Fruits of the Invasion, U.S. Interests in the Dominican Republic Ten Years Later
Goff, Fred
Ten years ago this month President Lyndon Johnson ordered a military invasion of the Dominican Republic to put down the revolt aimed at reinstating the democraticallyelected former President...
...In discussing the acquisition with officers of the Chase Manhattan Bank (one of his principal creditors), Bluhdorn explained how the invasion figured in his acquisition strategy: In discussing the political risks of the company's land holdings in the Dominican Republic he [Bluhdom] indicated that they were relying on President Johnson's close association with this trouble spot and on the artificial price at which South Puerto Rico Sugar [sugar] was being sold at, as a hedge against the nationalization of this land...
...Aguirre Co...
...The first step was to acquire privileged access to the country's natural, industrial and human resources and to its internal market...
...4 5 Today Julio Peynado continues the tradition of appropriating land from Dominicans for use by the ever-growing sugar giant...
...Resort International's main business at the time was, and remains, a gambling operation in the Bahamas, and numerous authorities concurred that the company was controlled by organized crime...
...During the U.S...
...B of A, May 1972...
...These are minimum figures...
...It sought to expand the financial infrastructure by creating new credit sources which could channel funds to investors - such as the Tourism and Hotel Industry Development Corp., which has powers to help finance tourism investments and FIDE (the Investment Fund for Economic Development) which borrows from international aid agencies and lends to private investors...
...A notable recent example was a 20 year extension of La Romana's 1953 tax exemption granted by Trujillo...
...Fuller Co...
...Chase Manhattan Bank Chase Manhattan Bank Chase Manhattan Bank City Wide Refrigeratn...
...4 ' Actually, the Peynado family's involvement began years earlier...
...See B of A, April 1972 and July 1972...
...Eshelman & Sons First Natl...
...Inversiones Daniel Construction Darlington Self-Serv...
...City Bank First Natl...
...Still a further diversification was the acquisition of a controlling interest in a new $34.5 million cement company, Cementos Nacionales, which will supply some 50 percent of the booming construction industry and thus compete with the government-owned Fabrica Dominicana de Cemento, the only other cement factory in the country...
...Power and the Dominican Republic," in I...
...C&H) which refines and markets all Hawaiian sugar...
...Joseph Co...
...food markets in that Toppel and Bluhdorn are both major stockholders in Pueblo Supermarkets (with Toppel being board chairman...
...En Un Tris" column, Ultima Hora, August 11, 1972...
...interests: U.S...
...47 In the capital, Santo Domingo, G&W acquired the 200 room Hotel Hispaniola (and casino) from the government (an old Trujillo property) and refurbished it, while on the seafront 100 yards away it is building a new 250 room luxury hotel...
...is the leading market [for exports] with 66.4 percent share in 1973...
...military and economic support stands in opposition to the fundamental needs of the people...
...Taking advantage of the country's attractive tourism incentives, it has developed the multimillion dollar Costasur resort complex at La Romana complete with its own jet strip, 18 hole golf course and tennis courts...
...Bank of Wash...
...What is more, with 4-5 applicants for every available Company job in the Dominican, the Company has the opportunity to expand rapidly within a framework of labor peace and dedication to work...
...The Balaguer government sought to improve the physical infrastructure for accommodating new investment through a large scale public works program (financed mainly through loans from international aid agencies) which included improvement of roads, expansion of electric power production, dam construction, and expansion of airports...
...See, for example, "Denuncia Venta Terrenos," La Noticia, December ,1973...
...a Tourism Promotion Law (June 1971) under which a wide gamut of tourist-related activities, from hotels to transportation services, was granted complete exemption from taxes and from import duties on goods not available locally, and guaranteed the right to repatriate capital and dividends from such investments...
...G&W, Loew's, ITT-Sheraton, Holiday Inns, Hilton, and ADELA all have hotel and resort projects under way in three different tourism regions being developed and financed by the government (with the help of large loans from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank).'" A group of 40 U.S...
...C. Hitt & A. Zalduondo Honey Creek Farms Intl Import-Export of Balt...
...Vero Beach, Florida) promotional pamphlet "The Dominican Republic" produced in 1974 to commemorate the World Amateur Golf Championships at its La Romana resort...
...The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, June 25, 1970 (on Societa Generale).12 thousand Dominicans have been murdered by right-wing terrorist bands and police trained by the United States...
...The big wholesalers .like American Express and Diners Club and Thomas Cook and the airlines must promote a country...
...2 2 5 In addition to U.S...
...International Commerce, September 21, 1970...
...On the Grenada plantation see: BLA 1966, p. 20...
...The total 182,000 visitors to the Dominican Republic in 1973 is small compared to Puerto Rico's 1.6 million, the Virgin Islands' 1.3 million or Jamaica's 517,400...
...Company management estimates that the resulting total effective Dominican labor cost of, say, $0.50-$0.70 per hour, is still in the range of one-half to one-third of that in Puerto Rico...
...By July 1967 the absorption of SPRS was complete with G&W's formal acquisition of all SPRS shares in exchange for $61 million worth of G&W securities...
...Since labor costs in the Dominican Republic are now significantly lower than those in Puerto Rico, many companies which first "ran away" to Puerto Rico have run away again to the Dominican Republic free zone...
...American Can Co...
...for marketing abroad...
...Business Week, January 20, 1975, p. 56...
...Adolph A. Berle, Navigating the Rapids, Edited by B. B. Berle and T. B. Jacobs (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. 5. For Berle's backing of the invasion see The Christian Science Monitor, November 1, 1965...
...food supplies distributed by CARE and two other private agencies.s6 The emphasis on attracting foreign capital, which tends to be capital intensive rather than labor intensive, has aggravated the unemployment problem - estimated at 50 percent in some sectors of the capital...
...for an electrical generating unit (General Electric and Westinghouse...
...158, 354...
...Once these immediate objectives had been more or less achieved, U.S...
...Overseas Private Investment Corp...
...cit., pp...
...At the time Bluhdorn and Toppel began acquiring SPRS shares, the company was a relatively traditional sugar producer with nearly 270,000 acres of land (between 9 and 15 percent of the arable land in the Dominican Republic, depending on how you determine arable land, and more than all the agricultural land in Puerto Rico), mainly used for growing cane...
...City Bank H.B...
...There is planned a direct, bulk air freight, link between industrial park's 6,000 ft...
...Financier Dominicana (ADELA, Manufacturers Hanover Trust) and the Corporacion Financiers Asociada S.A.-COFINASA (G&W, Bank of America, American International Life Insurance...
...XV (Events of December 1962...
...The draft study, called "The Future World Environment," was prepared by a commission selected jointly by Presidents Nixon and Ford and Senate and House leaders...
...hundreds more are detained as political prisoners in the country's jails...
...Corp...
...How will Washington react when change does come...
...travel correspondents are portraying the Dominicans as docile and highly receptive to foreign visitors: Here there are taxi drivers who smile, hotel employees who laugh and policemen who direct traffic with elegant hand gestures and are quick to offer aid...
...In return it will pay the government $30,000 per year plus 5 percent of the gross income from the zone.4" The tenants in the zone - some 18 U.S...
...14 million), the General Telephone & Electronics Corp.'s Dominican Telephone subsidiary ($13 million), Alcoa (bauxite mine, $13 million) and four oil importing and distributing companies, Esso, Shell, Texaco and Sinclair ($20 million).1 0 4 mining sector, with the two major ones being the $190 million Falconbridge Nickel complex and the $41 million Rosario Resources gold and silver mine (under construction and not included in the OPIC figures...
...If established properly...
...3 However, these plans to denationalize the Dominican productive assets were stymied in 1963 by the seven month Bosch administration which intended to use the income from state properties to partially finance its social reforms...
...5 010 To further accommodate G&W's operation (and other free zones) the government amended its industrial incentives law to exempt free zone operations from any exchange restrictions...
...WSJ, May 25, 1973...
...Its value as a tourist attraction had permitted the establishment of such traditionally Syndicate-controlled activities as gambling, prostitution, and drug traffic...
...versus $1.17 per ft...
...Intl...
...For background on the collective landholding system see p. 45...
...The three-part strategy involved: (1) creating favorable conditions for private investment, especially foreign investment, and hoping that the benefits of the resulting economic growth would trickle down to and pacify the mass of the population...
...C= vs...
...Jaime A. Vicens Warner-Lambert Pharm...
...Gulf & Western Inds...
...BLA, November 27, 1969, p. 382...
...10-K Reports for Amfac and C. Brewer & Co...
...Tony Roma, identified as an associate of organized crime figures in Montreal...
...Horowitz et al., Latin American Radicalism (New York, Random House, 1969) pp...
...The Financial Times (London), October 10, 1974...
...The next step for Washington was to create as stable a base as possible for the new government and to build an administrative structure capable of ruling the country...
...and international opposition, to retake the capital from the Constitutionalists and place it...
...Ten years ago this month President Lyndon Johnson ordered a military invasion of the Dominican Republic to put down the revolt aimed at reinstating the democraticallyelected former President Juan Bosch and his 1963 Constitution...
...adhesive 7042 -A Finance installment sale GM products 5029 -A Furfural production 5100 -A Invertible molasses 5100C-T Invertible molasses -A Cement plant -A Cattle ranch, slaughter, meat process...
...business which are diametrically opposed to those of the Dominican people...
...However, in an October [1969] meeting between Puerto Rico's Governor Sanchez Vilella and President Johnson, it was suggested that Puerto Rico take up the Dominican overture...
...strategy have shown many reform-minded Dominicans who previously viewed Washington as an ally - Bosch himself being the most prominent example - that the State Department and Pentagon merely reflect the interests of U.S...
...But G&W seems to have developed more than a coincidental pattern of relations with men suspected of being key channels through which illegitimate funds from organized crime activities are pumped into legitimate business enterprises...
...Rather than resolving the contradictions in the Dominican Republic, the deepening U.S...
...Embassy report, "Doing Business in the Dominican Republic," describes the potential the growing Dominican trade has for U.S...
...Article 25 restricted the right of foreigners to acquire Dominican land...
...40 million EXIMBANK loan to the Dominican Electric Corp...
...BLA, September 21, 1967, p. 302...
...cit., pp...
...This study was originally prepared for the April 1975 seminar in New York sponsored by the Dominican Republic 10th Anniversary Committee...
...An ominous note is sounded in a Jack Anderson column describing a recent confidential U.S...
...Article 19, for example, provided for profit sharing by workers in both agricultural and industrial enterprises...
...The chaotic events surrounding the 1965 revolution in Santo Domingo provided an opportunity for organized crime to deepen its influence in the country...
...3 1 The Puerto Ricans, according to Business Latin America,8 were at first reluctant to initiate any relationship with the politically volatile Dominican Republic...
...Las Vegas gambling figures Dean Shendel, Moe Dalitz and Hyman Segal...
...Eshelman & Sons J.W...
...Law enforcement agents described a series of meetings held at the hotel at approximately the same time in which Morton held discussions with Lansky, Levin, Korshak and Newton Mandell, who was the general counsel of the G&W subsidiary that owned the hotel...
...Gallagher says he passed the information along to the State Department...
...Gen...
...As one expert explained in 1971: There is no authentic tourist boom - not a boom - until tens of thousands of people want to visit a place...
...Morrison-Knudsen Nebraska Cons...
...See, for example, Norman Gall, "Santo Domingo, The Politics of Terror," The New York Review of Books, July 22, 1971...
...airstrip and San Juan, one flight hour away...
...and Delbert Coleman, a businessman accused of stock manipulation with Korshak and others by the Securities and Exchange Commission.11 ANOTHER CUBA In justifying the 1965 invasion, President Johnson and his apologists claimed they were acting to prevent "another Cuba...
...At the time, Berle was a recent Harvard Law School graduate who had enlisted in the Signal Corps during World War I.] In March 1918 [during the Marine occupation] I landed in Santo Domingo City and went to work on clearing the land titles for the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company and any other company that A view of the G & W hotel at La Romana (Photo: Howie Epstein/LNS).9 would produce more sugar and export it to the United States...
...AGRIDOC)," University of California, Berkeley, 1969, unpublished typescript, 44 pp...
...We will look at the beneficiaries of the invasion first as a whole...
...These major steps necessitated severe repression of popular dissent - no small task since the majority of the Dominicans backed the Constitutionalists...
...The most conservative estimate of new direct investment from the United States is the $220 million guaranteed by the U.S...
...7. "Bank of America's Man-on-the-Spot Report: Dominican Republic" (Hereinafter abbreviated B of A), August 1971, p. 2. The New York public relations firm was Sontheimer & Co...
...Forbes, March 1, 1973...
...Gurrentz Intl...
...Entrprs...
...In a country where over half the population makes its living in agriculture, the agrarian problem is, according to Solon Barraclough, an economist with wide experience in Latin America, "serious and growing worse...
...14-15...
...east coast...
...How the country is going to service and repay this debt is a question that worries even some government economists...
...government blue-ribbon commission report looking ahead to the end of the century...
...2 5 A recent U.S...
...3 3 In addition, Bluhdorn is the largest stockholder (22 percent) in Bohack which operates 120 supermarkets in New York...
...The obvious immediate beneficiaries of the government's open-door policy toward foreign capital are those U.S...
...Wall Street Journal (hereinafter abbreviated WSJ), September 28, 1971;ElSol February 13, 1971...
...William Johnson, "A New Era for an Old Island," Sports Illustrated, February 1, 1971, p. 40...
...6. Susanne Jonas, "Trade Union Imperialism," NACLA's LAER, April 1975...
...G&W was partners with Philip Levin, who was also a G&W director, in the Acapulco Towers Hotel in the Mexican resort town...
...Using dummy corporations and purchasing agents, the company is gaining an even tighter hold on land in the eastern region...
...In 1962, for example, George Walker, an executive of the Mellons' Koppers Co., and other high level U.S...
...In a further diversification G&W entered into a unique relationship with the Dominican government to become the only private manager and operator on the island of an industrial free zone...
...SPRS), the largest private sugar company in the Dominican Republic (and the largest single private U.S...
...If development is measured by growth in production, then the Dominican Republic is a glowing "little Brazil," or, in the words of a recent U.S...
...257 million to be spent on equipment purchases abroad over the next ten years by the government-owned facility...
...B of A, February 1973...
...In addition, the 1963 nationalist and reformist Constitution written under the Bosch government obstructed a foreign takeover of Dominican assets, whether they belonged to the state or not...
...The largest of these investments are in the * At the time of Trujillo's death in 1961, foreign investment in the island, according to the Central Bank, totalled some $150 million, with nearly $120 million accounted for by:the South Puerto Rico Sugar Co...
...Though based in Canada, Falconbridge is U.S.-controlled (by Superior Oil Co...
...Thus G&W is a beneficiary of the U.S.-Balaguer strategy of integrating the Dominican and Puerto Rican economies (with the Dominican Republic serving as the agricultural base and Puerto Rico the industrial base...
...American Can Co...
...The largest recent export sale was under a U.S...
...And before it got very far along in building up its financiera or private investment bank, Corporacion Financiera Asociada (COFINASA), local opposition, alarmed at the rate it was penetrating other locally-owned companies through loans and equity participation, forced it to sell off part of its interests.s 2 "After the fierce criticism of COFINASA earlier this year" reported the Financial Times of London in October 1974, G&W decided to divest itself of its shares, placing some of them in a special trust with the income to be used to maintain a new government sports complex and to support the new Pedro Henriquez Urena University in San Pedro de Macoris near La Romana...
...The architect of this $2 billion empire, Charles Bluhdorn, acquired his initial capital trading sugar and coffee...
...invasion and subsequent government policies in the Dominican Republic is unquestionably Gulf & Western Industries...
...Solon Barraclough, mimeographed evaluation of AID program in agriculture in the Dominican Republic, 1971, p. 74...
...This transaction marked the beginning of a series of controversial Sindona ventures in the United States, culminating with the recent failure of the $5 billion Franklin National Bank (in which he was the largest shareholder) and a high level investigation in Italy into Sindona's business interests, including his underworld connections...
...2) repression of dissent...
...6 and 9. 27...
...His first step was to take advantage of the repressive conditions surrounding the invasion and occupation by U.S...
...Alan Howard Sources include: Hank Messick, Syndicate Abroad (New York, Macmillan, 1969...
...7 And Balaguer has hired the prestigious Boston-based Arthur D. Little consulting firm to prepare an extensive survey of foreign investment possibilities on the island...
...industrial corporation...
...investment there...
...press release No...
...Amount of the investment covered by the contract (in $000's) Original Max...
...6 The report goes on for several more pages outlining the potential export sales in each major area of the Dominican economy...
...NYT, February 12, 1973...
...In July they moved in an aggressive new manager - a Cuban exile named Teobaldo Rosell, who had managed sugar mills in pre-revolutionary Cuba - to begin implementing their plans...
...This included the creation of an Inter-American Peace Force and a provisional government, followed by holding "elections" and the installation of Joaquin Balaguer as President...
...Source: U.S...
...meatpackers, Swift and Armour.3s (G&W's Dominican food production is supplemented by the company's citrus, vegetable and beef production on 63,000 acres in Florida and the recent acquisition of 150,000 acres of farm and cattle land in Paraguay...
...Under its 30 year contract G&W's income will come exclusively from the rental of land and the buildings it will construct and own in the zone...
...Willson Intl...
...The present minimum wage in the textile industry in the Dominican Republic is $0.30 per hour and the Company will pay this in La Romana...
...A WA IC Dominican Guarante 4 Company Name Aguirre Co...
...12The tourism boom, however, is still somewhat in the future...
...requested to the War Department to place me on "inactive duty" for the purpose of going to Santo Domingo in connection with land titles and the movement of the sugar crop in the island...
...2 4 One of the major beneficiaries of the increased number of tourists (from 28,000 arrivals in 1966 to 182,000 in 1973) has been Pan Am, which carried approximately half the passengers arriving in Santo Domingo...
...The subject of discussion was reportedly the hotel's business, which was not particularly profitable...
...The company also bought Playa Bayahibe, the best beach in the area, and obtained a concession over the nearby island of Saona for development as a national park (thus becoming the major beneficiary of a June 1970 Congressional action which nullified a law dating from 1937 preventing the government from leasing small islands adjacent to the country...
...ConDate tract Proiect Descriotion 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 1972 65-70 65-70 1971 65-70 65-70 1974 65-70 1971 65-70 1971 1971 1974 65-70 1972 1972 1964 1964 1964 65-70 1974 1974 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 1974 1974 65-70 1972 1971 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 1974 65-70 65-70 65-70 1974 65-70 1971 1974 1974 1973 65-70 65-70 65-70 1971 1971 1972 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 65-70 5853 -T Land development/agriculture products 5854 -T Land development/agriculture products 5855 -T Land development/agriculture products 6239 -T Agricultural development 6190 -A Can assembly plant 6295 -A Can assembly plant 6427 -A Nickel mining (Falconbridge complex) 6299 -A Commercial banking 8143 -A Finance company expansion 7032 -T Constrn...
...For very helpful information on this and other G&W diversification moves, see Del Castillo et al., op...
...For the purposes of comparison with the Company's San Juan labor costs, to the Dominican minimum wage must be added freight to and from San Juan and a variable U.S...
...headquartered at Vero Beach, Florida...
...Adolf Berle, Jr., a New Deal lawyer and sugar executive who headed President Kennedy's Task Force on Latin America and who backed President Johnson's Dominican invasion, relates in his memoirs how this process worked...
...a 20% interest in the $41 million Rosario gold and silver mine, and a 25% interest in G&W's $34.5 million cement plant...
...Westn...
...With sugar accounting for over half the country's export earnings, G&W produces one-third of the country's sugar (most of the rest being produced by the government sugar company...
...4 and 5. 29...
...See also World Bank press release No...
...Within five years he had solidified the legalinfrastructure for attracting foreign investors...
...OBJECTIVES In its military occupation, Washington faced the immediate problem of how, with the least amount of domestic (U.S...
...This is the context in which we turn to G&W's rapidly expanding tourist facilities in the Dominican Republic...
...By 1910, however, the company's officers faced the fact that: If the company was to continue to grow, it must find sugar lands elsewhere because of the natural limits on sugar lands and thus the ever-increasing cost of lands and leases in Puerto Rico...
...2 0 One final category of direct investment is banking...
...Gulf & Western Inds...
...Dominican plant capacity (140 machines) compares with the 125 sewing machines the Company presently operates in its San Juan facilities . . The initial total fixed investment of the company in the Dominican Republic will be limited to about $80,000, comprising mainly the 140 easily-movable sewing machines, plus an estimated $35,000 in two-week inventories, so its political exposure is narrowly reduced...
...Elsewhere we have tried to develop an analysis of the U.S...
...A few months after the landing of American troops in 1965, Bluhdorn and his close business associate Harold Toppel, head of Pueblo Supermarkets in Puerto Rico, began purchasing shares of South Puerto Rico Sugar Co...
...G&W was also an early supporter of Balaguer...
...military operations in the Caribbean serve the needs of private capital...
...See also the following issues of NACLA 's Latin America & Empire Report on the Dominican Republic: April 1974, April 1971 and November 1970...
...3 1 According to Business Week, "Bluhdom, reflecting his early career as a commodity trader, takes an especially active interest in the food and agricultural products group whose principal product is sugar...
...The $185 million in loans to the Falconbridge Dominican project are insured by an OPIC guarantee issued to Loma Corp., a Delaware-based company which was set up to receive the loans and relend them to Falconbridge Dominicans...
...it was "the natural filming ground" for scenes about Cuba in Paramount's (a G&W subsidiary) Godfather, Part II...
...and the Dominican Republic Government gets one-half of this...
...It is between Cuba and Puerto Rico, southeast of Florida.6 ^10...
...San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle (Sunday Travel Section), March 2, 1975...
...8 While nationalist pressures do not allow him to sell off the old Trujillo properties, Balaguer has followed a strategy of not expanding the state-owned sector, of allowing competing private companies to be established (in the production of cement and milk, for example) and of allowing foreign interests to lease others - especially hotels...
...of State, May 19, 1972...
...U.S...
...Ibid., pp...
...ss The Wall Street Journal reports that one out of every four Dominicans depends on U.S...
...Trujillo acquired the NCB branches in 1941 and used them to establish the first state-owned commercial bank in the country, the Banco de Reservas...
...Cia...
...With the opening of the island to private foreign investment another banking institution made its appearance - the financiera or private investment bank...
...Jose A. Moreno, "Class Domination, Repression and Economic Penetration in the Dominican Republic: 1966-1973," (Univ...
...For a summary of tourism investments, see G&W Americas Corp...
...cit., p. 180...
...in the hands of Dominicans the United States could control...
...By January 1974 these three banks had established 16 branches in the country...
...its frank intention, according to Melvin Knight in his classic history of the period, Americans in Santo Domingo, was to "destroy collective holdings"" which was "just what the sugar people had wanted for years...
...3 9 Amfac and Brewer together own 58 percent of California and Hawaiian Sugar Co...
...De Junco & Cruz Co...
...See International Finance Corp...
...Del Castillo et al., op...
...Then in June of 1970, looking for "areas outside the United States to expand into," according to Bluhdorn, with the whole world to choose from, G&W managed to pick out Societa Generale Immobiliare, Italy's largest real estate and construction firm...
...Embassy report, "one of the brightest spots in Latin America...
...Ahora, June 26, 1967, May 20, 1968...
...Morton's friends who stayed at the hotel during a two-week period in late February and early March of 1969 were: Meyer Lansky, reputed financial chief of organized crime in the United States...
...Indeed, the Dominican Republic even looks like Cuba...
...The Washington Post, March 9, 1969, and the Wall Street Journal, March 12, 1969 (on G&W-Pan Am-Resorts...
...troops occupied the island...
...With Washington forced to accept a socialist Cuba and apparently on the verge of re-establishing relations, the question naturally arises: what effect will this have on the 1965 Constitutionalist Women's Militia (Photo: Ahora magazine...
...Since 1965 two major financieras have been established in Santo Domingo, both with foreign participation (including Bank of America, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, ADELA and Gulf & Western...
...and a new Mining Code (1971) which led Business Latin America to conclude that "the Dominican Republic seems to be willing to remove whatever obstacles stand in the way of increasing mining investment...
...For examples of the newspaper campaign see the special supplements on the Dominican Republic inserted in the New York Times (hereafter abbreviated NYT) on October 3, 1971, January 28, 1973, and May 26, 1974...
...Meanwhile, in the United States, the Dominican government has conducted a broad media campaign to attract investment, paying nearly half a million dollars to one New York public relations firm alone to conduct a promotional campaign for tourism and industrial investment...
...BLA, 1967, p. 392...
...Los Angeles Times, July 8 and 15 and August 25, 1970 (on Illinois Racing Board hearings...
...Conditions in the Dominican Republic today resemble many of the conditions in Cuba before the Revolution - widespread poverty, unemployment, disease, malnutrition and illiteracy...
...The first prominent such figure was Levin, who bought into G&W in early 1968 and became an important associate of Bluhdorn until his (Levin's) death in 1971...
...see also Martin, op...
...sugar prices would affect this position significantly...
...More than a billion pounds of goods leave La Romana by sea and air destined for the United States every year, with much of this traffic coordinated from G&W's Americas Corp...
...stake in the country has also built up, both in economic and diplomatic terms...
...Metal Litho Corp...
...Ultima Hora August 31, 1972, p. 6. 42...
...import tax...
...WSJ, January 24, 1968...
...San Francisco Chronicle, January 8, 1975...
...See NYT, May 26, 1974, special supplement on the Dominican Republic...
...If they were to nationalize the company and sell at world prices (between one and two cents) quite naturally the Dominican Republic Government would not come out nearly so well...
...economic interests and their representatives in Washington began to move towards reaping the fruits of all this effort...
...I was working with a first rate Dominican lawyer, Francisco Peinado [sic...
...In June 1967, management of this $2 million project was assumed by Aguirre Co., a Boston-based Puerto Rican ex-sugar-producer-turned-real-estate-developer, which gave up the project to the Dominican Government in May 1970...
...The Mob" (2 parts), Life, September 1 and 8, 1967...
...1967, p. 184 and 256...
...Not surprisingly, Walker recommended gradually selling or leasing the properties to private investors...
...Company in San Juan...
...Its food production is aimed mainly at export markets in Puerto Rico and the U.S...
...References - Fruits of the Invasion 1. See Fred Goff and Michael Locker, "The Violence of Domination: U.S...
...War, Revolution & Insurrection...
...Many of these officials, such as Alvaro Carta, Teobaldo Rosell and Manuel de Leon are Cuban exiles, and questions have been raised about their ties to the Batista regime, CIA counter-revolutionary activities and organized crime...
...cit., chapter 4. 52...
...Among Mr...
...WSJ, December 14, 1967;San Juan Star, January 28, 1975...
...receivership and occupation of the Dominican Republic in the early 1900's, the National City Bank, predecessor of the First National City Bank (FNCB), had served as the country's central bank...
...Ralph Rounds, a New York attorney whose firm represented the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company...
...BLA, May 29, 1969, p. 174...
...Loma Corp.(Falconbrg...
...At the same time the U.S...
...That's a key advantage over a twin plant in the United States.49 An investment analyst's report on Caribbean Leisurewear, one of the first tenants in G&W's free zone, details how this twin plant arrangement can work: Rental [of the company's 16,500 square feet of space] is at a favorable $0.72 per ft...
...Nebraska envisioned raising some winter fruits and vegetables but mainly sorghum for shipment to its large mills in Puerto Rico for processing into cattle feed...
...invasion in 1965 provided the opportunity to expand SPRS to an even more extensive exploitation of the Dominican Republic...
...Cornelius Gallagher (D-NJ), then a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, with the suggestion that Joaquin Balaguer, then in exile in the United States, would make a good president of the Dominican Republic...
...BLA, January 18, 1968, p. 19 and May 29, 1969, p. 173...
...a since abandoned United Fruit banana subsidiary, $14 million), the Elmhurst Construction Co...
...3. John Bartlow Martin, Overtaken by Events (New York, Doubleday, 1966), p. 116...
...G&W's sugar production must also be viewed in a larger context...
...It is estimated that between 65 and 85 percent of the entire economy eventually ended up in his hands...
...The most notable ingredients included an Investment Incentives Law (1968) which extended generous tax and duty exemptions to new investments, particularly those geared to production for export markets, placed no restrictions on foreign ownership, and created two agencies to deal with incentives...
...Santo Domingo has increasingly taken on the look of a pre-revolutionary Havana, nurturing an environment that is almost tailor-made for the specialties of organized crime...
...3 Since acquiring SPRS, G&W has used it as a base to diversify into a wide variety of Dominican ventures...
...companies at present - are attracted by the large pool of extremely low cost and non-unionized labor available for assembling and manufacturing imported components and raw materials which are then re-exported, mainly to Puerto Rico and the United States...
...the operation could qualify for income tax exemption under Puerto Rican law...
...cit., p. 180...
...Embassy, August 1974), pp...
...To U.S...
...The two neighboring countries - the largest in the Caribbean - have many cultural, historical and economic similarities...
...The day will very likely come When the Dominican Republic can be merchandised by the wholesalers and at least begin to boom, but not for a while yet...
...The two financieras are: Cia...
...City Bank First Natl...
...The invasion and subsequent U.S...
...Contract = OPIC contract number (A = contract is active...
...It was blocked from establishing a mortgage bank to finance the housing construction industry...
...Sidney Korshak of Chicago and Los Angeles, who is a labor relations "consultant" reportedly associated with organized crime interests...
...Rafael L. Ruiz, "Doing Business in the Dominican Republic," (Santo Domingo, U.S...
...See February 1975 Kidder Peabody report on G&W, p. 16...
...Darlington Self-Serv...
...When Washington cut Cuba's sugar quota in July 1960 the Dominican Republic replaced Cuba as the chief Western Hemisphere supplier of sugar to the United States under the beneficial quota arrangement...
...In terms of a social infrastructure, capitalist investment seeks a plentiful, well trained, cheap and docile labor force...
...This giant conglomerate, built up since 1958 through the acquisition of over 100 other companies, is today the 79th largest U.S...
...s 4 However, judged by the criteria of an even distribution of the income produced and of better living conditions for the majority of the people, the country is worse off than it was ten years ago...
...of Pittsburgh, mimeograph, 1974...
...and the U.S...
...Bluhdorn and his associates denied any and all knowledge of organized crime figures connected with G&W properties, but Illinois and Federal law enforcement officials presented evidence of precisely such a connection...
...This represents the first of an estimated U.S...
...2 now paid by the A 10-year-old Haitian boy cuts cane for Gulf & Western at wages so low even poverty-stricken Dominicans refuse to work for them...
...In addition to producing sugar, molasses and furfural (a cane byproduct used in purifying lubricating oil and making rubber), the company grows and exports beef, winter vegetables, citrus fruits and tobacco...
...sugar mills in Cuba in 1960, its mill was the largest one in the world under U.S...
...auto antenna cables for export 5112 -T Mortgage financing 5650 -T Growing/packing bananas 5113 -T Mortgage financing 5478 -A Processed milk & byproducts 5843 -A Confectionary products 5096 -T Leasing autos/buses/trucks 5153 -T Poultry farm 5860 -T Electric power generating plant Original Max...
...This food chain accounts for 41 percent of supermarket sales in Puerto Rico and operates 69 supermarkets on the U.S...
...Ahora, October 31, 1966, p. 8. 47...
...Ro-Search Inc...
...And the viability of the recent labor intensive investment strategy in the free trade zones depends on perpetuating high unemployment rather than eliminating it...
...IC Roughly the size of Vermont and New Hampshire, the Dominican Republic shanes the island of Hispaniola with Haiti...
...and (3) not touching (for example, through tax or land reforms) the interests of the coalition put together as the main base of local support for the Balaguer government...
...Secretaries from Trenton ahd shoe clerks from Norfolk must want desperately to come...
...Since the Cuban Revolution came to power in 1959, Washington has developed sophisticated methods for dealing with political instability in the Third World and particularly in Latin America...
...It includes Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and is chaired by ex-Undersecretary of State Robert Murphy...
...8. BLA, 1970, p. 6; International Commerce, September 21, 1970, p. 25...
...In the words of Business Latin America: Only great effort by AID consultants, one of whom was openly condemned as a lobbyist in the Dominican Congress, got the Nestle deal approved...
...troops to smash the highly combative trade union at La Romana, the Sindicato Unido (see "Trade Union Imperialism...
...5. Business Latin America (hereafter abbreviated BLA), September 14, 1972, p. 2901...
...4 Despite the coup which overthrew Bosch and abolished the 1963 Constitution, few investors felt secure enough about the island's stability to undertake major ventures due to the political turmoil between 1963 and the 1965 invasion...
...Coverage = Original amount of insurance purchased (in $000's) A = vs...
...Pat Holt, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, Staff Memorandum for Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, December 30, 1971...
...has in the Caribbean or Central America...
...SPRS's history is a dramatic example of how U.S...
...interests in the Dominican Republic which is in process but still far from completed...
...Plant is being specifically laid out for volume sewing and finishing of dresses, blouses, pants, skirts pre-designed and pre-cut in San Juan...
...NYT, July 27, 1974...
...In all of these investments management and sales control is in the hands of the foreign companies...
...It represents a preliminary research framework for further work on U.S...
...Export-Import Bank helped G&W finance this venture and the Dominican government acquired a 25 percent share.51 When the conglomerate tried to move into financing, however, stiff local opposition prevented it from carrying out its full plans...
...investors, these companies were plums ripe for the picking...
...The policy of relying on massive doses of foreign "aid" loans to create the infrastructure necessary to attract foreign capital has given the Dominican Republic one of the fastest growing rates of foreign debt per capita in the world...
...Grenada plantation by Nebraska Consolidated Mills (now ConAgra) in 1965, while U.S...
...By agreement with the Dominican government, G&W virtually controls the customs station at La Romana, one of the busiest ports in the country...
...467-68...
...intervention in the country's affairs has only compounded them...
...Calculation based on data in G&W's 1974 Annual Report and I O-K Report...
...to acquire and develop seven miles of waterfront at Macao on the east coast.16 Alfa International of Miami is teaming up with the Dominican government to develop a $150 million tourist city at Manzanillo on the northwest coast.17 A group of U.S...
...By early 1975, G&W held a 22 percent interest in Amfac, Hawaii's largest sugar manufacturer, and also held a smaller interest in C. Brewer & Co., the second largest Hawaiian producer...
...By June 1973 the project came full circle when a group of Dominican banana growers, who had since developed the lands under the direction of the state-run Dominican Agrarian Institute (IAD), sold their crop to the United Fruit Co...
...Mills Oceanography Maricult...
...Article 28 required large landholders to sell that portion of their lands above a maximum fixed by law, with excess holdings to be distributed to the landless peasantry...
...industrialists visited Santo Domingo to study the former Trujillo properties and advise the Dominican government on what to do with them...
...The World Bank's International Finance Corp...
...3 2 G&W has an additional advantage in serving the Puerto Rican and U.S...
...Thus, one of the major objectives which Balaguer's foreign "advisers" began pushing as soon as he assumed the presidency in 1966 was the creation of a favorable investment climate for foreign capital...
...The Trujillo companies accounted for 63 percent of sugar production, 63 percent of cement, 73 percent of paper, 86 percent of paint, 71 percent of cigarettes, 85 percent of milk, 68 percent of wheat and flour plus the nation's only domestically-owned airline, its leading newspapers and three principal radio and television stations...
...Other free zones exist in the country, but they are administered, as is the custom in other countries, by the government...
...The second heaviest area of foreign investment has been in the food and agriculture sector: expanding sugar and molasses production at Gulf & Western's La Romana mill, production of fruits, vegetables and meat (especially for export), and food processing (a Nestle/Carnation milk plant, American Can and Stokely Van Camp canning operations, and Philip Morris' acquisition of the largest private tobacco company).* U.S...
...Banana marketers, for example, have included the United Fruit Co., Standard Fruit & Steamship, Bud Antle of Salinas, California, and Banana Supply of Miami...
...It is the island's largest private employer and tax payer, the largest private landowner and is the private company most closely associated in the popular mind with the hated Balaguer regime...
...The country is too far behind...
...ownership (it was owned by a group of investors closely tied to the Rockefellers...
...Eventually we worked out a theory of land titles and a land court which would clear title to land and permit immediate sugar production...
...Soon after his death in 1961 his family was banished from the island and his properties were taken over by the state...
...direct investors, another even larger group of interests is also benefiting: this group is composed of the various ancillary institutions which help place and service the foreign investments, such as law firms, investment banks, public relations and advertising firms, insurance companies and suppliers...
...G&W's corporate connection with organized crime surfaced briefly in 1969 when a congressional investigation of the conglomerate revealed it had worked out an agreement with Resorts International for the purchase of a substantial amount of stock in Pan American Airlines...
...Financiers Dominicana (AID-DLC/p-1027), U.S...
...6 On the ideological front Balaguer has sought to create the impression among Dominicans that a critical ingredient for development is foreign capital...
...Expropriation...
...investors were initially interested in establishing light industry to penetrate the Dominican internal market - "a market delight second in the Caribbean only to Puerto Rico in terms of population, the propensity to consume durables and processed perishables" 13 - but strong resistance from local interests had greatly limited such expansion...
...9 WHO BENEFITS...
...Robert D. Crassweller, Trujillo (New York, Macmillan, 1966), p. 166...
...South Porto Rico Sugar Company 50th Annual Report (1950), p. 2. 28...
...policy toward the Dominican Republic has long been closely linked to its Cuban policy...
...Local G&W administrators make no secret of their support for Balaguer...
...One of the prime agents for purchasing lands - both for agriculture and for incorporation into a national park G&W will run as a tourist attraction on the eastern end of the island - is Julio Peynado, a well-connected Dominican attorney whose principal client is G&W...
...Shortly after the U.S...
...Waiters and shopkeepers are doggedly friendly and difficult to arouse to anger.19 * One of the more criticized agribusiness investments involved the acquisition of the 32,000 acre United Fruit Co...
...A company history published in 1950, on the occasion of the firm's 50th anniversary, relates how members of a New York banking house with experience in Puerto Rico had been eyeing the possibilities of investing in sugar on that island: Before the Spanish-American War, however, there had been too much risk involved to interest American investors...
...73/23, November 27, 1973...
...Del Castillo, op...
...When Pan Am stockholders threatened to fight and called for a thorough investigation, G&W backed away from the original deal, though it still owns Resorts International stock...
...cit., chapter 4. 53...
...Cuba's strategic location for the trans-shipment of drugs into the United States implied the need to acquire new bases of operation in the area, or to expand old ones following the island's loss...
...I.S...
...interests which stood behind the decision to intervene as seen from the perspective of a few months after the event.' Here we will try to follow up that analysis from a perspective of ten years later...
...4 " In 1974 G&W also bought Schrafft's candy company, a heavy user of sugar...
...74/82, October 31, 1974...
...but one company, Gulf and Western Industries, in particular stands out as a major beneficiary and is worth examining later in more detail...
...An expedition sent out to explore likely sites brought back a favorable report on the undeveloped area lying north of La Romana in the Dominican Republic on the very island where Columbus first introduced sugar culture in the New World...
...More recently, AGRIDOC, a consortium of U.S...
...4 3 The system worked out by Berle and Peynado became the Military Government's Land Registration Law of July 1, 1920...
...Business Week, January 20, 1975, p. 57...
...This country has become the best market the U.S...
...CONCENTRATION OF LAND While SPRS's land holdings on the eastern end of the island already accounted for 80 percent of the cultivated land in San Pedro de Macoris province and 60 percent in El Seibo, one of G&W's main goals in increasing sugar and agricultural production has been to buy up even more land (or contracting with more colonos, local landowners who contract with the company to grow cane and sell it to the La Romana mill...
...Bank of Wash...
...Miami Herald, July 1, 1973, p. 87...
...2. Hispanic American Report Vol...
...Jaragua Inc...
...WSJ, September 7, 1971...
...construction and engineering companies have also profited: for example, the prime contracts for the two largest projects since 1965, the Falconbridge complex and the $40 million Tavera dam, were Brown and Root and Morrison-Knudsen respectively...
...Edward Rosenthal Stokely-Van Camp Stokely-Van Camp Stokely-Van Camp Stokely-Van Camp Tenna Corp...
...Bank of America Bank of America Brown & Root, Inc...
...By 1903 the factory was in operation...
...The public record of the past decade is filled with ardent and glowing statements by G&W officials as to the unique qualifications and achievements of Balaguer as President...
...4 6 DIVERSIFICATION OUT OF AGRICULTURE Soon after acquiring SPRS, G&W began using its base in the Dominican Republic to diversify out of agriculture...
...and nostalgic travel correspondent Horace Sutton speculates that with tourism development under way in Santo Domingo, the city is "perhaps on its way to becoming a replacement for once gay Havana...
...Given G&W's murky history of association with organized crime and the use of the Caribbean-Florida entry route for illicit drug traffic into the United States, it seems quite possible that, known or unknown to top G&W executives, the corporation's operations in the Dominican Republic are used as a front for the activities of organized crime...
...Intl...
...This meant injecting massive amounts of economic aid, rebuilding the police and military forces and reconciling as best possible the factions within Balaguer's principal bases of support - the oligarchy and the armed forces...
...Financieras are highly versatile banking institutions used to penetrate new investment markets: they locate and develop new investment prospects, distribute shares of new companies, help in opening closely-held local private firms to foreign capital and aid in the creation of capital markets where company securities can be traded, as well as provide long term loans...
...Some U.S...
...News & World Report, July 7, 1969, p. 75...
...Armco Steel Corp...
...Investigation of Conglomerate Corporations, Hearings Before Antitrust Subcommittee of House Judiciary Committee, Part 1 (On Gulf & Western Industries), July & August 1969, pp...
...And what is the effect of having the Cuban example of development next door to the Dominican Republic...
...U.S...
...prods ind...
...Del Castillo et al., op...
...Conservas Casera Cia...
...He did not seem to feel that the fluctuation in U.S...
...Within five months of his inauguration Balaguer had approved a new Constitution which omitted those sections of the 1963 Constitution so objectionable to private economic interests...
...Zachery Co...
...154-55...
...Falconbridge nickel complex 6361 -A Milk plant 7179 -T Trading in goods and merchandise 5158 -A Bank branches/international banking 5958 -A Banking facilities -A Mortgage banking 6222 -A Reconditioning/selling appliances 7207A-A Processing & packaging food products 5792 -T Lumber mill 8008 -T Constrn...
...Another person involved in lobbying the U.S...
...Jaragua Inc...
...Within the semblance of stability brought about by this strategy, U.S...
...Tibbals-Crumley-Musson Richard Tiefer Tocomo Corp...
...These mechanisms include massive doses of economic "aid," elaborate private investment promotion schemes, training and supplies for elite counterinsurgency forces, and myriad covert activities...
...At the time the La Romana free zone was established in 1969, an Arthur D. Little executive explained to a group of U.S...
...Grenada had withdrawn because of a banana disease...
...Godfather Part III When the Cuban Revolution forced organized crime from one of its major operational bases, the Syndicate did not abandon the Caribbean area...
...Other companies benefit from the fact that the Dominican development strategy relies heavily on producing for export markets - shipping companies (the island has no merchant marine) and foreign marketers, such as sugar brokers, banana distributors and food wholesalers...
...Mills Nebraska Cons...
...Since Balaguer took power in 1966, between one and two The hearings also established that Lansky had used the hotel to evade police surveillance during a conference of organized crime figures which took place in Acapulco in early 1970...
...In 1974 sugar production accounted for some 20 percent of the company's $224 million profit...
...manufacturers the advantages of having twin plants on the two islands: "Serious consideration" should be given to having a single management run a labor-intensive raw-materials-using plant in the Dominican Republic, send semimanufactured products to Puerto Rico for finishing...
...This law was adopted by the military government and is still in operation...
...Should Dominican wages rise in relation to wages elsewhere, the jobs would vanish as the shops ran away to cheaper labor havens...
...supermarket chain, A&P, and two of the largest U.S...
...Because of G&W's abusive and repressive treatment of its workers, its huge profits, its expansionist moves into wide sectors of Dominican industry, and because its investments are all in sectors in which Dominicans already have long experience, the popular parties have long been in agreement in calling for its nationalization...
...9. For example, a 9.5% interest in the $190 million Falconbridge nickel complex, a 50% interest in the $30 million Shell oil refinery...
...Carnation Milk Century 21, Polk Bros...
...44 million), the Grenada Co...
...s As in pre-Revolutionary Cuba, a regime totally dependent on U.S...
...In July 1970, top G&W executives were asked to appear before the Illinois Racing Board, then investigating ties between a G&W-controlled company, Chicago Thoroughbred Enterprises, and organized crime...
...San Francisco Chronicle, November 4, 1970...
...Ambassador Hurwitch, in fact, reproved G&W's La Romana manager, Teobaldo Rosell, because he had called at a local rally for Balaguer's re-election to a third term during the 1974 presidential campaign...
...City Bank First Natl...
...B = vs...
...occupation army had finally secured control over the Dominican Republic, that the company's officers felt secure enough to authorize the heavy capital investment for construction of a sugar mill at La Romana - previously the Dominican cane had been shipped overnight by barge to the Guanica factory...
...Those who protest or resist the government responsible for these conditions risk imprisonment, exile and assassination...
...249-291...
...The purchase of 10.5% of SGI stock marked the beginning of a long and intimate association with the man who controlled SGI, the mysterious Sicilian banker Michele Sindona, who at the same time purchased a 50% interest in a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures Corp., which is, in turn, a G&W subsidiary...
...is the leading supplier [of imports] with 53.8 percent of total for 1973...
...2 1 The Bank of America entered the scene in 1968 through the purchase of an existing bank...
...fertilizer) also failed to implement .a much-touted project to develop 200,000 acres of ex-Trujillo land after intense public criticism of the terms of the investment...
...Though a little weak on training, the Balaguer administration has gone out of its way to keep labor costs low through a systematic repression of efforts to organize militant unions, to the point of sending soldiers to break up strikes and looking the other way while labor leaders are assassinated (see accompanying "Trade Union Imperialism" article...
...3 6 As a result, the company is undertaking a "major expansion program" to develop more sugar acreage both in the Dominican Republic and Florida, where it has smaller cane holdings...
...Falconbridge Nickel complex 7221 -A Retail supermarket & cafeteria -A Operation of retail supermarket 6258 -T Estab...
...Ed Reid, The Grim Reapers (New York, Bantam, 1970...
...companies which have made direct investments since 1965...
...The fact that one of his law partners, Polibio A. Diaz, is legal counsel to President Balaguer probably makes him a more effective lobbyist for the company...
...east coast...
...interventions occur, most likely in the Caribbean, possibly in Latin America (with) military units of 40,000 or larger, resembling occupation armies.6" Developing a strategy to deal with this possibility is one of the primary tasks facing Dominican revolutionaries...
...3 4 Previously Bluhdorn had been rebuffed in an attempt to acquire control of the largest U.S...
...Gulf & Western Inds...
...investors had, with few exceptions (see below), been excluded from exploiting them...
...With Puerto Rico under the wing of the American government, and in a preferred position under its tariff system, opportunities on the island appeared more attractive...
...Presently the S.R.S...
...Coverage Inv.Amt A B C 250 1.550 800 818 1,138 1,075 2,164 4,328 1,680 1,680 500 1,000 1,700 1,000 1,323 2,646 50 3,550 f1,760 220 440 50 73 145 80 350 300 600 300 50 100 25 40 6 12 2,880 550 757 1,297 100 150 100 200 1,690 2,000 762 1,860 3,000 4,500 383 765 720 729 729 47 53 106 186 500 450 175 350 185,000 185,000 39 78 3,500 2,500 1,500 2,500 1,600 14 26 1,983 3,966 589 1,177 300 470 470 50 100 298 350 196 15 29 30 60 205 250 16 53 209 60 97 385 200 100 200 250 1.550 800 818 642 1,075 4,328 1,680 1,000 1,700 2,646 100 2,850 1,760 440 100 145 80 350 600 600 100 40 12 1,200 550 757 200 2,000 1,860 4,500 765 720 729 53 106 186 500 450 175 185,000 78 3,500 1,500 3,275 1,600 26 3,966 1,177 600 100 350 196 29 60 250 16 151 184 60 385 200 100 695 250 1.550 800 818 642 1,075 4,328 850 60 900 2,646 100 8,000 1,260 100 145 80 350 600 600 100 40 12 180 20,000 300 100 1,690 1,110 620 4,500 765 720 729 53 106 186 500 450 185,000 78 3,500 1,500 2,525 1,000 26 3,966 1,177 600 100 350 196 29 60 250 8 30 162 60 385 100 695 Key: Date = Fiscal Year coverage first issued (65-70 indicates coverage issued between 1965 and 1970...
...customs receivership] .2 However, it was not until 1917, one year after the U.S...
...Cane cutting wages are kept so low that Dominicans can barely live on them and the sugar companies - enjoying their highest profits in decades - import thousands of even poorer Haitians to do this strenuous work...
...The equivalent of the War Production Board of that period was seeking to increase production of sugar...
...The big investments now on the drawing boards are in tourism...
...By February 1966 Bluhdorn and Toppel acquired enough stock to gain seats on the company's executive committee...
...In response to nationalist pressure, the government has taken minority positions in several of the largest recent foreign investments...
...These conditions changed when the American army landed on July 25, 1898 at Guanica Bay, near where the company's Guanica factory now stands...
...The loss of access to Cuban nickel deposits (among the largest in the world) was one of the factors behind the huge Falconbridge nickel investment in the Dominican Republic...
...and Del Castillo, op...
...Ibid., p. 140...
...Dept...
...G&W Americas Corp...
...However, the net effect of the U.S...
...Data from the Dominican Central Bank, as cited in Del Castillo et al., La Gulf& Western en la Republica Dominicana (Santo Domingo, Editoria de la UASD, 1972), p. 190-192...
...T = contract is terminated) Inv...
...Nevertheless, the G&W appointed managers of Cofinasa remain in their jobs and many Dominicans doubt that G&W no longer has an interest in the company.' 3 The paper estimates that G&W's current stake in the country is about $200 million, making it the largest single foreign investor...
...and Del Castillo, Op...
...Chase Manhattan Bank ad in publication of the American Chamber of Commerce of the Dominican Republic...
...By December 1973 the FNCB had assets in the Dominican Republic of $70 million...
...cit, pp...
...4. Dan Kurzman, The Washington Post, May 25, 1965, as reported in I. F. Stone's Weekly, May 31, 1965...
...1969, p. 173...
...Motors Acceptance Gulf & Western Inds...
...El Nacional May 22, 1971, p. 10...
...sic] is selling their sugar at 8 cents a pound in the U.S...
...The expanding tourist industry has brought alarming reports of increases in drugs, prostitution and gambling, even though there is evidence that the resorts themselves are losing money...
...Since the loss of U.S...
...Article 23 prohibited large land holdings...
...government at this time in favor of Balaguer was I. Irving Davidson, long identified as an associate of organized crime figures...
...Photo: Howie Epstein/LNS...
...Accordingly, in February 1918, Mr...
...in D. Gale Johnson, The Sugar Program (Washington, D.C., American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1974), p. 13...
...5962 -T Single-unit family dwellings 8123 -T Breeding/raising Higrade hogs 8085 -A Manufacture/sale of spices 5733 -T Lumber mill 5998 -T Lumber mill 5976 -T Refurnishing hotel/motel 5977 -T Refurnishing hotel/motel 5237 -A Storage tank - fats/oils 6398 -A Falconbridge nickel complex -A Lithographic plant 7100 -A Construction Tavera Dam/power station 5636 -T General farming of milo and vegetables 5634 -T General farming of milo and vegetables -A Fish farm 5734 -T Lumber mill 7137 -A Mfg./sale of cigars, cigarettes -A Mfg./sale of dry cell batteries -A Refrigeration equipment distribution 8212 -A Mfg./sale injected mold welt footwear 6216 -A Mfg./sale of wood furniture, cabinets 5933 -A Integrated food/vegetable processing 6319 -A Integrated food/vegetable processing 7207B-A Integrated food/vegetable processing 7208 -A Integrated food/vegetable processing 8112 -A Mfg...
...San Juan), May 1, 1970, pp...
...invasion and subsequent Washington policies toward the Dominican Republic has been to create rather than prevent "another Cuba...
...The Miami Herald, November 24, 1974...
...One of the commission's projections, relates Anderson, is that War becomes a major instrument of policy in countries of the Third World...
...as well as a U.S.-backed repressive government which resists reforms...
...Julio's uncle, Jacinto Peynado, was Trujillo's first puppet President and his father Francisco negotiated ,the Hughes-Peynado plan covering the termination of the Marine occupation in 1924.42 It was Julio Peynado's father, Francisco, who also helped assemble the original SPRS lands in the Dominican Republic...
...For that to happen they must be sold - sold by travel wholesalers...
...J.W...
...On AGRIDOC see NYT, January 22 and April 16, 1968...
...Opposition to foreign investment in industry has been so great that the large AID mission on the island has switched its emphasis to tourist development, hopefully a field with fewer vested interests.14 While a relatively large number of companies have established small assembly plants in "free trade zones" set up by the government, these involve minimal investments...
...See the USAID loan paper for the Cia...
...Thomas E. Quick Philip Morris Ray-O-Vac Refripartes, Inc...
...S. Prakash Sethi, "Agro-Industrial Development Co...
...Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Washington, D.C.7 THE GULF & WESTERNIZATION OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC The largest single beneficiary of the U.S...
...For a critique of tourism promotion as a "development" strategy, see Gail Grynbaum, "Tourism and Underdevelopment," NACLA Newsletter, April 1971...
...agribusiness giants (including Dow, International Harvester and Worthington) headed by International Minerals & Chemicals Corp...
...Aguirre Co...
...Land figures from data supplied by Alan Howard...
...They must have something to merchandise - package tours and options on the packages, a full range of prices and accommodations...
...OPIC) through June 1974 (see chart...
...La Opinion (New York) January-February 1968...
...operate cattle ranch 8140 -A Manufacture & sale of animal feeds 8221 -A Poultry farm 1632 -A Commercial banking 1633 -A Commercial banking 1633A-A Commercial banking 5882 -A Commercial banking -A Commercial banking/expansion of branch -A Mfg/sale ind...
...military invasion in April 1965, well-known Mafia figure Joe ("Bayonne Joe") Zicarelli approached Rep...
...investors led by Terry Sanford (ex-Governor of North Carolina and now president of Duke University) and Harry C. Robbins, a North Carolina real estate developer, have joined with Elmhurst Construction Co...
...The U.S...
...Melvin K. Knight, The Americans in Santo Domingo (New York, Vanguard Press, 1928), p. 103...
...Within a year after Trujillo's assassination, the First National City Bank and Chase Manhattan Bank had opened branches in Santo Domingo...
...For once firmly entrenched in power, Trujillo had initiated a program of taking over as many of the country's productive assets as possible...
...As a result, the company purchased some 20,000 acres there in 1911 [when the Dominican Republic was under a U.S...
...Hawaii produces 10 percent of all sugar consumed in the United States and the Dominican Republic nearly 6 percent (with G&W accounting for one-third of all Dominican sugar...
...For an analysis of the Falconbridge investment, see the three articles on this company in the April 1974 issue of NACLA's LAER...
...IMMEDIATE U.S...
...Given G&W's controlling interest in the Madison Square Garden Corp., which has reportedly attracted the interest of underworld elements, who live from the gambling industry associated with horse racing and other sports events connected with Garden holdings, it is not surprising for G&W to occasionally mix with organized crime figures...
...The Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 1967...
...Data is for 1973, as reported...
...Though the Dominican Republic was known to contain vast riches, both developed and potential, for at least 20 years U.S...
...G&W Annual Report, 1974, p. 14...
...For a case study of how these firms benefit, see F. Goff, "Falconbridge-Made in USA," NACLA's LAER, April 1974, p. 11 ff...
...labor leaders, labor mediators and business executives have invested half a million dollars in the 15,000 acre Punta Cana resort and tobacco plantation.'" While racial violence and anti-American sentiment are scaring tourists from some of the Caribbean islands which enjoyed/suffered the tourist boom of the '60's, U.S...
...Inconvertibility...
...239-49 (on COFINASA...
...During 1974, which saw sugar prices soar 400 percent, Bluhdorn not only boosted G&W's sugar development but also attempted to increase its power in the sugar market through acquisition of a strong position in at least one other major sugar producer...
...Aguirre Co...
...Ahora May 9, 1966...
...Acapulco Towers was run by "Moe" Morton, not as a regular hotel but as a private club for himself and his friends...
...Report on Caribbean Leisurewear by PRFG Securities Corp...
...City Bank First Natl...
...policy-makers began implementing a long range strategy for keeping the lid on the island and extracting the benefits gained through the invasion...
...The Balaguer administration, reports the Financial Times "appears to have done everything possible to help G&W despite local objections...
...Over the last ten years the social tensions have increased, and, in the words of Pat Holt, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's staff, who visited the island in 1971, "change seems inevitable, and it is likely to be more radical - and possibly more violent - for having been postponed...
Vol. 9 • April 1975 • No. 3
