Guzman Tacks to the Right
As Guzmin's funeral cortege passed by, one woman was heard to say: "Guzmin didn't take away my hunger, but he gave us freedom." That was not a eulogy shared by all. Some would simply argue that...
...Within the party, that meant using government resources to strengthen his own tendency and creating obstacles for the others...
...Unrelentingly battered during the Balaguer regime, some groups had disbanded, others had limited themselves to cautious and clandestine work among the popular organizations tolerated by Balaguer...
...Above all, it suggested the possibility of other such nationalizations, the recuperation of sovereignty...
...For the adherents of the first view, restricted representative democracy seemed the ideal political model...
...Progress toward political and economic freedoms seemed even more complicated and confusing than anyone could have predicted...
...This was the bleak picture when at the end of June, with little warning and no compensatory cost-of-living increases, Guzmin announced the third increase in the price of fuels...
...By the end of 1979, without renegotiation, debt servicing would equal twothirds of the country's entire export earnings...
...And the U.S...
...Yet somehow this platform was not mirrored in Guzmin's policies...
...1,200 people were killed, tens of thousands left homeless...
...Within 13NACLA Rpomt five months 118 new unions were formed, almost swamping the organized movement's capacity to incorporate them.' In the countryside, peasants suspended the land takeovers that had punctuated the last years of the Balaguer regime...
...He opted for an "easy" way out, that of foreign indebtedness, mortgaging the future of the Dominicans to meet the costs of the present...
...Merchants engaged in a heyday of usury, hoarding and speculation...
...Economic Policy Proves Gutlese Wonder The spring of 1979 brought with it the budding of economic problems sown the previous fall...
...The other project, best articulated by Pefia G6mez, was a radical and nationalist conception, which proposed to compensate for the economic weakness of the popular classes by articulating their political power through the PRD...
...popular support was waning rapidly...
...La Noticia, May 15, 1979...
...Guzmin supported the company's unionbusting measures by militarizing the zone...
...Second, producer associations would link up with agroindustrial companies to process animal feed for local use, or pack tomatoes, coconut meat and the like for export...
...government, in an impressive display of military force ostensibly there to assist, clearly expressed its intent to maintain order and support the Dominican government...
...In exchange for their forbearance, Guzmin agreed to study the wage scale and reaffirmed the government's guarantee of the right to organize...
...Early on, the tendencies within the PRD had tried to maintain the appearance of unity and support for the government...
...The forecasted political storm hung suspended for the moment, however, overtaken by one of a climatic nature...
...Reform or Deform the Countryside...
...Nickel and sugar prices remained depressed, and in the United States barriers were maintained against sugar and textile imports...
...Guzmin was not looking for such confrontation...
...And finally, given the difficulties of the U.S...
...8 Several of Gulf & Western's major operations were entirely tax free.' The government refused to levy new taxes on the import substitution companies as well, allowing them to reinvest tax-free more than $214 million in profits in the name of job creation-a concession that netted fewer than 1,000 jobs.'" Ironically, the state-owned sugar company accounted for half of the government's corporate tax revenues...
...One surprising measure followed another...
...Guzm.n's answer was just as quick: he turned the police on the demonstrators...
...It was not easy either to reconcile or to reach these objectives...
...In those days it seemed that the only blessings the Dominican Republic received were those bestowed by John Paul II on his visit to the country...
...With each loss of footing he improvised steps which threw him further off balance...
...Although they reappeared on the scene with a moral legacy of resistance, their forces were weak and fragmented...
...company were scandalous, the measure was greeted with many cheers...
...The increase in effective demand spurred by state spending was reflected not in a growth of national production but in an import boom...
...Once in power, he announced a new bill to promote agroindustry and another to promote exports...
...8. Latin America Commodities Report, May 2, 1981...
...This was made patently clear by Guzmin's short-sighted solution to the economic deterioration...
...They were also in marked disagreement about the nature of the political moment...
...To deal with these dilemmas the government sought to increase the class of small- and medium-scale farmers, giving them access to credit and political backing...
...Thus, for example, he imposed virtually no controls on imports and made no moves to carry out an ade18NovIDal quate tax reform...
...Rather, he was like a novice tightrope walker, clumsily inching his way across the wire...
...The minimum wage was less than half the amount needed just to buy the basic monthly food basket for a family of four.' The government had done nothing except worsen the situation, approving price increases requested by the bourgeoisie and indirectly encouraging the increase of imports whose prices reflected the inflation afflicting the U.S...
...It was business' aim to both teach the workers' movement a lesson and force the government to define its intentions...
...Further manipulation of the situation by the police, as well as several tactical blunders by the CGT, permitted the Secretary of Labor to recognize the UGTD leaders as the "legitimate" representatives of the reconstituted Sindicato Unido...
...The protest was still growing when the PRD leadership intervened, severely criticizing GuzmAn and Majluta, pressing the drivers to stop the strike and calling on people to return to their homes to avoid giving the Right an excuse for a coup...
...And finally, the reform was an instrument of political conversion to draw the rural masses toward the PRD...
...For them, the debate was about how to push this process beyond its own limits...
...The effect on the PRD was serious...
...Under the new conditions, organizations of the Left began to resurface, first through myriad newspapers, then in open activities...
...Workers struck the mine in Bonao, demanding unpaid back bonuses and restitution of their union leaders-the fifth successive leadership fired by the Canadian company since 1974...
...He announced his intent to collect $38 million owed the government by Gulf & Western...
...Above all, the immediate boost in economic activity, with record earnings for bankers and importers, and healthy profits for industrialists as well, endeared Guzmin to these groups...
...With the troops came offers of credit to pay for more U.S...
...They also managed to impose their candidate as president of the party to replace Salvador Jorge Blanco, head of the PRD bloc in Congress...
...Guzmfn's economic "model" had not gotten off the ground...
...Without hesitation Guzmin leaped into the fray...
...3 A hundred thousand people had no land at all, and 60% of the rural population was without full-time work...
...The first, represented by Guzmin's tendency, saw the PRD's political importance resting on "its power over the large popular masses" in a society in which the bourgeoisie constituted the dynamic and leading element...
...This new factionalism tended to muddle the issues, often eclipsing the long-standing controversy about the kind of populist project the party stood for...
...exporters could hardly be expected to look favorably on barriers to the Dominican market...
...GUZMAN TACKS TO THE RIGHT 1. "Archivo de Huelgas," Ahora, February 26, 1981...
...But there were heated disagreements in banking and industrial circles about the role of foreign capital, the necessity of state planning and the need to protect local industries...
...Left tabled were the bills for export promotion, mining, foreign exchange liberalization and agroindustrial development...
...and Frundt, Gulf & Western...
...The progressive agronomists he selected from the PRD to head the new Dominican Agrarian Institute promptly declared their intent to act against the large landowners...
...Middlemen offered the peasants a pittance for the produce they had managed to salvage...
...Espaillat accused Guzmin of ignoring the program and handing over the reins of economic policy to those Pefia G6mez called "the natural adversaries of the party...
...A gallon of gas was pegged at $1.85-25c more than an OPEC pass-along...
...it did not even seem to be one of transition...
...They accused the unions of acting Ixrenaturely...
...At the risk of caricature, it is possible to identify the poles of this larger conflict...
...Supporting only restricted emergency powers, they said little for the moment about the " reconstruction" loans, even though they would surely be used only to meet balance of payments 1920 MACLA Roped requirements...
...But by spring 1979 the signs were inescapable: Guzmin was trying to establish an independent base of power...
...Above all, they were encouraged by the desire of the Guzman government to present itself as the guarantor of "order" and a friend of business...
...First with great moderation and then with greater abandon, Guzm.n adopted a hard-line policy against the union movement, a policy which would characterize his future conduct toward the popular movement in all of its expressions...
...The principle of incompatibility of functions between government and party leaders was established, in which leaders who went into government had to resign their party jobs and vice versa...
...On balance, democracy within the party was expanded considerably, and, to the surprise of few, Pefia G6mez was reconfirmed as the unquestionable leader of the party...
...Such was the destruction that it seemed nature had given Guzmfin something to pin his economic problems on and granted him the chance to make a fresh start...
...The plan was predicated upon substantial investments from the private sector...
...economy, U.S...
...They had high hopes for the "Farmer President," as GuzmSn had been hyped during the campaign, and they concentrated their efforts on creating and strengthening their organizations...
...And finally, the instability and subsequent doubling of interest rates in the international financial markets-rates averaged almost 19% in 1981-attracted even Dominican capital away from productive investment and into the money markets...
...By the May 1st workers' rally in 1979, some 17WAChLARepo UGTD contingents could be heard shouting slogans against the GuzmSn government and in the coming year they would lead some of the most significant strikes...
...The denunciations that flew between the tendencies, rumors that Guzmin harbored re-election ambitions and speculation about the existing balance of forces within the party fed interest in the event...
...Mill workers from the PRD who had worked closely with the CGT during the Balaguer years chafed at the epithets "officialist" and "yellow" justifiably hurled at the UGTD...
...The results of the convention gave a little something to everyone...
...A system of delegate selection was approved which guaranteed proportional representation of all tendencies...
...This attitude was spurred by the amnesty decree for political prisoners, the return of exiles and what appeared to be the agrarian calling of the Guzmin government...
...its offensive steadily escalated...
...By briefly flying the nationalist banner, Guzm.n revived both the hopes of the people and the fears of foreign investors and their domestic allies...
...One objective of the PRD's agrarian policy was to raise rural productivity by gearing its production to the needs of urban consumers and industry...
...Newly discovered mineral deposits proved economically unattractive...
...Part of the Left saw it as a fleeting episode and argued that the situation would quickly deteriorate...
...Guzmin's and Majluta's tendencies retained the majority of posts at a national level...
...By the late 1960s Balaguer and G&W had destroyed the unified organization of mill and field workers, a unique body the CGT had since worked many clandestine years to rebuild...
...If these interests did not always coincide with those of the government, so be it...
...It was a strong statement to a working class that thought "its" party had come to power, that thought that social justice was a radical idea whose time had come...
...The Left should be prepared, therefore, for either a coup or a dropping of the PRD's progressive mask...
...Candidates would not be picked at this time, but the rules of the game would be established and forces in control of the 1981 nomination convention would be defined...
...Guzmin was also opposed by the CGT, most of the Left and the peasant associations, which offered an alternative reconstruction program based on the initiative and participation of the popular classes...
...As a result of Guzmin's refusal to take action in these two areas, the trade deficit would, in less than two years, go from $184 million to $537 million, and the government's budget deficit from $93 million to $331 million...
...The trade union movement-one of the main targets of Balaguer's repression-represented only 15% of the industrial working class...
...The Army closed the town's radio stations and surrounded the strikers' headquarters, cutting off food and water supplies...
...The minimum wage increase decreed by Guzmin in December 1978, although barely covering the price increases of the previous few months, helped him maintain popular support...
...In the midst of all this, the government announced that it had discovered and dismantled a military plot led by pro-Balaguer officers who had been retired by Guzmin...
...Other sectors viewed the opening as the beginning of a real transformation of bourgeois rule, of which the new freedoms were an integral part...
...The people must be patient through this fragile moment, he insisted, invoking the specter of a right-wing coup...
...Six people died and dozens were wounded in encounters with the police...
...To Guzmin's followers, the Dominican General Workers' Union (UGTD) was little more than an instrument of the party, a weapon to wield against the militant and left-wing General Workers' Confederation (CGT...
...Suddenly, in October 1978, the UGTD appeared on the scene to compete for control in the now open elections...
...2. Ibid...
...Furthermore, redistribution alone would not satisfy the aims of the government's strategy to promote capitalist development in the countryside...
...If a year earlier their first surge grew out of confidence in Guzmln and the PRD, the thought of a reconstruction program in which the people made the sacrifices and the bourgeoisie reaped the benefits gave impetus to their inclination for autonomy...
...Widespread stagnation of the world economy by 1979-80 contracted demand for the types of exports that could be produced in the Dominican Republic...
...Because the new issue was access to the resources and privileges of power, the distinct tendencies began to subdivide into rival political cliques...
...Alarmed by the possible implications of such absolute power, opposition members of Congress linked arms with other PRD tendencies and the largest business associations to block Guzmin's way...
...For the workers, the slum dwellers and the peasantry, it was a time of effervescent mobilization...
...now it had government encouragement to operate freely...
...Bernardo Vega, "Los cuatro deficits del Apocalipsis," Listin Diario (Santo Domingo), February 6, 1982...
...Although the price and conditions of purchase of this U.S...
...I (Santo Domingo: Publicaciones ONAP, 1982), p. 1 9 4 . 5. Nuestra Palabra (Santo Domingo), August 1979, p. 2 . 6. Economist Intelligence Unit, Quarterly Economic Report on Cuba, Dominican Republic and Haiti (London), Second Quarter, 1979, p. 1 3 . 7. World Bank, Dominican Republic, p.76...
...The private sector, irritated by the wage increases, threatened more layoffs...
...Guzmfn took advantage of the disaster to demand extraordinary powers-which would render Congress virtually irrelevant-and to open another round of borrowing...
...None of these measures had the impact of Guzmin's announcement that his government was nationalizing the Rosario goldmining operation...
...9. SeeJos6 del Castillo et al, La Gulf & Western en Reptdblica Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Editora de la Universidad Aut6noma de Santo Domingo, 1974...
...Before the bill of Guzmin's economic program came due, the country enjoyed an interlude of optimism...
...First, malnutrition and poverty would find home-grown solutions in greater production of rice, corn and beans...
...Guzmin was forced to enter into negotiations and ended by offering the drivers a subsidy of $100 a month to compensate for the gas price increase...
...The most significant resignation was that of Leopold Espaillat Nanita, presidential aide for economic affairs and one of the principal authors of the PRD economic program...
...A policy of "controlled recession" in certain developed countries-particularly high interest rates and high unemployment-fostered a growing trend toward protectionism...
...The motor of this "model" was an increase in state expenditures, particularly through higher salaries and public employment...
...he dedai'ed his opposition to the sale of state enterprises to the private sector...
...Some 200 families owned more land and had greater access to water than 260,000 families together...
...To restrict imports meant confronting powerful business sectors, depriving the voracious middle class of its luxury consumption, quickly provoking a scarcity of many consumer products, spurring inflation...
...As a result, the internal struggle became volatile and occasionally violent...
...This attitude was most palpable in the countryside, with the further growth of peasant organizations and the drastic increase in land occupations...
...Since it represents the capital on which the Dominican Central Bank will provide dollars for repatriation purposes, investors are likely to register, if not governed by a separate contract...
...he sped up the program of subsidized people's stores under the Institute of Price Stabilization (INESPRE...
...16NovID1982 PRD tendencies other than Guzmin's were fired from their government jobs...
...Adding to popular indignation was Guzmin's refusal to take measures to confront the problems in the trade balance and the fiscal deficit...
...The taxi drivers, who provide the main means of public transport, called a strike, immediately joined by students and workers who transformed the action into an anti-government protest...
...there had been enough scandal with the timid measures that accompanied the April gas price increase...
...Within Guzmin's governing team, several resignations reduced the number of PRD cabinet members to two, both in minor posts...
...The Crumblings of Party Unity Between swings of the ax, the tree rests...
...In political terms, the scheme was attractive...
...The most prominent struggle was that of the unions, in which the CGT and elements of the UGTD joined forces to beat back the owners' onslaught...
...Different Conceptions in Practice The experience of the workers' confederation created by the party soon after Guzmin's inauguration exemplified this contradiction...
...The UGTD campaign was coordinated from the National Palace by Guzmin's right-hand man, Interior Secretary Vicente Sanchez Barat...
...The PRD electoral platform had stressed an end to repression, the legalization of all parties, freedom of expression, the right to unionize and to strike, and amnesty for those still jailed or exiled for their opposition to Balaguer...
...to reduce them would increase the deficit...
...combined with the cost of oil imports, the Treasury would be penniless on the international market.' By the end of August, only a year after his inauguration, Guzmin's situation was not enviable...
...Within two days the strikers were defeated...
...At the same time, the creation of 34,000 public jobs-teachers, agronomists, medical workers and others-in the government's first 18 months fulfilled the political promise that the PRD held out to the new professional sectors...
...Furthermore, the government's ability to en*Registered foreign investment, while not complete, is the most proximate measure of investment in productive enterprises...
...the difference was a hidden tax added to help mitigate the fiscal deficit...
...Only by doing so can they receive the benefits of the tax incentives accorded by the Industrial Incentive Act...
...Central Bank, Boletin Mensual, p. 105...
...In April Guzmin decreed the second rise that year in the price of gas and other fuels...
...Done at a moment of towering world prices for gold, it raised the possibility of remedying the fiscal deficit...
...To Guzmin's there were no fundamental differences between the interests of this class and those of the nation...
...With an eye to the approaching party convention, Guzmin took steps to recoup the loss...
...One of the most ominous was the growing tension between the PRD and the government...
...And finally, rules were changed to establish the direct participation of the base in the selection of national electoral candidates from the PRD...
...This would bring grave consequences since it generated no new employment and pushed the trade deficit to dizzying heights...
...His ability to be the magnet of one tendency while still trying to keep the party together had thus far been successful...
...Among the dead were four identified as community leaders from the PRD, giving the lie to government allegations that the protest was a conspiracy of reformists and leftists...
...To long-time trade unionists in the party, the UGTD was a new opportunity to fight for workers' interests-not only economic but political ones as well...
...To this end, PRD advisers drew up a series of short-term measures 14NIelsDes ig which later acquired the misnomer "induced demand model...
...All told, between 1978 and 1981 foreign investment registered with the Central Bank increased by only $27 million.* Not only would this put a damper on export growth, but it would leave the new purchasing power nowhere to spend itself but on imports...
...The first scene of confrontation was at La Romana sugar mill, owned by Gulf & Western...
...he sent Congress a bill that would permit the expropriation of large landholdings using state-owned irrigation channels...
...1 " Guzmfn's was not the government of the people...
...Its annoyance was not diminished by the apparent inability of the President to get Congress to act on the principal economic projects of the government before the May recess...
...What was needed, then, was an instrument that could incorporatae the masses as "clientele," and thus overcome the frictions and conflicts that would arise in the short run...
...La Noticia, August 2, 1981...
...No one could say that Guzmin had consolidated his forces, achieved the objectives he had set for this period or even, for that matter, that he was well on his way to doing so...
...the private sector was getting more alarmed daily by his political ineptitude...
...They muffled their outcries when GuzmSn accepted a medal from the Guatemalan government and prayed for the health of dictator Lucas Garcia-just days after his regime assasinated Alberto Fuentes Mohr, leader of Guatemala's Democratic Socialist Party, a party close to the PRD...
...A political crisis was in the air...
...A good sign for business, it would nonetheless sharpen divisions within Guzmin's party...
...In carrying out their offensive, employers relied on Trujillo's 1953 Labor Code, the quicksand of the Labor Department and the support of the police...
...Meeting with union representatives, he called for a truce...
...Its adherents viewed the state as a neutral apparatus, available for use by a class other than the bourgeoisie and for the benefit of the majority...
...Taghtrope Walking Without a Net At the end of October 1979, political tensions and attentions centered on preparations for the PRD's Tenth Convention...
...But the palms had barely turned upright before enterprising souls saw the chance for a money-making venture...
...In short, they fought with the weapons of legality and the legality of force...
...Business Calls the hts The bourgeoisie wasn't relaxing either...
...Most telling was the Falconbridge strike of April 1979...
...But the government of "political freedoms" did not intend to include popular democracy within its definition...
...Allied to this was the goal of incorporating the peasants into market relations, transforming them into small entrepreneurs or an agricultural proletariat for the new rural investors...
...Through control of the state they would strive to push through a program of reforms that, without restricting the rights'of capitalists, would eliminate excesses and increase the participation of the population in the wealth of the nation...
...The possibility of a coup galvanized the PRD into a unified show of support for the President...
...The reactions were not long in coming...
...In five months, more than 2,000 workers were fired and the union movement was forced on the defensive...
...imports...
...In particular, the Agrarian Institute would provide state lands for the creation of collective settlements, to be worked in common under the direction and control of the Institute...
...Within one year Guzmin had doubled the public debt inherited from Balaguer...
...But the success would soon prove to be both ephemeral and counterproductive...
...To avoid the waves of protest that the first had provoked, he increased the minimum urban wage from $100 to $125 per month, and that of rural workers to $3.50 per day...
...They tried to calm the protests that flared when members of Gulf & Western's contribution to Dominican development, a hotel at La Ramana...
...Industrialists fulfilled their earlier threat of new layoffs, tried to lower salaries to less than $100 a month, and demanded special considerations from the government...
...To the acclaim of industrialists he also restricted a few competitive imports...
...If Guzmin was unwilling to impose import restrictions on the powers that be, he was less willing to tax their property or their businesses...
...Expected foreign investment had yet to materialize and tax collection remained far below spending, aggravating the fiscal deficit...
...With the adjournment of the convention the political parenthesis which had opened with the hurricane closed again...
...It was, in the words of PRD Secretary General Pefia G6mez, a period in which democracy would be institutionalized...
...The increase in the cost of living in the last year had hit the Dominican people hard...
...But such categorical statements ignore the limits of historical reality and its changing possibilities...
...By 1981 the UGTD was paralyzed by the factional struggle...
...The continued export orientation of most of these enterprises, together with an anticipated rise in the country's traditional export items, would generate the foreign exchange needed to increase imports...
...La Noticia, May 24, 1981...
...15NACLAReporI courage investment hinged on its ability to maintain peace in the countryside, that is, winning the peasantry's support...
...But the brightness of the first months darkened under gathering storm clouds...
...No one embraced the measures with enthusiasm but, for the moment, nothing more happened...
...The price of this was land...
...In the face of political pressure and the offer of compensation, the drivers agreed to call off the strike...
...Some would simply argue that freedom with hunger is a contradiction in terms, or that freedom cannot be bestowed, it can only be won...
...Encouraged by the concessions it had gained between May and August, it simultaneously increased its pressure on the government for quick economic recuperation and unleashed an offensive against the trade union movement...
...In a speech to Congress in February 1979, Guzm-n insisted, "The PRD is obliged to and must continue to be the fundamental base of my government...
...Patience was nearing its end...
...Besides, import duties represented more than a quarter of fiscal revenues...
...But few new investments materialized-due to a conspiracy of various factors...
...The economic reactivation plan was supposed to clear the way for longer range growth based on increased agricultural production for the domestic market, new foreign investment projects in mining and free zones, and joint ventures with local capital in agroindustry and manufacturing...
...It was a hollow guarantee...
...Nobody sat around waiting for change after the August inauguration...
...He added nothing then or later about reciprocity...
...Slipshod dams, bridges and roads, contracted during the Balaguer period, gave way to the ravaging wind and water, accounting for part of the $800 million in damages...
...For his part, Jorge Blanco showed popular roots within the party, which translated into significant representation in leadership posts for his tendency...
...In the poor neighborhoods of the urban centers, local PRD leaders mingled with the Left in leading protests and squatter occupations...
...The resulting increase in demand, it was assumed, would in turn stimulate private investment and a new jump in employment and demand...
...Vice President Majluta, in a public outburst that haunted his bid for the presidential nomination several years later, declared that the strikers should be shown no mercy...
...The government's commitment to land reform seemed so serious that Gulf & Western, as a preventive measure, offered to donate nearly 42,000 acres to the Institute (less than 5% of its landholdings...
...In the first month of 1979, delegations representing 44 campesino groups and federations from different parts of the country met together and agreed to push for the creation of an independent national peasant movement...
...A necessary companion piece was a monetary policy that would increase the availability of credit, and at relatively low interest rates...
...3. World Bank, Dominican Republic, Table 7.13, p. 3 9 3 . 4. Antonio Guzmin, "Ante la Asamblea Nacional con motivo de la Conmemoraci6n de la Independencia Nacional (February 27, 1979)," in Discursos Presidenciales, Vol...
...This would also reduce the country's whopping food import bill-$125 million in 1978...
...The increase in gas prices was what blew the lid, but the pot was already aboil...
...This is particularly the case with the Guzmin period, one of transition and of a complex confrontation of forces...
...The mobilization of these sectors was on the rise...
...hbdued Desmand-sReduaed hvestment Economic recuperation was a top priority for the Guzman government...
...As some in the Left had predicted, it was making its peace with the bourgeoisie...
...The party also promised to overcome economic stagnation, increase jobs and improve living standards and working conditions...
...More than 100 union leaders and activists were fired in the first two weeks of Guzmin's term...
...The government promised to settle some 5,000 families annually, and to improve drastically their conditions of housing, health and education...
...They justified Guzmin's Cabinet appointments, which included only minority participation for the PRD, as a necessary political compromise...
...Each was headed by a potential presidential contender jockeying for PRD candidacy in the next elections...
...the goal was not simply to multiply the number of tiny plots...
...More important in the long run were the agreements made by the assembly at the request of Pefia G6mez...
...A slow redistribution of land would not placate the peasantry, and any redistribution at all would incur the wrath of large landowners...
...Since no concessions were asked of the business sector, it made none...
...On the last day of August, Hurricane David forced its way across the island, leaving a path of destruction to guide Hurricane Frederick less than two weeks later...
...economy...
...2 Restoration of dismissed workers became virtually the sole demand...
...It's an HI Wind...
...Property taxes remained the lowest in Latin America, and the corporate tax exemptions so generously arranged by Balaguer in his last days stayed on the books...
...Early in his campaign Guzmfin identified agrarian transformation-the development of agroindustrial projects and the need fbr an agrarian reform-as a priority issue...
...Furthermore, he warned, social agitation would run contrary to economic recovery, for certainly foreign investors would remain in the wings...
...Guzmin recognized the loss of popular support and knew its erosive potential within the base of his party...
...It also meant putting the party in the position of endorsing initiatives at odds with its own traditions and postulates...
...7 Transnational corporations such as Falconbridge exported a total of $400 million in nickel between 1978 and 1981, but paid taxes of only $2-3 million a year...
...Tensions with the party were becoming critical...
...For those of the latter, the vigorous expansion of democracy was in itself one of the principal banners of the struggle...
...The party, in this conception, should function as a mediator, permitting those to govern who are able, and expecting those with nothing to lose to collaborate...
Vol. 16 • November 1982 • No. 6
