The text deals with the workings and ideology of the Trujillo regime which was able to stay intact for over 30 years, an accomplishment founded on the totalitarian and brutal rule through its namesake. Two aspects caught my interest especially; the way in which the Dominican identity was described as not only fragile but absent in its entirety prior to Trujillo's rule, and his gift giving policies, which absurdly played into the eventual creation of identity and feel of belonging for an entire nation.
Trujillo's explicitely violent tactics and manipulation struck me as so openly controverse that at first it was difficult to grasp the support he seemingly received throughout decades of ruling -- highlighting this passage (Derby 22), however, it becomes clear that Trujillo mastered "a system of domination which was effective because it was able to produce ‘‘practical consent’’ for a terrorist regime."
As the author mentioned, practicality and effectiveness in state and economy directly influenced the process of identity-forming. A certain intimacy between ruler and people, created through gifts that eased the individual's life on a very personal basis, created public "consent" since indebtedness and subconscious gratitude were at that point deeply wired into the nation's mindset. The populist approach, in Trujillo's otherwise pompous aesthetic, served as device to have the people under his rule feel seen albeit in a system of contrasting brutality and surveillance.