played a notorious part in the political life of Havana, being recognized as a promoter of social legislation and author of the speech pronounced by President Carlos Prío Socarrás when the body of José Martí was transferred to Santiago de Cuba. When Fulgencio Batista led a coup d'état against Prío Socarrás and took over the presidency in 1952, Bosch was jailed by Batista's forces. After being liberated, he left Cuba and headed to Costa Rica, where he dedicated his time to pedagogical tasks, and to his activities as leader of the PRD. Molasses tycoon Jacob Merrill Kaplan earned his fortune primarily through operations in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The J.M. Kaplan Fund was found in a 1964 Congressional investigation to be a conduit for funneling CIA money to Latin America, including through the Institute of International Labor Research (IILR) headed by Norman Thomas, six-time Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. These funds were used in Latin America by José Figueres Ferrer, Sacha Volman, and Juan Bosch. Via the Fund, the CIA gave Figueres money to publish a political journal, Combate, and to found a left-wing school for Latin American opposition leaders. Funds passed from a shell foundation to the Kaplan Fund, next to the IILR, and finally to Figueres and Bosch. In 1959 the Cuban Revolution took place, led by Fidel Castro, causing a major political, economic and social upheaval in the Caribbean island. Cord Meyer, a CIA official, was chief of International Organizations Division, a CIA-sponsored group for promoting democracy in international groups. He used the contacts with Bosch, Volman, and Figueres for a new purpose – as the United States moved to rally the hemisphere against Cuba's Fidel Castro, Rafael Trujillo, the strongman caudillo that ran the Dominican Republic for 30 years had become a liability. The United States needed to demonstrate that it opposed all dictators, not just those on the left. Bosch accurately perceived the process that had begun from those events and wrote a letter to Trujillo, dated 27 February 1961. He told Trujillo that his political role, in historical terms, had concluded in the Dominican Republic. For over a year, the CIA had been in contact with dissidents inside the Dominican Republic who argued that assassination was the only certain way to remove Trujillo. According to Chester Bowles, the Undersecretary of State, internal Department of State discussions in 1961 on the