Mario Antonio Read Vittini was born in Hatillo, near San Cristóbal, on 15 May 1926. From his father, he descends from William Augustus Read (1820–1887), an American immigrant from
Roxbury, Massachusetts, of English and French descent, who married Dominga Rodríguez Isambert, a Dominican of partial French origin. His mother has Corsican ancestry. Read Vittini became a
Doctor of Law in 1948. On 10 June 1952 he became First Secretary for Embassies and Legations. In 1960 he sought
political asylum in the Brazilian embassy and received asylum from the United States and exiled in New York, where he married Carmen Virginia Escobar. He returned to the Dominican Republic after the death of dictator
Rafael Trujillo and became the vice presidential candidate of the
Democratic Revolutionary Nationalistic Party (Partido Nacionalista Revolucionario Democrático) in the
1962 Dominican Republic general election, despite he co-founded in that year the
Social Christian Reformist Party (PRSC). He favoured the coup against
Juan Bosch in September 1963. During the Triumvirate, Read Vittini served as Secretary (Minister) of the Presidency. By 1966 the PRSC had split into three factions and Read Vittini was the leader of one of them: the right-wing party
Christian Democratic Party (PDC), which supported
Joaquín Balaguer in the
1966 election, but Read declared himself in opposition to Balaguer early in 1968. Read served as
Ambassador from the Dominican Republic to the United States from 1969 to 1970. He later served as Legal consultant of the Executive Branch from 1986 until 1988, when he was designated Secretary (Minister) of Labour. He also served as the Dominican representative at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and as
Governor of the
Central Bank of the Dominican Republic from 18 August 1993 to 31 August 1994 with Eligio Bisonó Bisonó as his deputy governor. Read died from
pancreatic cancer on 20 July 2010, aged 84, at his home in Evaristo Morales,
Ensanche Quisqueya, in the city of
Santo Domingo. ==Family tree==