divergent ideals and desires of the Dominican people have at last found expression, Fundamental civil rights, without which freedom and civil order are inconceivable, have been extended to all citizens who now, after thirty-one years of political obscurantism, freely exercise their constitutional rights and privileges. The iron curtain which encircled the island, and through which independent opinion could scarcely filter, has been lifted, and the right to travel freely has been accorded to three million people who were virtually cut off from international political life and from world civilization.