Bosch and Balaguer: Dominican Roulette
Plastrik, Stanley
A FIERCE STRUGGLE is being played out in the Dominican Republic, a struggle for power. It may be argued that this is a well-known game in Latin America, as indeed it is. But here the...
...L L ET US EXAMINE the following political scenario, admittedly one among others, but with a stronger likelihood than others of being realized...
...Neither may be considered apart...
...The oligarchic caste needed Trujillo, on other occasions it needed the officers, today it needs Balaguer—it reigns, yet does not rule...
...Apparently, this refers to the anarcho-syndicalist leader of Barcelona in the early days of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), who was later allegedly slain by the Stalinists while taking part in the defense of Madrid...
...But the 1970 quota is 10 percent lessthan that of 1969, signifying that the country mustsell over half its sugar elsewhere (in Europe) atwhatever price it can obtain...
...Bosch received 500,000 in 1966...
...I foresee a speed-up of land reform and the creation of many new thousands of small peasant-proprietorship families...
...The classic ingredients that make up this poverty are familiar throughout the Caribbean: high unemployment, high illiteracy (50 percent), a landless agricultural class, consisting of 68 percent of the total agricultural population, 7 a steady migration of peasants to Santo Domingo and the country's few other large centers to swell the barrios (Santo Domingo grows at a rate of 8 percent annually...
...I share the view of Professor Wiarda (DISSENT, November—December 1969) that "It is extremely presumptuous for affluent North Americans to tell a people living in misery, starvation, oppression, and frustration that STANLEY PLASTRIK they should be patient, that they must wait and sacrifice now for a distant and uncertain future...
...There is, it goes without saying, a 20-30 percent export-import imbalance each year...
...On the positive side, there is no serious problem of racism, despite Trujillo's effort to "whiten" the population...
...They are the exploited and the poor, urban and rural...
...But here the difference is that at least one of the players, Juan Bosch, leader of the PRD (Partido Revolucionario Dominicano), formerly one of a group of Latin-American democrats with socialist convictions and now a militant revolutionary, has a considerable basis of support among the urban and rural masses in his country...
...In my view, he would like to forge a tough alliance between his party (elitist leadership, professionals, and intellectuals of the new Dominican society) and the "progressive," younger officers of the Dominican military...
...But the story is not yet over...
...What would you have the PRD do...
...It easily outdistanced its rivals on the Left, the Dominican Communist party (PSP—Partido Socialista Popular), and the more dramatic fidelista movement, the MPD (Movimiento Popular Dominicano...
...It broke cleanly with any notion of appealing to or forming an alliance with any forces in the United States...
...He draws freely from a variety of sources and, perhaps unavoidably, the narrow framework of Dominican life tends to simplify much of his thinking...
...In searching for means of defend ing his regime he fears the Right far more than the Left...
...I am inclined to agree that he has something different in mind...
...There is no sign Bosch has fired the Dominican people with his slogan...
...Social Security program...
...hence, they take to the streets during the day, but warily desert them at night...
...STANLEY PLASTRIK final shots and the rat-a-tat of the automatic weapons...
...With two requirements: first, economic growth, demanding a degree of tranquility, an end to the atmosphere of potential violence and actual threat bordering upon adventurism...
...This strain of revolutionary thought is, of course, quite familiar in Latin America, although its influence has long been on the wane...
...This half-serious proposition was scornfully turned down by Bosch and others for, as Pena Gomez, the second leader of the PRD, said, "How can we join a government that STANLEY PLASTRIK shoots down our people...
...The operational word is "dictatorship," and Latin Americans have centuries of experience with it...
...The abstract, often commonplace arguments used by both men, one on behalf of formal and parliamentary democracy, the other rejecting representative forms of elective government, are of little immediate consequence...
...It is the veiled threats, the hints of violence or extraparliamentary ac tion that count...
...but it will also resist efforts to upset its political hegemony in the Caribbean, particularly if such efforts are linked up with another power (Cuba...
...second, Bosch's understanding that top priority should go to economic development as a preliminary to social change...
...What then is Bosch after with his slogan of "dictatorship with popular support...
...Dictatorship" in their minds is associated with violence and terror...
...Balaguer, who served Trujillo in a variety of important posts during the 31 years of the dictatorship, is reputed to know intimately every important family on the island, each man's interests, price, and limits...
...Finally, and most important, because the Dominican people themselves are fed up with violence, coups, civil strife, bloodshed, they will not massively back any party whose slogans and action appear to take for granted the inevitability of violence...
...We would see then a political alliance of radical middle class and radicalized officer class, cemented by the PRD's institutions and common sentiments of nationalism...
...The spirit of intense nationalism could inspire such an alliance...
...Such is the stuff of Dominican politics...
...The military-industrial alliance of the Northern colossus operates inexorably, proceeds according to fixed responses, and cannot be influenced except by force...
...Nor were those who succeeded the Spaniards —the English, the French, and, finally, the North Americans any more worthy...
...But today Bosch's PRD offers a program drawn from a new set of ideas...
...The inability of Dominican society to come to terms with its Trujillist past is shown at the scene of the assassination itself...
...The Dominican Republic is not large, nor is it particularly fertile...
...Consulate office for a visa...
...In short, a representative democracy cannot exist unless it is accepted that the will of the people, expressed freely, legitimately, and honestly, is the very essence of the system...
...At the end of the road lies prestige and power or arrest, exile, and, conceivably, assassination...
...From his writings one could not say he is an original or major political theoretician...
...If this is true, then the basis for a limited modus operandi exists—practical, concrete, nonideological...
...Under the American quota system, 464,316 tons will go to the U.S...
...Victor Serge's Birth of Our Power, Ramon Sender's Seven Red Sundays, or the chapter entitled "Millenarianism II: The Andalusian Anarchists" in E. J. Hobsbawm's Primitive Rebels...
...the history of anarchism, almost alone among modem social movements, is one of unrelieved failure...
...more accurately, the Catalonian school around STANLEY PLASTRIK the turn of the century,' the classical tradition graphically described in early novels of Victor Serge...
...This alone lifts the Dominican struggle above the usual level of rival caudillos jousting for personal power...
...BOSCH AND BALAGUER: DOMINICAN ROULETTE 2. Can Balaguer be pushed, and how much and in what direction...
...Full guarantees for freedom of expression...
...Since we know that all underdeveloped countries are primary exporters, it follows that H. Myint's generalization to the effect that "It is now generally assumed that the expansion of primary exports is highly unlikely ever to provide a satisfactory basis of continuous economic growth for the underdeveloped countries," holds true for the Dominican Republic as wells The present economic path leads into the rut of backwardness, dependency, and stagnation...
...This represents 90 percent of the sugar crop...
...Being white is a profession...
...the standards of living and productivity are both low...
...The U.S...
...In turn, "Pentagonism" is so built into the American economic and political system that it makes no difference who heads the government or which party is in power...
...9 Sugar production for the first trimester of 1970 has attained the record tonnage of 514,858, as compared with 442,521 tons of cane cut in the first trimester of the previous record year of 1961...
...a top-heavy armed force that, in 1963, had a total of 17,200 men (12,000 in the army, 3,000 in the navy, and 2,200 in the air force), accounting for more than 40 percent of the annual budget...
...In India it is pungent—curry powders and condiments, mixing with the odors of street filth...
...In essence, the U.S...
...The Dominicans take the omnipresent corruption with grace and good humor, fully aware of what goes on...
...On the first point, as the editor of one of the leading daily papers explained to me,3 one must closely study the speeches of the two men for hints as to future tactics in their struggle...
...Mobilization (both of the masses and the opposition) means keeping the present government off-balance by actions that disturb the "public order...
...Still, we cannot evade the key question: is there a chance of significant economic development in the Dominican Republic today, under present conditions, that is, the continued existence of the Balaguer administration...
...But today, the state, which made state property out of the Trujillo holdings, has become the country's greatest industrialist and landowner...
...He speaks of autonomous bodies of BOSCH AND BALAGUER: DOMINICAN ROULETTE the citizenry, organized into decentralized "estates" (unions, professional bodies, peasant and small landowners' associations, etc...
...This class consists of merchants, professionals, landowners, public officials, and industrialists, all small-scale and relatively underdeveloped...
...an educational system in which less than 13 percent of those who are eligible attend secondary schools...
...Balaguer, in discussing the situation, asks whether Bosch will permit the social stability needed for sustained economic development...
...The President possesses the means, largely based on American loans and advances, for carrying forward major developmental programs of agrarian reform, irrigation, housing, education, and industrialization...
...Accustomed as they are to living in a harsh and bitter world, Dominicans respond with remarkable sensitivity to each stage in the rise and fall of leaders...
...and, in turn, a middle class profoundly distrusted by three-fourths of the population, thoroughly corrupted under Trujillo, and offering a sterile soil for the flowering of democracy...
...the other speaks slowly but clearly, without hesitation...
...Taxi drivers switch on their radios, and thousands of people in the streets hold aloft their transistors...
...N THE QUALITIES and shortcomings of both ' Joaquin Balaguer and Juan Bosch one sees all the weaknesses of Dominican society...
...This will scarcely be the first time a conservative, bourgeois leader has initiated important land distribution programs...
...I have taken possession of all for their Highnesses...
...Nevertheless, the inner mechanics of the struggle point in such a direction and on all sides heads with a clearer vision are bound to come forward...
...Don't kill me, don't kill me...
...oppose this universal flood...
...The built-in resistance to change in the society prevents such a policy from succeeding...
...For example, many observers have been puzzled by the way Bosch seems to have abandoned his proverbial prudence since returning from his second exile...
...control over the nationalized sector of its feeble economy is the prime target in the game of power...
...But whatever section of the monument may have been put in place was promptly vandalized and thrown into the sea...
...has continued to try to impose Anglo-American style democracy ("free elections," "loyal opposition," "local initiative," etc...
...under orders of President Balaguer, then serving his first term in office, its construction was halted...
...Much of this has gone down the usual sink holes of corruption, bribery, and waste, but cautious economists point to some improvement, largely surface in nature...
...The Dominican economy is ripe for a change...
...A traditionalist and conservative in his thinking, he is a pragmatist in daily affairs...
...The relatively paltry tens, even hundreds, of millions invested by American imperialists in the Dominican Republic are not the disturbing element...
...BOSCH AND BALAGUER-bOMINICAN ROULETTE The constant shifting of this middle class takes the form of makeshift alliances with the oligarchy, consisting of the so-called first families of the Republic...
...Why would the Dominican Republic, whose democratic tradition is so recent and feeble to begin with, end up differently...
...Bosch has a program for them—nationalization, nationalism, structural economic changes...
...The movement would continue whatever his own fate might be, since he had clearly laid down the guidelines for the future...
...During the May 1970 elections, at least 45 persons were killed, and the PRD opposition calculates a political death list of close to 1,000 over the past five years...
...But if intuitively Bosch is a tribal chieftain, intellectually he is far more sophisticated...
...Hence, the incapacity of the middle class or even a significant strata of it to hold power in its own name and, for instance, its support of Trujillo for over 30 years...
...Agricultural credit...
...One quarter of a million fewer Dominicans voted in 1970 than in 1966, enabling the PRD to claim these abstentions as protest votes since, in theory, everyone is required to vote...
...He has been moved and can be moved...
...the dictator had screamed...
...A strong section of the military should respond favorably, with the understanding that the strike movement is called off, that there is a return to "normalization" and work, followed by negotiations based on the promise of a new deal for the country, this time backed by the military...
...Why is such a course adventuristic...
...The American government bears the greater share of responsibility, both historically and in the immediate sense, and it knows this...
...Authentic agrarian reform...
...by exposing its incapacity to achieve any real economic successes through pursuing goals that would lead to savings for further capital investment...
...Except for the ultra-left Fidelistas, Maoists, etc., Bosch would be followed.' 0 He may, however, be obliged to deliver a heavy repressive blow against the ultra Left, and he would not hesitate...
...Only the Nixon administration drew satisfaction from the election results...
...an explosive population growth of 4 percent T Balaguer's feeble agrarian reform program settles 2,000 peasant families a year on small plots, but the number of new peasant families seeking land is estimated at 20,000 plus per year...
...Bosch's slogan of "dictatorship with popular support" has not gone down well with the people (isolated groups of middle-class intellectuals excepted...
...I'll give you millions...
...The last dictatorship popularly backed (by unions and workers' organizations) in Latin America was Peron's in Argentina...
...As one leaves the international airport to drive into the capital city, huge billboards of Chase Manhattan and the First National City banks "welcome" one to the country, unabashedly...
...He writes with elegance and depth...
...It is not true that the United States will not and cannot tolerate major structural changes in the Dominican Republic...
...market, or lessthan half...
...can be obliged, both by force of circumstances and by its own people, to underwrite the basic costs of such a program...
...Yet those who renounce armed struggle as futile must accept the view that the Balaguer government can be pressured into action, action that must yield structural reforms to have any effect...
...During the era of Trujillo many able men of the highest character believed simultaneously both that the regime was in many respects barbarous and that only with a strong hand could the country be governed...
...Since 1966 and the first election of Balaguer, another $110 million ($60 million in grants, $50 million in development loans) have been supplied by the U.S...
...I would maintain that the U.S...
...If this appears to dovetail with the later stages of Cuba's fidelismo as described by Rene Dumont (cf...
...Almost two-thirds of the population is mixed...
...The upper and middle strata of the middle class tend to be the weakest sector of the society, cracking most rapidly under pressure and being the most faithless to democratic outlooks...
...This implies strong support of the Balaguer government, of the military, which is still viewed as the last bastion of stability and anti-Communism, and ultimately of the established order...
...If the Dominicans are finally to begin their own history, these are the minimal conditions...
...Dr...
...Although scarcely an impressive theoretical declaration, it instantly became the center of controversy...
...The sticking point with Balaguer is that while one part of his political mind publicly recognizes and accepts the need for "institutional and structural changes" of a major order, another part holds him in a gradualist vise controlled by oligarchist and conservative forces...
...A A NNOUNCED AS THE "NEXT STEP," Bosch's pamphlet, Dictatorship with Popular Support sold out quickly on the streets of Santo Domingo when it appeared on June 16, 1969...
...The Republic is, then, a classic example of a one-crop economy with its attendant evils...
...I am told that his Judas (untranslated), a defense of that classic betrayer, is very powerful...
...on the contrary...
...A born orator with a resonant voice, he unquestionably feels most comfortable in expounding and enlarging upon his views...
...Both men are answerable to their constituencies in a restless society that has yet to come to terms with its past...
...In a curious way, the Dominican Republic resembles one of the backward nations of Eastern Europe...
...power and capacity to act abroad is actually shrinking throughout the world and that, henceforth, there will probably be no automatic interventionist reflexes on the part of the U.S...
...the key question is, to what extent will he permit (or even encourage) changes in the hopelessly outdated social structure of his country, a stratification that for centuries has been so tilted as to drain off the nation's productivity and wealth in the direction of the oligarquia...
...So effective have Bosch's broadcasts been since his return a few months ago that President Balaguer, choosing prime time on the national TV network, has felt obliged to answer his speeches directly...
...See, for example, The Unfinished Experiment (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), an account of his brief presidency...
...According to Victor Alba, the military regime in power during the 1963-65 period permitted army officers to import goods duty free (radios and transistors, refrigerators, air conditioners, machinery, etc...
...To a large extent, Bosch's recent thought may be seen as a coming to terms with fidelismo, or the forging of a Dominican version of Castroism minus the latter's original spontaneity and elan...
...Professor Wiarda believes that the PRD of Juan Bosch will wait another decade for its "revolution" and that, meanwhile, it sees its task as...
...Nor would I exclude in advance the popularity of such a political-cum-military dictatorship...
...9 Growing more sugar cane is about as valuable for the prospects of the future as the patronizing activities of Balaguer in handing out sewing machines and peso bills to the groups around his presidential home...
...Dominican history illustrates the truism that dictatorship in its crudest form flourishes in a society where all classes are equally underdeveloped...
...David is a master tactician who grasps the fact that the political union of the tribes of Israel requires a "single supreme leader...
...This is the utopian side of Bosch's ideology, but one ought neither to ignore it nor underestimate his sincerity...
...First, it is not what they say, but what they leave unsaid or, rather, half said, that counts...
...In his final paragraph tacked on to his version of Columbus's Journal, the great Spanish Dominican historian, Bartolome de las Casas, writes: These are the last words of the admiral Don Christopher Columbus concerning his first voyage to the Indies and their discovery, and he had assuredly much reason and spoke as a very prudent man and almost as a prophet, although carnal men have not appreciated the goods which God offered to Spain, both, spiritual and temporal...
...I am not, of course, suggesting the formation of a "national unity" government that would include the PRD, as was recently proposed by Balaguer...
...Confrontation—an eventual face-to-face encounter between the mobilized masses, urban and rural, and those sections of the middle class willing to follow the PRD leadership and program, on one side, and the government forces on the other side—is a step between mobilization and revolution itself...
...This means 8 out of 10 of the country's population...
...3. Given the conditions in the Dominican Republic, what choice do the people have but to follow the path of revolutionary violence indicated by Bosch's policy...
...Some feel that the only way out lies in besieging the U.S...
...The North Americans, of course, dominate this alliance...
...But such is the stern conviction of the Dominican Republic's revolutionary leader, and of a considerable portion of the population standing behind him...
...Bosch and the military would enter negotiations, with the major thrust toward the socalled progressive junior officers...
...They also possess a sense of humor and playfulness, and a capacity for looking critically at themselves...
...In city and countryside, one misses drive and initiative...
...In his second inaugural address (August 1970), President Balaguer gave recognition to the world-wide social revolution that "will overwhelm those who...
...Would this be the moment for unleashing a new North American intervention...
...The agricultural and sugarfield laborers, landless, and unemployed a large part of the year, will continue to suffer and to support the more drastic PRD program of land reform...
...But the most needed improvements, such as highway repair and construction, irrigation expansion (the absence of which blocks any major agrarian reform), exploration for mineral and ore possibilities, etc., are not done...
...It is a lonely place close to the sea, at the eighth kilometer mark on the George Washington Highway, which skirts the coast to the east of Santo Domingo...
...DISSENT, SeptemberOctober 1970), or with recent political trends in Peru and Chile as described by Victor Alba, this is correct...
...For example, Vice-President Francisco Augusto Lora, head of the Movimiento de Integracion Democratica (MIDA), a small party, who openly opposed Balaguer in the election, has pushed the following program upon the new government: Constitutional reform to prohibit presidential reelection...
...T T HAT THE UNITED STATES retains control of the Dominican Republic, lock-stockandbarrel, is beyond question...
...an acceptance of its present role of revolutionary opposition on a nonviolent basis...
...of course, invariably presented as a "temporary" and "transitional" measure...
...Balaguer would announce his resignation and, before going into exile, turn over the government to the military...
...The subject may range from a popular folktale with political significance, delivered in a rich Creole dialect, to an elaborate theoretical disquisition on the nature of democracy or the oligarchy, delivered in equally rich Spanish...
...The "first families" and upper middle class did not acquire his holdings and were thus deprived of an opportunity to become a firmly based economic class...
...which make up the sugar industry—all foreign, American-ownedand the cattle ranches...
...It is time it ended...
...by refusing to take part in parliamentary democracy...
...To those who challenge Bosch to describe in more detail his "dictatorship with popular support," he presents his anarcho-syndicalist side...
...or, more specifically, a part of its professional and intellectual strata...
...Balaguer, Sorbonne graduate, sophisticated and controlled, is a master at manipulating the machinery of government...
...This elite-military alliance, after the seizure of power, will rule the country with a rough hand, aggressive on the social and economic front, ruthless toward opposition from all quarters, firm against threats of intervention...
...building up its organization, carrying its message to the masses in the countryside, building nationalistic and revolutionary consciousness, demonstrating that the present system is incapable of meeting popular demands, and laying the groundwork for a future revolutionary movement that will once and for all destroy the power of the country's entrenched interests...
...Then follow exports of coffee, cocoa, leaf tobacco, and bananas, in that order...
...role in Santo Domingo in a recent unpublished paper on the elections as directed toward . . • helping promote gradualist social and economic reforms within a framework of political stability...
...line beyond which, in effect, he urges Bosch not to go, for to do so might lead to the President's yielding to the section of the oligarquista that already demands Bosch's third exile and the suppression of his movement...
...New York Times, April 21, 1970 What, then, has changed...
...Let civil war rage a while...
...Howard Wiarda, in his paper on the recent elections, has suggested a more moderate perspective, but it does not fit the irrational pattern that Bosch, like other charismatic leaders of our time, seems to have chosen...
...One man whispers, can scarcely be heard...
...But this time the military would not succeed...
...Can Balaguer break through the cycle of poverty, stagnation, and backwardness, and avoid turmoil and revolutionary upheaval, predicted on all sides...
...The May elections settled nothing beyond partly clearing the stage for a new phase in the struggle between the two caudillos...
...Political power must be decentralized and distributed to those who lack it but have the will to change things...
...As their incessant concern with one another's statements and activities testifies, one cannot Iive politically without the other, anymore than they can live with one another...
...The government proposes a significant land-distribution program, some major hydroelectric and irrigation projects, etc...
...the party slogans dealt with social justice, individual liberties, and improved well-being for all layers of society...
...How long the country can avoid an explosion is anyone's guess...
...Sensing victory, the PRD and Bosch would then feel that their moment has come...
...so that they could supplement their regular salaries with a small resale business...
...The record since Jefferson's time of North American pressure, domination, and intervention is well-known...
...And many people, unconsciously ambivalent, could hate or deplore the dictatorship and at the same time regard it with respect and fascination...
...a tendency, often silent but very strong nevertheless, which is implicit in the heritage of Hispanic culture...
...It promises to be an all-time record year for thecountry...
...Because this self-defeating conclusion yields the field to the enemy in advance of the struggle...
...For them, the notion that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun is absorbed from childhood on...
...Balaguer is an empiricist who relies upon his knowledge of the governmental machinery and a narrow shrewdness in manipulating power to ward off the challenge of STANLEY PLASTRIK Juan Bosch...
...All the immaturities and failures of this Republic are present in both...
...both could halt the present trend toward civil strife...
...He is a literary man who has written short stories and historical and literary criticism, in addition to political works dealing mainly with Trujillo and his own experience as President...
...I think they can...
...He went so far as to pinpoint the two greatest social evils under which his people live: (1) high concentration of landownership and irrigation water...
...But the "first families"—they really are interwoven clans —have a very narrow economic base (one can scarcely speak of a well-laid infrastructure in the Dominican Republic...
...All the developmental experience of the so-called Third World nations points inescapably to this...
...He is unreceptive to contradiction and not at all eager to be pressed too hard...
...They are Joaquin Balaguer, newly reelected President of the Republic who began his second term in August, and Juan Bosch, leader of the PRD...
...He has an example to put before their eyes, the Peruvian officers in power...
...In general terms, one might reply to this by pointing out the consequences of any number of violent revolutionary paths to power in the 20th century...
...In examining his approach to these people, we begin to discern the character of Bosch as a middleclass political revolutionary...
...by emphasizing its weakness, ineptitude, and undeniable tendency to capitulate to the Right...
...Bosch began as a thorough-going democrat with a vague socialist program: The democratic system starts from one point: that sovereignty resides with the people alone and that what they decide by majority wish is sacred...
...His pantomime did not entirely correspond to the account given by Robert Crassweller in his superb Trujillo biography,' but it reflected perhaps more accurately the terror, fear, and hatred mixed with admiration and awe in which the monster was held by the average Dominican...
...His "Pentagonism" theory, according to which the military-industrial complex of North America has now seized control over the American economy and foreign policy, is an important, if not key, aspect of Bosch's thinking...
...The network of imperialistic entanglements, which link the great families of Dominica, the banks, the exporters, the landowners, etc., is spun around these companies...
...The Dominican Republic is on the edge of major economic and social development over the next decade, provided, of course, its internal political struggle does not destroy it in advance...
...The climate is equable, the scenery beautifully rugged...
...Can he be forced to bring about institutional and structural changes in land relationships, industry, business, etc...
...Dictatorship without popular support appears to be the almost inevitable outcome of such movements...
...What has record productivity brought with it...
...That we confront here an oversimplified version of imperialism and a Devil theory of history seems clear...
...Medium-sized farms, over 200 hectares in size and mainly in the Cibao valley, in addition to their own food needs, grow coffee, cocoa, and tobacco for export...
...to Latin America in the past five years...
...New electoral law against compulsary voting and favoring better representation to opposition parties...
...A section of the military—reactionary, Trujillist, and proAmerican— may reject this scenario...
...second, it is a dialogue of the deaf...
...He hardly expresses a novel thought when he says that Representative democracy has served to maintain the privileges of a minority of property and wealth, and it has not provided the stability, personal safety, health care, and education that the majority wants...
...Every night one can hear the rattle of smallarms fire in the poorer barrios of Santo Domingo...
...It is now five years since the last American intervention...
...This represents the highest per-capita level of aid S The Economics of the Developing Countries, by U. H. Myint (London: Hutchinson, 1964...
...social reforms nonviolently...
...No Latin-American country, according to Bosch, can free itself from the United States without meeting the latter's instant intervention and resistance...
...2 This question is crucial because the Dominican Republic is apparently on the threshold of a significant economic advance that could lead to an important rise in living standards...
...And on the ruins of what would remain, the whole tragic cycle would start all over again...
...auto agency, American cars were excluded from the list...
...It is as if Nixon were to take to the airwaves in response to the onslaughts of Fulbright...
...Strict observance of human rights...
...Unquestionably, there are leaders of the PRD, among whom is probably its Secretary General Pena Gomez, who hold to this perspective...
...because it fails to recognize the fact that U.S...
...This revival of a colorful but long-forgotten figure must reflect a rebirth of anarchist, terrorist, and syndicalist tendencies...
...FINALLY, A WORD on the course of action indicated for the PRD...
...on the other is a stretch of tropical plantlife...
...By the masses, he means the 25 percent unemployed, the farmers and peasants, and the workers...
...To those who have argued—and there are many—that his slogan simply means a Dominican version of fidelismo, or Marxism-Leninism, Bosch has answered with denials...
...For, if Juan Bosch could tell me that in 1965 the Johnson order to invade had come as a complete surprise to him (he was then in exile in Puerto Rico) and that he had actually believed Johnson's claim that the objective of his invasion was to assure the safe removal of North American citizens, this is by no means his understanding today...
...From this straightforward position Juan Bosch has moved a long way...
...Those who know the Dominicans agree that they are essentially a long-suffering, gentle (all things considered) people with a dignity of their own...
...He is a magnetic and charismatic * Cf...
...His prose vibrates with emotion, telling us much about Bosch himself.5 In his imaginative account of King David, a figure who obviously has great appeal to him, Saul is shown as a primitive Trujillo, suffering from persecution mania while David is Bosch-like, "a contemporary of ours...
...During this half hour, the nation literally comes to a standstill...
...Nothing in this country, least of all the consciousness of its people, can ever be what it was before Lyndon Johnson sent in his troups...
...It announced his abandonment of a "democratic" perspective and embraced a policy of struggle, including mass violence, for the seizure of power...
...Balaguer speaks for state power, the North Americans, the oligarchic families, the military...
...Two things must be observed about this strange dialogue...
...I think there is a connection here with the phenomenon of Juan Bosch...
...This would signify the end of the present government...
...The weakness of the Balaguer presidency is clear: lack of unambiguous support from a significant social class...
...Bosch himself is, of course, part of this middle class, which he calculates at 20 percent of the total population...
...The North Americans will not allow us to go our own way...
...He and his immediate family (wife, brothers, children) actually owned the country...
...Yet these brutal facts do not warrant the automatic deduction that one can predict at all times American response to a given situation in the Republic...
...the assassins, screaming curses, the 1 Trujillo, The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator, by Robert D. Crassweller (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp...
...And as the Americans arrive to restore "peace," everyone would know which side they support...
...ONLY TWO THINGS can prevent the unfolding of this tragic scenario: (1) economic development, including structural changes so that distribution becomes more equitable, and (2) the unambiguous lifting of the threat of American intervention, under any circumstances and no matter what provocation...
...This is the tendency to react more understandingly and tolerantly than the Anglo-Saxon culture to the very firm exercise of political power...
...But because the head of state then was the franchise-holder of a U.S...
...Of course, it has little to do with either daily tactics or immediate strategy...
...hardly an enticing example...
...Over the past three months, these two men have conducted a fascinating dialogue...
...A balanced budget, increased tax revenues, reduced food costs, at least until the recent meat shortage, etc...
...Columbus himself had already spelled the doom of the island of "Espanola" when he remarked, "It is a land to be desired and, when seen, never to be left...
...because it ignores both the possibility of applying "pressure" on Balaguer by legitimate and parliamentary means, as well as the evolution of his own position (the effort to build a stronger popular base than that of the traditionalist oligarchy...
...Further, at the time of Trujillo's death, the "first families" lost out in the struggle over his holdings...
...Algeria would be the latest, but no less representative example...
...Furthermore, Balaguer knows he must modernize the country and change its relationship to the United States if he is to gain any support among urban people—students, the new technological class, etc...
...Professor Bosch (the title is a gift of the masses in sympathetic recognition of his often didactic way of talking to them) is temperamental, meteoric, and charismatic...
...But if the oligarchy, the 200 families, has proven inert and passive, the same must be said by and large for Bosch's masses...
...2) February 1963— inauguration of President Bosch, PRB in power...
...The stench of poverty varies from one poverty-ridden country to another...
...It is hard to say whether Bosch and his PRD boycotted the elections because they felt that, even in a relatively fair poll, their party would lose, or whether their boycott was an opening blast in a campaign to prevent the functioning of normal parliamentary democracy...
...STANLEY PLASTRIK In Wiarda's view, this model is both irrelevant and inappropriate to Dominican needs...
...On the other side of the road is the cement floor of what was to have been a small police station built to protect the monument...
...Furthermore, Bosch and his main antagonist, President Balaguer, are playing for keeps...
...Under Trujillo: l'etat, c'est moi...
...It is mountainous, capable of much greater irrigation and electrical power than has been developed so far, but it is Iimited in scope regarding further economic development unless, of course, significant discoveries of metallic ores occur...
...But the poverty is there, and has been since the moment Columbus landed on the island of Hispanola 500 years ago and noted in his Journal how poor the Indians were...
...Balaguer received approximately 600,000 votes out of 1,100,000 cast, or considerably less than his 1966 total of 750,000...
...There is a growing export of bauxite, and the only significant manu BOSCH AND BALAGUER: DOMINICAN ROULETTE factured item is cement, which goes largely to the United States...
...On one side of the road the sea breaks against the rocks...
...Violence is inevitable," says Bosch...
...Striking out to start a civil war, it would attack the Bosch supporters, including its military wing...
...After parking his car, the driver reenacted his version of what had occurred...
...This evil genius, who ran the country for 31 years until gunned down almost ten years ago, is still very much present in the minds and thoughts of Dominicans...
...Trujillo's chauffeur, cringing in a corner of the limousine, pleading his innocence...
...Most people spend their lives in the countryside and in the smaller towns and villages...
...But the tactic and strategy of Bosch will, I think, prove otherwise...
...In a word, such mobilization means making it difficult for the present government to function...
...Robert D. Crassweller T T ODAY, IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, two men spar with one another, from a distance, carefully and prudently, probing and preparing...
...At present only bauxite (ALCOA-owned) is important, though there is a potential for the expansion of iron ore mines, copper, etc...
...Clearly, Lora sees himself as a rallying center for progressive action...
...Juan Bosch is an intellectual autodidact with a passionate belief in the word...
...4) April 1965—popular rising to restore Bosch, followed by the North American intervention and support of the military oligarchy...
...will accept nationaliza STANLEY PLASTRIK tion and expropriation of American properties, major land redistribution programs (Mexico), class shifts in property holdings and property relations, etc...
...2 This word, much bandied about in Dominican political polemics, particularly by Bosch, can referto anything from a specified group of Mandarinlike families to the whole damn system...
...The explanation can perhaps in part be found in a recent speech in which, again discussing his major "new" idea of "dictatorship with popular support," Bosch said that it no longer mattered what happened to him...
...they are mirror images of each other...
...At a certain point, the armed forces would then be brought in and, in the usual brutal fashion, kill some hundreds of strikers and their supporters...
...Given their history, these people have little reason for illusion...
...an end to confrontationist threats that provoke the Right and encourage police violence and terror...
...Thus began the story almost half a millennium ago...
...Each crisis, small or large, offers its automatic violent solution rather than forcing the leadership to search for other ways, alternatives to violence...
...Bosch speaks for the urban masses, the unemployed (estimated at between 25-40 percent of the employable population...
...It cannot "win," but can bring about a state of civil war...
...It will be the tactic of mobilization and the strategy of confrontation...
...THERE ARE SOME TOUGH QUESTION to which, at best, only tentative answers can be given...
...Second, the lifting of any threat of intervention from its only possible source, the United States...
...At this point the Army, its failure apparent to all, would go to Balaguer to report its defeat and its unwillingness to BOSCH AND BALAGUER: DOMINICAN ROULETTE go on simply killing people...
...And please also be sure to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...1. Why is Juan Bosch wrong in his apparent conclusion that nothing can any longer be accomplished through parliamentary means or within the limits imposed by American power...
...Hovering over this tiny country (its population is now somewhat over 4 million) is the memory of El Benefactor, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo...
...Or is the future hopeless without a cleansing revolution...
...We know that in Bosch's thoughts and actions over the years the notion of a military junta has always loomed large...
...A rich mulatto is a white man...
...Playing all the roles, murderers and victim alike, my driver danced through the grisly scenario of what had taken place according to the popular imagination...
...e.g., 80 percent of the sugar plantations were their property...
...Strategically, the document is directed toward new elements in Dominican society: the youth and student groups, intellectuals, professionals, and technicians...
...among which the state itself will compete for influence...
...It is calculated that 150,000 tons will be kept for local consumption, and 970,000 for export abroad...
...When Bosch returned triumphantly to the Dominican Republic on October 20, 1961 (for the first time in 24 years...
...The leadership of the September 1963 coup, which overthrew President Bosch and forced him into his second long exile, came from this group.° 6 Four major dates of contemporary Dominican history should be held in mind: (1) May 1961— assassination of Trujillo...
...It will be pressured, in turn, by the corporate bodies...
...It may begin with strike actions and nonviolent acts of disobedience among professionals supporting the Bosch movement, gradually extending to workers' organizations and peasant unions...
...About I million tons of sugar are exported annually to the United States and the United Kingdom, constituting 60 percent of the country's total export trade...
...but here is simply an opening for Bosch and his party to exert pressure on the administration in power...
...But a basis for limited collaboration exists because of two factors: first, Balaguer's frequent public recognition that his country's main danger comes from the threat of a rightist coup...
...A standing joke: is El Presidente listening too...
...On one side of the road, close to the sea, stand the remains of what apparently was intended as a monument to the killers, most of whom were subsequently killed by followers of the dictator...
...I felt this presence when a taxi driver, a sympathizer of the Bosch movement, took me by car to the spot where Trujillo was killed by a group of men most of whom were not much better than he...
...It is in a stronger position than it has been for years...
...The PRD may have claimed "victory" in that the combined abstentionist, anti-Balaguer and allegedly coerced vote may add up to more than Balaguer's 600,000 votes, but the latter's Reformista party exercises full political and social power...
...In this generally dismal picture, is there a ray of hope for the future...
...The economic chaos that followed the 1965 uprising required about $100 million in U.S...
...Although its membership has dropped sharply—perhaps by half—since its peak of close to 200,000 in 1962, it would still seem fair to say that the party has a mass base...
...In meeting Juan Bosch—we spent several hours together discussing Dominican problems, in French—one takes away the impression that his effect depends largely upon his verbal impact, on what the French call presence...
...Obviously, these two conditions are linked together...
...He is vain (he was highly pleased to tell me that the since-deposed King of Cambodia, Sihanouk, had received him recently with all the honors due an official head of state...
...We use it here in the sense of those who wield political, economic, and social power...
...and invasion would not take place—not yet...
...Right now, their political barometers record stormy weather ahead...
...he remains popular because the social evils of Dominican society remain...
...How characteristic that all my meetings with PRD people, including Bosch himself, took place in fashionable and attractively furnished homes of modem, upper-class style, with attractive wives about, and daughters and sons busy at work doing party tasks, etc...
...Its inner evolution has been extreme...
...Freedom for trade unions...
...We observe, then, a social oligarchy incapable of ruling or acting in its own name, hence dependent upon tenuous alliances with one or more sections of the middle class...
...When challenged to explicate his slogan of "dictatorship with popular support," he is prepared to answer in detail...
...but only in part...
...In the Dominican Republic it is flat and stale, as though frying oil was neutralized by the street odors...
...He also has some idea of the complexity of modem history and politics, unlike Balaguer who thinks in the classic terms of liberal and Catholic elitism...
...mails these days are not exactly at the peak of efficiency and we have had one or two unhappy situations in which articles were lost in the mails...
...but for her ambition and greed Spain was not worthy to enjoy the spiritual good, save for some servants of God...
...IN MY NEW YORK NEIGHBORHOOD, which is rapidly becoming Dominicanized through an influx of thousands of young Dominican males looking for work, one can see painted in subway stations the slogan, Viva Durutti...
...In the immediate sense, it ought to develop a new set of tactics with respect to the present Balaguer administration— firm insistence that it carry out its proposed program (agricutural and irrigation reform, etc...
...There are those who claim that Bosch has long been familiar, through his father, with Spanish anarcho-syndicalist thought...
...It may be argued that this is a well-known game in Latin America, as indeed it is...
...2) the hundreds of thousands of land-hungry and unemployed peasants...
...Does it materially differ from fidelismo...
...Would those he represents permit this...
...But what really counts are the great estates and companies (latifundias) in the East (Azucarera Haina, La Romana, South Puerto Rico Sugar Company, etc...
...The PRB nevertheless proposes to act in the name of the masses...
...And the confrontation, toward which everything seems to head, could bring one of the worst of all forms of violence—American military intervention...
...grants and huge amounts of food to maintain the economy and to prevent hunger...
...by not strengthening existing democratic institutions...
...To a considerable extent, the answer rests with these two men, though the response of the U.S...
...There appears to be no oil...
...Bosch, on the other hand, has always been concerned with questions of theory and principle in the art of governing...
...This means that such men as General Chinino Lluberes, head of the air force base at San Isidro, notorious center of military intrigue, and General Enrique Perez y Perez, chief of the armed forces, must be curbed by civilian power, and those areas of the countryside which, in effect, are military fiefdoms must be restored to civilian control...
...Then, after a few weeks or months, the North American gringos would be welcomed by both sides...
...Only two are still alive, under constant protection...
...Peru, soon Chile, Venezuela, and other LatinAmerican states underscore the falseness of this view...
...Bosch's most thoughtful writings deal with the Dominican middle class, a group pivotal in Dominican affairs and politics...
...In part Juan Bosch is a throwback to such a movement...
...per year (that of India, supposedly the example of demographic failure, is now 2.5 percent) ; just about the lowest per-capita annual income in Latin America ($218) ; an infrastructure that desperately requires highways, tourist centers for income, feeder roads, irrigation, electricity, etc...
...This "kingly" side of Bosch stems from his nationalism—he is very much the Dominican patriot...
...In our problematic scenario, this may come about several years from now...
...But Balaguer, an alert political leader, is aware of this and is moving to win such support by creating for himself an independent peasant base...
...Would the Marines land once again...
...The majority of anti-Trujilloist middle-class leaders wanted to replace the Benefactor, but not to change the nature of his regime...
...Bosch, who is at present the voice of the Left, also rejects such a limited unity of action as is suggested here...
...No wonder city streets are deserted once the sun goes down...
...Most likely, it would take the form of "flash" strikes seriously hampering the normal functions of the government and bringing the country to a standstill...
...They live in simple huts with palmthatched roofs...
...Nevertheless, we know that economic development, particularly if accompanied by an equitable distribution of its fruits, is a long and difficult process...
...Hence, he who controls the state controls the property—a condition of which Bosch is keenly aware...
...That would be the greatest contribution we could make to the future of these people...
...A start can be made by the American government with a unilateral declaration of intent not to intervene militarily in the affairs of the country...
...Faced with the possibility of major economic progress, his calls for revolutionary struggle may become "obsolete...
...By the same token, Balaguer in his speeches will draw a 3 In verification of the claim by this editor that the newspapers constitute the freest and most independent institution of the republic, I should note that I read four dailies (two morning, two evening papers) each of which published in full the speeches of Juan Bosch...
...He has never proposed to defend the present government against any rightist putsch...
...such matters can always be arranged...
...Traditionally, it maintains its appeal to the urban and rural masses, but clearly they are no longer seen as the vanguard force...
...Professor Howard J. Wiarda, a close student of Dominican affairs, has described the present U.S...
...a section of the poorest and land-hungry campesinos and, above all, for the new middle class of university students, professional groups, and small civil servants...
...Given Washington's capacity for blundering (surely, there would be State Department people and Pentagonists urging large-scale invasion), one dare not say this could not happen...
...The issue is, can a small, backward, divided nation of some 4 million people, with a tradition of violence, carry out fundamental TO CONTRIBUTORS We strongly urge anyone submitting ma terial to DISSENT to keep a carbon copy...
...437-39...
...3) September 1963—military coup ousts Bosch...
...He foresees a new kind of middle-class leadership of the masses, made up of youth (students), the new, progressive and modernizing professionals (lawyers, architects, engineers, plantation owners, business men, etc...
...So keep a copy...
...Any political policy based upon the "inevitability" of violence is adventuristic in that it becomes "inevitably" a self-fulfilling prophecy...
...But I suspect that this time, cooler and subtler heads would prevail ("let them kill one another for a while"), 10 At all times Bosch has protected his flank by vigorously attacking as irresponsible petty-bourgeois, etc...
...The stumbling block consists of the unresolved political relationships, with Balaguer struggling to restrain the putschist military crowd, and Bosch striving not to be outflanked on the Left by an assortment of fidelistas, Maoists, etc...
...or, David, The Biography of a King (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966), originally published in Santo Domingo under the title: David-Biografia de un Rey...
...Dominicans say: "A rich Negro is a mulatto...
...but he also fears dependence on the Left...
...those who attack him from the "Left...
...BOSCH AND BALAGUER—DOMINICAN ROULETTE Each day, except on Sundays between 1:30 and 2:00 PM, the Dominican national radio plays tape recordings of speeches by Juan Bosch...
...Hence, the relation between the two is charged with danger and high tension...
...A FIERCE STRUGGLE is being played out in the Dominican Republic, a struggle for power...
...Although he thinks of himself as an international figure, his experience is limited to a country that he himself described as having a "more backward social and economic structure than that of any other LatinAmerican country...
...and an evolutionary, incremental, essentially 19th-century and even New Deal development model...
...constitutes another formidable factor...
...As one who appears politically poised in a stance of perpetual belligerency, Bosch is hardly in an enviable position, and even his present support among intellectuals and students could melt quickly...
...It was probably a combination of both...
...He sees pentagonismo as the concretization of North American imperialism in the seventies, one component of the "Latin-American oligarchic front," and as an alliance between the American military and the great landlords, the import-export merchants, the banks, fellow Latin-American militarists, etc...
...figure, radiating charm and strength—provided, however, he feels one is receptive...
...We take more than usual precautions, but the U.S...
...Nor is economic development of any kind likely in a country such as the Dominican Republic without previously breaking the back of the triumvirate of large landowners, Church, and Army, which holds concentrated power at the top...
...the movement would be too powerful...
Vol. 17 • November 1970 • No. 6
