All Hands on Deck
As arbitrary as it may be to draw lines around periods of history, the PRD tenth convention was something of a watershed for the democratic "opening" inaugurated by the party's presidential...
...One of the key elements of the PRD's recuperation and of its subsequent victory was the consistent demand for democracy by its more progressive wing...
...it is, in fact, a program for U.S...
...Moreover, it brought to light a critical contradiction...
...So, sure enough, when U.S...
...And, finally, he restricted the amount of foreign exchange the Central Bank could dispense for the import of agricultural and industrial machinery, inputs and spare parts...
...Salvador Jorge Blanco was elected the party's presidential candidate and Manuel Fernandez M.rmol, of the Guzmin faction, accepted the nomination as his running mate...
...sugar...
...We return after two or three days with $20 or $30...
...And, finally, while the CBI project has monopolized Caribbean policy debate throughout 1982, it is illusory to conclude that this is the sole expression of U.S...
...The elections over, all were in accord that the PRD's range of options had been reduced during the presidency of Guzmin...
...The CGT called a meeting of trade unions and threatened to declare a general strike in support of the ADP...
...CEA--Cn't Win for Losing It didn't take the Reagan policy to make the CEA an unviable company...
...market...
...Alarmed by Guzmin's inability to control political discord, other sectors of the bourgeoisie also stepped onto the stage...
...In sum, he reaffirmed that he and the PRD were the only real and effective mediators between the state and the popular classes...
...But what was disastrous for the Dominicans was not so bad for Gulf & Western...
...Confrontations and the maneuvers over party control gave color and content to the suspense and heightened expectations...
...Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Robert Anders6n, may have on his agenda the tending of these agreements...
...And that support was active: student mobilizations in neighboring towns, church occupations, sit-ins in government offices...
...This will enable companies to shift their plants out of higher-wage Puerto Rico to other Caribbean nations, including the Dominican Republic where many are already large-scale free-zone employers...
...3. El Sol, May 2, 1979...
...What's Good for GuW...
...the largest groups had dedicated themselves to exploring political "convergence" to counter a history of fragmentation...
...and furthermore [states] that price increases for basic goods were dictated not only without our approval but even without the sound counsel and recommendations of our party...
...To the Dominican Republic, with its history of military intervention in internal politics, the Administration is doubling military aid...
...Integration into the popular movements became the priority for most groups, and while their track record was uneven, they often provided cohesion to what might otherwise have been predominantly spontaneous outpourings...
...Collective management" had merely meant that the IAD paid land reform producers daily fees for work, and at the end of the year the peasants decided how to divide the profits, if any were made...
...He expressed his support for the Salvadorean junta in July 1980, only days after the PRD had received a representative of the FDR, and a year later denounced as an act of intervention the joint Mexican-French declaration recognizing the FDR as representative of a significant sector of Salvadorean society...
...government and the incapacity of the opposition to legitimize an alternative through Balaguer...
...But the Left had made steps forward...
...In June Guzmin announced a ban on all vehicle imports, including trucks and tractors, and added to the categories of imports that required seeking dollars on the parallel market...
...The Guzmin period had repercussions in the popular movement...
...Bosch's PLD was the party which showed the greatest capacity for mobilization, doubling its proportionate vote since the last elections...
...Many peasants had abandoned the settlements once they realized that the state had not reoriented its credit policies and that adequate income levels on the projects were not attainable...
...Two-thirds of the Agricultural Bank's loans (the chief source of credit) went to large-scale rice farms and cattle ranches whose extensive grazing pasture could often have been far better utilized by the landless peasants...
...The Nicaraguan people had triumphed over the Somoza dictatorship, and in El Salvador in early 1980 the mass movements were the principal protagonists, street demonstrations still at moments eclipsing the armed struggle...
...through their publications...
...At an institutional level the PRD organized solidarity committees in active support of Nicaragua's FSLN and El Salvador's FDR...
...Anticipation grew as the convention date was repeatedly postponed...
...Though lacking the champion they had hoped for in government, the Dominican masses were in motion, inspired in part by their counterparts in Central America...
...quotas were imposed in 1982, the CEA tried (though failed) to violate an agreement on its best sugar sale yet in order not to squeeze G&W out of the U.S...
...What does the Caribbean package hold for the Dominican Republic...
...With the movement divided by the actions of the UGTD, its members shifted the struggle inside the organization...
...S S I nNACLAReport people were openly offering assistance to the FSLN...
...The private sector continued its campaign against INESPRE, the state price control board, and, reportedly in collusion with the AFL-CIO's American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), organized a truckers' strike that forced Guzmhn to practically dismantle the Popular Sales Program.2 1 Factional fighting within the PRD reached critical levels, obliging the UGTD to cancel its congress, provoking violent confrontations between individuals and affecting the functioning of the government as funds and resources were channeled for use by the officialist tendency...
...As arbitrary as it may be to draw lines around periods of history, the PRD tenth convention was something of a watershed for the democratic "opening" inaugurated by the party's presidential victory in 1978...
...planting and expansion by the heavily subsidized European Economic Community sugar beet growers...
...For Dominicans, on the other hand, the measure meant that for every sugar dollar they had earned in 1980-81, they would get only 30o in 1982-83...
...Dept...
...Listin Diario, January 24, 1982...
...more than delighted to comply, G&W bought CEA sugar on the U.S...
...Should these last measures pass-for their future is not certain-the outcome could be a multiplication of the free zone companies already numerous in the Dominican Republic...
...Even prior to the new sugar policy, the State Department had estimated that HFCS would capture nearly 45% of the U.S...
...The convention was finally held in midNovember, exhibiting an extraordinary exercise in democratic participation...
...As discontent became more vocal, Guzmin began to place more emphasis on the program's visibility...
...it was clear that it was with Guzman, not the party, that people had felt obliged to settle accounts...
...In sum, at the end of the Year of the Farmer, the tally favored neither farmers nor Guzmin...
...The PRD demonstrated that it was still the principal political force in the country, despite GuzmSn's blunders...
...The chairman of G&W is a founding trustee of C/CAA, and the large donors' list reads like a Dominican "Who's Who": Alcoa, Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, Eastern Airlines, G&W, Maidenform and Sea-Land...
...he was the protector of the government who warned the people that violence threatened the regime that had brought freedoms...
...the rural struggles grew...
...The only changes were ones of degree...
...This is best for workers unaccustomed to working in an industrial context," explained the State Department Desk Officer for the Dominican Republic...
...El Sol, November 25, 1980...
...New York Times, April 11, 1981...
...To top it off, the lands aren't even theirs, but belong to the state...
...military participants...
...He, too, replayed his role, this time with even greater virtuosity...
...See: World Council of Churches, " 'Sold Like Cattle': Haitian Workers in the Dominican Republic," Dossier No...
...Such was the profile of his foreign policy, and such was its reception by the people...
...Production stimulus without an integrated Dissolving Sugar Solutions On a December day in 1981, Dominican economic chaos became part of the price negotiated by Office of Budget and Management Director David Stockman for Southern votes for the 1982 Reagan budget...
...In the provinces of Nagua, Navarrete and Cotui, in San Juan de la Maguana, in more than 60 sites peasants by the thousands occupied state lands, particularly those that were idle, uninhabited and illegally in private hands...
...Demagogic sleight-of-hand had gotten him 2nNovIDsc2 M Juan Bosch's Dominican Liberation Party through the first year...
...7 Preempting by one day Guzmin's major economic recovery speech, the Reformist Party announced in early summer that through its control of the Senate it would permit no new loans or tax measures...
...Increasing Caribbean militarization, both directly by the United States, and indirectly through other nations, has in fact been the most concrete accomplishment of the Reagan measures...
...As if on cue, the strike transformed itself into a national protest...
...The parties further to the left demonstrated serious weakness in the electoral contest, a function of their lack of resources, their inexperience in this arena and inability to challenge the widespread assumption that reformism had a future...
...NeitherJorge Blanco nor the PRD could elude their responsibility to the Dominican people...
...Again it was made without any advance preparation of public opinion or consultation with his party...
...Of all the union disputes during this period, one of the most most revealing was that of the Dominican Professors' Association (ADP) against its employer, the government itself...
...In 1978 it was the CEA, not G&W, which stockpiled under the International Sugar Agreement's country export limits, allowing G&W to fully export its share...
...This social outpouring wasn't the only consequence of the economic measures...
...Having satisfied themselves that Guzmin would never side with the popular movement, business sectors and landowners pressed for more and more concessions...
...During 1980 the ADP had decreed five work stoppages, involving 25,000 teachers, for better salaries and working conditions and, following a purge by the Secretary of Education of so-called extremists, for the reinstatement of the expelled teachers...
...The UGTD condemned the incident and warned that it might join the work stoppage...
...the CGT and another smaller federation opposed it...
...The defeat of the Majluta-Guzmin tendencies was a solid repudiation of Guzmin's presidency...
...prices immediately fell another 2s...
...Overturning a seven-year policy of lessened government interference in sugar imports and marketing, Stockman offered guaranteed prices for Southern cane and Midwestern beet growers...
...In May 1981, representatives of the IMF returned...
...interests...
...But they were understandably uneasy about his frequent support for the actions of the popular sectors...
...The image of that short-lived battle for true democracy was in the air asJorge Blanco outlined the necessity of a policy of social justice with economic austerity...
...In August 1980, with an impressive display of publicity and military force, Guzm;n proceeded to settle peasants on the property of the powerful Aguayo family, whose vast lands had been initially targeted, then overlooked, by the Balaguer agrarian laws of 1973...
...Economic survival, not recovery, became the goal...
...History repeated itself like an all-too-familiar play...
...For openers, Guzmin submitted a "balanced" budget which bore no relationship to reality...
...5. NACLA interview, July 12, 1982, San Juan de la Maguana, Dominican Republic...
...links were built between the Dominican General Workers' Confederation (CGT) and Nicaragua's Sandinista Trade 21NACLA Rport Union Confederation (CST) and between the radical Christian movements in both countries...
...Guzmin's support for the business owners went beyond mere repression of the workers...
...It was a hard act to follow...
...The year had scarcely begun before everyone realized that the Muse of Irony must have presided over the selection of the motto...
...When Congress got through with them, the tax proposals had been scuttled, leaving landowners and importers untouched...
...The latter had already boosted their sugar exports fourfold during the 1970s, cutting into traditional Central American and Caribbean markets...
...They were accustomed to placing 85% of their exports on the U.S...
...Both the Guzmin government's unpopularity and the growing autonomy of the popular movement represented a threat to the survival of the party...
...3 While specific IMF agreements were never announced, the summer of 1981 marked the beginning of government plans to "clean house...
...With six demonstrators killed and more than a thousand arrested, the protest reached the dimensions of a crisis, subsiding only after a week and the intervention of Pefia G6mez...
...He imposed an austerity plan which froze public sector hiring and salaries...
...Over the last four years it had been quietly boosting its only other sugar operations-in Florida -from 26% to nearly 40% of its total sugar output...
...sweetener market by 1985-twice that of a decade before-and that by 1990 the United States might in fact end all sugar imports...
...troop involvement in the region...
...Equally ironic is the assertion by CBI designers that the spread of labor-intensive plants in the Puerto Rican "Bootstrap" mode will provide stability to the area...
...The new LAD director would see to it that as many settlements as possible were made, raising expectations rather than standards of living...
...Business sector discontent notwithstanding, the Reformist Party could not capitalize on the situation...
...With the victory ofJorge Blanco, it found itself for the moment without a response or a coherent posture...
...The Agrarian Reform Getf Plowed Under The first clue to a shift in the agrarian reform program itself was suggested in March 1980 when the director of the Agrarian Reform Institute (IAD) was replaced...
...Guzmin, among others, declared that only Majluta could guarantee the continuity of democratic liberties...
...Juan Bosch's PLD and most organizations of the Left contributed leadership and strength to the protest...
...Placing its struggle in a larger context, the ADP labeled the repression against its members part of "a total political plan against the entire democratic movement in the country...
...6. Economist Intelligence Unit, Quarterly Economic Report (Fourth Quarter 1980), p. 10...
...The repeal of this approach marked a recognition of its failure...
...In May, sharp import quotas were imposed, forcing a new domestic "market" price above 20p...
...The skill with which the party-government conflict had been managed, particularly the astute political vision of Pefia G6mez, had allowed the party to find-and within the political polarization of the country, to rescue-the forces necessary to propose a mass31NACLA Report based option, the possibility of a "true" PRD government...
...Furthermore, a rapid decapitalization of the bank through bad management meant that by the end of 1981, the few disbursements to the peasant cooperatives were backed up more than seven months...
...Even the Catholic hierarchy protested the profanation of the temple, unnecessary use of force and the arrest of clergy...
...With this show of force a new period began, in which the eleventh PRD convention dominated the attention and interest of the entire society...
...The rest of the Left, split into two electoral fronts, got a combined 2% of the vote...
...10 (November 1980...
...8. Wall Street Journal, September 8, 1980...
...Short of a change in the Reagan-Stockman free market (on a leash) approach, the Domintcans can look forward to neither...
...In 1982, this lineage was recalled by Jorge Blanco's exaltation of Francisco Alberto Caamaiio, the hero of the 1965 revolt...
...government, the Reformist Party and even by the PRD...
...The measures also affected the industrialists already agitated by an extremely lenient policy toward foreign investors announced months earlier to the American Chamber of Commerce...
...Within two days of his announcement, the public taxi drivers called another strike...
...The $350 million aid component to the CBI which passed Congress in September 1982 promises the country $40 million for financing the import of U.S...
...During this period, Pefia G6mez, alarmed by the deterioration of government-peasant relations and the increase in land takeovers, promised that the PRD would intervene...
...Not publicized was that, when one calculates interest, the extra-official rate of the dollar and inflation, this mode of payment saved G&W $50 million.' Furthermore, the value of its land in the eastern region was enhanced, as was its prestige because of this "civic work...
...It was all carried out amidst a great flurry of radical rhetoric by the Secretary of Agriculture...
...If Reagan's measures didn't cause the CEA's problems, it certainly aggravated them...
...Only high world prices and guaranteed markets could allow the Dominican company a graceful exit from the sugar scene, and the country some relief from economic chaos...
...invasion, occasioned a strong street protest in which four Dominicans were killed and 300 arrested...
...For example, during a strike at the largest pasteurizing plant, Leche Fresca, the government doubled its purchase of the company's milk, frustrating a boycott organized by the employees...
...A few months later the government entered into technical default on two foreign loans...
...As with the peasantry, this period registered an upsurge in trade union struggles...
...and, in a strict sense, the government was bankrupt...
...Whose Foreign Policy Was It...
...Turning his back on the Puerto Rican struggle for independence, Guzmin even failed to contact the PRD's fraternal party, the Puerto Rican Independence Party, during his visit to that country...
...To its fold had been drawn numerous professionals and government workers, disillusioned with the PRD and attracted by the pragmatic, nationalistic pronouncements of "el professor" Bosch...
...And finally there was the threat of a sugar workers' strike...
...The deciding vote back then had been cast by the popular sectors, but the victory was determined as well by the compliance of the U.S...
...The director of this "non-governmental organization" is Peter Johnson, political officer in Santo Domingo following the U.S...
...More than 8,000 sections of the party-around 400,000 people-participated directly in the selection of the presidential candidate...
...In a "Dinner of Businessmen's Unity," organized by the National Council of Businessmen (CNHE), the keynote speaker accused the government of standing outside the crisis and declared the CNHE's intention of taking decisive action in the political affairs of the country...
...The PRD to Power-Power to the PRD General elections were held on the 16th of May 1982...
...Observers were already remarking that, with good weather, world sugar production would increase nearly 10% during the 1981-82 season, thanks to increased U.S...
...Guzmin's foreign policy was even more conservative than Balaguer's, violating most of the commitments that the PRD had assumed as pprt of the Socialist International and going against the sympathies of the Dominican people...
...About the only ones left untouched were the transnational corporations...
...Paradoxically, the net effect of Guzmin's measures was to undermine the very sector that had been the key to his economic recovery strategy...
...We're going crazy because we have no market," complained members of the peasant organizations...
...For example, what Reagan considers his keynote measure-the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI)-is not really a program for the Caribbean...
...Officially designated the Year of Change, 1981 was a year in which Guzmin, without coup attempts, hurricanes or OPEC increases, would have to demonstrate that he was capable of governing...
...Official vehicles were conspicuous in the proMajluta car caravan demonstrations while police interfered with the activities of Jorge Blanco followers...
...And in the state enterprises various important strikes were staged...
...Guzmin's public relations machinery rolled out words of praise for his "significant" confrontation with the transnational giant...
...Recently negotiated loans totaling hundreds of millions of dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank and others have added to its burden: debt servicing accounts for more than a quarter of its 20t-per-pound production costs...
...If Gulf & Western and other "Bootstrap" investors in Puerto Rico get their way, special earnings held by these companies in Puerto Rico will be eligible for use throughout the Caribbean...
...They even discussed the possibility of establishing a U.S...
...he isolated Guzmin from the party umbrella and he defused the political crisis...
...Dominicans enthusiastically participated in the Sandinistas' literacy crusade...
...NACLA interviews with members ofthe leadership of the UGTD (June 1982) and FENAZUCAR-CGT (July 1982...
...Central Bank reserves were scraping bottom by summer...
...production, consumers would now spend two...
...After a meeting with Guzmin, an accord came quickly...
...Still other measures lie in abeyance: U.S.-backed investment risk guarantees, tax reductions and expanded business credit...
...The PRD, from as early as 1974, had taken on as its own the banner of democratic liberties...
...leaders of the Dominican Independent Campesino Movement (MCI) met with other Central American peasant organizations...
...with the 1982 quotas it would be one-third this amount...
...Smokescreen for Militarization If the highly touted CBI is not contributing much to stability in the region, Reagan's policy of militarization offers even less...
...His consent to let U.S...
...Severely criticizing Guzmin, Pefia G6mez was the accusor who validated popular complaints by echoing them...
...It had survived repression and withstood alternative projects pushed by the U.S...
...As Commander Train's special assistant between 1978 and 1982, Anderson helped design the Ocean Venture '82 maneuvers in the Caribbean, the largest peacetime military mobilization on record, with 45,000 U.S...
...And the peasants' battles were no longer isolated acts...
...Several had eschewed their foquista past and sought new structures of democratic leadership and mass participation...
...Dominated by the UGTD, the negotiating committee accepted the offer without consulting the delegates' assembly...
...At four mills, workers declared a work stoppage and were countered with immediate police intervention and military occupation of the mills...
...The Central Bank was $300 million in arrears in its payments on letters of credit, and foreign exchange receipts had plummeted...
...Caribbean policy), and sent his foreign minister to meet with the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet...
...With him went the PRD emphasis on agrarian reform "consolidation," which had sought to strengthen the viability of existing settlements through peasant organizations and a modicum of selfmanagement...
...8 By the end of 1980, the trade deficit woud be ten times the amount for the entire 1960-77 period...
...In 1981 the CEA lost more than $20 million when the government allowed G&W to violate local laws and sell a disproportionate part of its sugar internationally rather than supply domestic needs...
...The country's economic performance was not measuring up in anyone's terms...
...The foundation was a G&W-created organization which would invest in tourism and related projects precisely in the region where the company is already the major tourism investor...
...As a final death knell, the poisonous strife between cliques, which postponed the initiation of the PR campaign until two months before elections, led Balaguer to repudiate his own vice-presidential candidate...
...Thus, by 1980, each mobilization received the support of other peasant organizations as well as of the major unions...
...The triumph of the workers in the state sugar mills in November 1981, that of the government workers, a land takeover by 1,200 peasants in San Juan de la Maguana in February 1982, the growth of the Independent Campesino Movement-these and others were manifestations of the strengthening of the popular movement in the last years...
...he was the paternal leader who asked those who believed in the ideals of the PRD to return home...
...2. El Sol, July 21, 1980...
...Possible competition, increased cost of imported inputs and austerity, sure to shrink demand, were all disincentives to investment and accumulation for this group...
...This caused the parallel market rate to quickly double to 50% above official rates, and carried a built-in domestic inflationary cycle...
...Jorge Blanco's selection as candidate was achieved with the support of the most radical sectors of the party, in particular, progressive members of the UGTD...
...Karen de Young, "$1.50 a Day and the Ground to Sleep On," Washington Post, August 28, 1980...
...Discussion grew heated when more leading officials resigned in disagreement with the policy of printing money to finance the $300 million budget deficit...
...This calculation was not baseless...
...Wedded to his part in the plot, GuzmAn ordered the military to occupy working-class neighborhoods...
...The peasants' conditions worsened...
...Thus, with neither grief nor glory, the industrialization program, sheltered by the protective arm of Law 299, died...
...For its part, the Reformist Party obtained 36% of the presidential vote and got 57 legislators...
...25NACIA Report grappling with militant peasants in Navarrete and tobacco workers in Tamboril, front pages of the newspapers focused on Guzm.n's backroom re-election campaign and the debate about the country's economic situation, particularly the fiscal deficit and the decapitalization of the state sugar company...
...The Dominican Liberation Party received almost 10% of the vote and seven deputies...
...ElNuevo Diario, April 20, 1982 and July 15, 1982...
...In an acid footnote, the CEN added that "the PRD takes no direct responsibility for the unpopular measures adopted by the government which motivated the peaceful resistance of an important sector of civil servants...
...This process resulted in greater UGTD autonomy within the party and moved it closer to the CGT position...
...Peasants throughout the country applauded Guzmfn's audacious action...
...The agrarian reform was going the other way...
...Within three weeks, Guzmhn announced that he would not seek reelection and expressed his support for the candidacy of his vice president, Jacobo Majluta...
...The company, in fact, didn't even lobby against the imposition of quotas, evidently confident that the Dominican government would not allow its operations there to suffer from restricted access to the U.S...
...goods...
...He proposed taxes on real estate and on imports and a value-added tax on domestic production...
...To these meetings came the head of the Puerto Rican National Guard, apparently to arrange a mutual assistance agreement with the Dominican armed forces...
...They called the elections the "great caudillos' last stand...
...The National Executive Committee (CEN) of the PRD declared its concern that the government's actions could "become transformed into a political conflict of unpredictable consequences...
...invasion in 1965, and currently on leave from the State Department...
...Shortly thereafter, Guzman signed a mutual defense pact with Haitian dictator Duvalier which reportedly resulted in Dominican troop mobilization to help Haitian troops fend off an exile landing at their border...
...This measure obliged the manufacturers to turn to the parallel currency market, where higher prices for foreign exchange were ultimately reflected in the increased cost of domestically produced goods...
...Ahora, September 1, 1980...
...Of 300 settlements in existence, not 50 received systematic help, despite the IDB loan for that purpose...
...And the cattle ranchers' association accused the government of undermining investment security in agroindustry...
...NACLA interview with Central Bank official, February 12, 1982...
...The inspiration of these contacts spread through the Dominican movement, prompting new forms of organization and higher levels of ideological discussion...
...First Quarter 1981), p. 16...
...The Peasant Movement Comes of Age The Year of the Farmer was also the year of land takeovers...
...Shortly before, Major General Robert Schweizer, the Pentagon's strategy planner, met with Dominican military leaders...
...Slipping Down the Economic Spiral In the spring of 1980, while the Army was positioned to benefit from Reagan's protective legislation...
...The backing of the predominantly Catholic "church of the poor"--committed priests and nuns who made up the iglesia popular-became apparent...
...7. Ibid...
...This turn of events both permitted and demanded his greater alignment with the popular movement...
...Now the salient elements were Guzmuin's calamitous economic policy, the marked divergence within the PRD over the content and goals of the opening, and the ever more confident and vigorous private sector offensive, orchestrated principally by the National Council of Businessmen and fired by the weakness and willingness of Guzmin himself...
...For all intents and purposes, the peasants were relegated to little more than peons, an agricultural proletariat in the employ of the Institute...
...Nevertheless, the electoral campaign had assimilated and relegated all other demonstrations of political struggle in the country, creating a certain level of confusion and disorganization within the ranks of the popular movement...
...The money will be released following negotiations between Dominican officials and the U.S...
...The new U.S...
...Only the hiring and wage freeze was endorsed with gusto...
...Not a socialist party, and not one which encompassed the popular movements, it was, nonetheless, the only major political force to challenge the purported causes of the crisis and the path for recovery-in particular, recourse to the IMF, a solution which was embraced by both other parties...
...Concealing another sizeable tax hike in the skirts of an OPEC price increase, GuzmAn decreed a 54c-per-gallon price rise for gasoline...
...The police assailed strikers, clergy, parishoners and supporters alike...
...no reason not to push his luck...
...If the IAD technician erred in crop selection there was no profit and no recourse...
...A. Fiallo, Vanguardia del Pueblo (Santo Domingo), April 15, 1981...
...Companies bringing jobs from South Carolina or San Juan will stop running only as long as low wage rates are maintained and unionization and taxes are nonexistent...
...users to substitute high fructose corn sweeteners (HFCS), economically produced at 12-15o per pound...
...The price of sugar was on the rise, but the sugar harvest was delayed for the state mills...
...The Dominican Left, for its part, lacked the possibility of projecting an electoral option despite its relative growth over the last four years...
...Adding to the hubbub was the case of the 23MACLA Report Aguayo farm...
...Atlantic Command, Harry D. Train, who offered "all types of military aid to combat communism...
...And in the end it was not just the workers that were hit...
...Only months later his bombastic reception for Vice President George Bush triggered a repeat of the protests...
...What was made public of the agreement-for much remained unannounced-was that over seven years G&W would "donate" the sum in pesos, not dollars, to the Eastern Region Development Foundation...
...But this only made things worse, helping drive down the world price to 9s in May 1982...
...he was the mediator who forced Guzmin to listen to the protests...
...Where had this supply-sider been looking...
...They included a 780,000-ton sugar quota and trade privileges for textiles and leather goods...
...Congress promptly rejected it, forcing Guzmin to negotiate, point by point...
...In the following months good weather indeed brought substantially increased production...
...At the international level, European church groups and progressive unions gave them messages of solidarity and favorable publicity 22NovIDlclO982 The Year of the Farmer ended only in disappointment for Dominican campesinos...
...That the CBI will reshuffle Caribbean production according to the priorities of the companies instead of the countries should not be surprising...
...La Noticia, October 5, 1978, March 10, 1979 and March 11, 1979...
...Only the intermediaries benefited, together with commercial usurers who maintained their hold on financing rural production...
...Guzman Pushes the PRD into Opposition The polarization would continue until the eleventh PRD convention in November 1981, meshing at moments with the party-government schism...
...Demands included the payment of bonuses legally due, salary readjustments to reach the minimum wage level, the signing of negotiated agreements, the reinstatement of fired union leaders and respect for trade union activities...
...It was as if the country's political struggle had transferred itself to the heart of the PRD and would be solved there...
...Guzmin denounced all of these demonstrations as a political conspiracy and qualified the takeovers themselves as simple vandalism...
...As prices fell, the Administration raised import duties and fees to their maximum...
...For every dollar the government saved by not buying U.S...
...If it was a final performance for some, it was a first for others, as a somewhat unified Left put forward its own candidates for the first time...
...PRD Gets One More Chance On July 5, 1981, to the surprise of many who had predicted the erosion of PRD support, more than 300,000 people congregated to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the party...
...If they fell below, the government would effectively be forced to buy millions of pounds of U.S...
...In the countryside peasant mobilizations, undaunted by repression, were even more significant than in previous years...
...Peasant expectations had been lifted by this solo act, but there were no other expropriations...
...Together with other countries squeezed by the quota, they added 20% more sugar to an already saturated world market...
...ALL HANDS ON DECK 1. The United Nations and other international forums have characterized Dominican contracting of Haitian labor as a form of slavery...
...It was the final face-off between the old presidents-an aging and deteriorating Balaguer, and a forceful, irreverent Juan Bosch...
...In short, by the end of the first year the situation in the Dominican Republic had become polarized...
...First there were disagreements over the "per head" price the Dominican government would pay its Haitian counterpart for migrant workers...
...The Pentagon's hope is that the Dominican military can play a special role in its clientelist military nNovIDul92 demonstrated the strengthened capacity of the trade union movement and the popular organizations to act together when the situation arose...
...Thus in July 1980, Francisco Santos, general secretary of the CGT, declared that the government was becoming committed to a "disturbing and dangerous path, responding with the police and military to any demonstration or action of worker discontent motivated by the abuses and impunity of the bosses...
...Pointedly blacklisting their leaders from any land reform settlements and militarizing each of the zones of unrest, Guzmhn by 1981 had thrown to the winds his populist image as "the Farmer President"--or at least as the president of the poor and landless farmer...
...Facing sugar purchases of up to $1 billion, the "free-market" Reaganites chose instead to create a scarcity...
...of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Sugar and Sweetener Outlook & Situation (Washington, D.C.: May 1982...
...The police, wading into one of these protests, caused the death of a journalist and a young newspaper vendor...
...The cost of the basic diet had already increased 50% by 1980.14 Official dollars were reserved for only oil imports and debt financing...
...Had Stockman failed to do his homework...
...this while the Right trampled them and the Left insisted that, without a radical transformation of social structures, democratic reforms would be mere cosmetic changes...
...This gave non-GuzmAn sectors of the PRD, particularly the tendency led by Salvador Jorge Blanco, the opportunity to present themselves as real opponents of the government, and Jorge Blanco as a legitimate alternative...
...warships make a "good will" stop in April 1981, during the anniversary of the 1965 U.S...
...The slogan of our movement has become 'Land or Death.' ""2 The peasant movement had taken advantage of the more tolerant political atmosphere to consolidate organizing and education work supported for more than a decade by the Left and progressive sectors in the Catholic Church...
...The following year the Dominican government insisted that G&W benefit from a Venezuelan order, even though all of G&W's sugar had been sold...
...A 19o domestic price floor for sugar encourages U.S...
...The IAD and the Secretary of Agriculture maintained control over the allocation of resources, particularly credit and inputs, and over marketing...
...He effusively congratulated Edward Seaga, the new Jamaican president, on his victory over social democrat Michael Manley...
...Dozens of workers were arrested, more than 1,000 fired and Guzmin issued a decree declaring that any act affecting the cane harvest constituted a violation of national security interests...
...4. NACLA interview, July 16, 1982, Cotui, Dominican Republic...
...But the demands of the people could no longer be postponed...
...market and sold it to the Venezuelans at a 25% markup...
...Like a hangman stepping into his own noose, Guzmin went ahead with his speech...
...This second political crisis of the year Making the Caribbean Pacific If little else, Reagan's Caribbean policy is a package of paradoxes...
...Washington Post, June 13, 1982...
...While the state sugar operations faced substantial loss, G&W was neatly NNovlDec 192 plan for the credit system, transport, storage or markets in the end meant ruin for the farmer, who found no adequate means of selling the product...
...3 Even the self-management elements of the program had met criticisms of "clientelism...
...The unsteadiness of Balaguer's health, the party's inability to project itself without him and its failure to give a democratic stripe to its ideological or organizational expression all reflected the decay of the organization...
...The Inter-American Development Bank, which had ifinded the program to the tune of $64 million, had in fact threatened to withhold additional funds unless the IAD could restrain the absentee rate...
...base in the country...
...Said one peasant leader from the PRD: "It's not true that the closer we are to the PRD the more we will cross our arms, seeing our families go hungry while the big shots get more land and do nothing with it...
...We take our produce to the capital and have to sell at prices fixed by the intermediary, prices that don't even compensate the cost of production...
...In only a year everything had changed...
...With industry trends like these, and with their main market hostage to political concerns, many Dominicans wonder why the CEA priced itself out of a shrinking market by taking on the loans to modernize its facilities...
...This, in turn, imposed clear conditions on Jorge Blanco's presidency since, after all, he was a noted lawyer linked to the Santiago industrial group...
...Some provisions of the original CBI progam which were shelved were important to the Dominican Republic...
...companies operating or seeking to operate there...
...Criticisms directed at its leaders shook the PRD workers' confederation...
...Its subsidies to G&W together with its history of plunder by various political interests had already left the company decapitalized and entirely uncompetitive...
...Also caught in the middle was a PRD leadership which recognized that without the support of the popular movement the party lacked political viability...
...The number of families settled was less than the previous year, and that in turn had not reached half the original PRD commitment of 5,000...
...This strategy emerged most clearly with the 1981 upgrading of the Caribbean Contingency Task Force in Key West, Florida to one of three full-grade Atlantic NATO commands...
...9. Ahora, August 11, 1980, p. 12...
...The Businessmen's Council called it "an act in violation of the constitutional right to private property...
...Baptized the Year of the Farmer, 1980 opened with unmistakable omens...
...Not even foreign relations escaped partygovernment differences...
...Sources: G&W Form 10-K, 1977 and 1981...
...In characteristic fashion, Guzmfn had caused more political problems than he had solved...
...He accepted the establishment of a mediating commission, agreed to reinstate the great majority of those dismissed, freed those detained and, one month later, sacked his education secretary...
...He made several agreements with the Duvalier regime in Haiti (see box on U.S...
...Salvador Jorge Blanco was elected president of the Dominican Republic with 46% of the votes, and the PRD obtained the majority in both houses of Congress...
...But more critical, it showed that the partygovernment conflict had nearly reached the point of rupture, confirming the swelling realization that Guzmin's government did not represent the positions or the interests of the party...
...Thousands of medical workers affiliated with public institutions decreed a work stoppage that lasted 60 days, and municipal workers in the capital, particularly the garbage collectors, went on strike...
...In so doing, he was gambling that international sugar prices, then hovering around 25c per pound, would not fall as low as the newly guaranteed 17-19C domestic price...
...Anti-Slavery Society for the Protection of Human Rights, "Migrant Workers in the Dominican Republic" (1978...
...30Novlcl082 0 2: 0 1- o A broad popular mobilization during the '82 campaign delivered 46% of the vote to the Dominican Revolutionary Party...
...Despite all this, retailers and importers tended to maintain their loyalty to Balaguer...
...It was only the peasant movement itself which showed a positive balance that year...
...Negotiations between factions stretched out as each simultaneously jockeyed for advantage and tried to avoid tearing the party to shreds...
...As the third assembly of the Independent Campesino Movement, held in October 1979, showed, a national organization had emerged...
...The CEA responded by offering a loan instead of bonuses and promised to consider the other demands...
...Embassy to design "a private sector strategy," which could include altering certain foreign investment regulations...
...The peasants have to travel many kilometers from the countryside to the banks to sign their contracts," explained a representative of one of the peasant associations, "but the money never appears...
...And finally, the professional organizations gave their support, indignant at the aggressiveness shown toward the teachers...
...public and private investment was practically at a standstill...
...And between those who pushed for a greater opening and those who wanted to narrow it was a small but influential professional sector, satisfied with the expansion of liberties but concerned about the polarization...
...efforts at the same time that the PRD and the Dominican strategy-one which seeks to obviate the future necessity of U.S...
...The strike was called to protest the layoff of 100 workers who had demanded the reinstatement of union activists...
...What Can a Leopard Do vwth Its Spots...
...GuzmSn was so chronically off balance by this time that he couldn't seem to ever think of any way out but to throw others off balance too...
...market...
...If Guzm.n's assumption was that he could distribute the cost of the crisis across the social spectrum and maintain his popularity aloof from the repercussions, he had not learned much...
...Presumably hopeful that the company would further the country's interest in international sugar forums, the Guzman government had already bent over backwards to ensure G&W preferential treatment in sugar marketing, even to the detriment of the state-owned CEA...
...He was followed by the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S...
...It was designed primarily by Caribbean/Central America Action (C/CAA), an organization created by the oldest and largest Caribbean investors...
...In 1979, Dominican participation in the three-member team designed by the United States to negotiate with Nicaragua's Somoza legitimized U.S...
...4 The policy of stimulating domestic production didn't even produce results, as evidenced by a marked increase in food importation in 1980 and 1981...
...market...
...Financial interests and industrialists were divided, finding in Jorge Blanco an attractive candidate for his economic recovery plans and the legitimacy he promised to bring to austerity...
...The Dominican state had long been engaged in a modern slave trade through which it endowed its cane fields with the requisite cutters and kept down production costs.' Added to the delay was the difficulty in obtaining funds to begin operation-which obliged the state sugar company (CEA) to ask for more loans and sell part of the harvest prematurely to speculators...
...Widespread protests were sparked across the country by the attack...
...For seven years, some 50,000 landless peasants protested, while the family flaunted its privilege by randomly grazing cattle on the fertile acreage...
...The Dominican democratic experiment was entering into a new stage in which the "easy" reforms had been used up...
...in June the director of the state electricity company announced that without new loans the country would run out of electricity in two weeks...
...9 The brazenness with which the education secretary had identified and fired "extremists," his refusal to negotiate with the ADP, the abuses of power against the teachers, the attacks against PRD leaders who tried to mediate-all were condemned by the ADP...
...This confrontation culminated in November with the violent eviction from the Church of Santa Ana of teachers who had declared themselves on a hunger strike...
...His opportunity came in August, when Cyrus Vance returned to the country, this time as Gulf & Western's legal counsel, to settle the business of the $38 million debt...
...So much for numbers: what did it all mean...
...Christian communities of 27NACLA Report the iglesia popular, which had already suffered the deportation of a number of progressive church workers, organized actions in various parts of the country...
...If the party in Santo Domingo didn't exactly go shoulder to shoulder with the peasants, local PRD leaders did more frequently support their actions and the non-Guzmin national leadership broadened as much as they could their role as mediators in diverse conflicts that were stirred up in the countryside...
...he was the offended since, like the people, he had been ignored by his party's president...
...1 0 In the face of such protest, Guzmxin retreated...
Vol. 16 • November 1982 • No. 6
