Will the U.S. Save Trujillo?
ALEXANDER, ROBERT J.
Support of shaky ruler threatens Caribbean democracy Will the U.S. Save Trujillo? By Robert J. Alexander WITHIN A FEW MONTHS Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina will celebrate his 30th anniversary as...
...The case of Jesus de Galindez, who was sequestered from the streets of New York early in 1956, is known the world over...
...The year 1955...
...The State Department has been strangely silent about Trujillo...
...The U.S...
...has had a longer reign...
...The present one...
...However, Trujillo's real attitude toward the U.S...
...Trujillo has frequently meddled in the affairs of his neighbors...
...Although it issued two protests to the Dominican Republic about the case of an American aviator, Gerald Murphy, who was killed there in 1956...
...There is a state of effervescence in the Dominican Republic such as has not existed for at least 15 years...
...These letters accuse one or another Government official of the most barbarous combination of crimes against the state, humanity and common decency, and always include an accusation that the person involved has not been sufficiently loyal to "El Benefactor...
...The two newspapers of the capital are his property, at least in part...
...Not only did he rename the capital city, which got its original name from Columbus, after himself, but he had half a dozen provinces named after himself and members of his family...
...Because John Moors Cabot, then a member of the legation staff in Santo Domingo, wrote unfavorably to the State Department about Trujillo in 1930, the Dominican dictator became his sworn enemy...
...Trujillo's friendship for the U.S...
...Trujillo's rule is a highly personal one...
...Although he crushed the Communists after they had served his purposes, it is from this flirtation between the Dominican dictator and the Communists that the rise of the latter as an important element in the country's affairs is to be dated...
...Armed Forces, and among retired military men who served in the Dominican Republic...
...For the first time in many years the pint-sized tyrant finds his hold on power seriously menaced...
...But Trujillo is essentially no more pro-U.S...
...Kidnapping is also frequently the fate of Trujillo's opponents in foreign countries...
...The democratic opponents of Trujillo...
...The former group now finds a great deal of moral and material support among elements of the present Cuban regime...
...the silver anniversary of his ascension to power, was celebrated as "The Year of the Benefactor...
...in an evident attempt to discredit Trujillo's present most bitter foreign enemy, Fidel Castro, summoned Major Diaz Lanz, the dismissed chief of Castro's Air Force, to give testimony about the '"Communist"' nature of the Cuban regime...
...Not so well known is the case of Maruricio Baez...
...Some of these orders he modestly named after himself...
...Trujillo has turned the whole of the Dominican Republic into one huge private hacienda...
...During the period of democratic government in Venezuela between 1945-48...
...The press, governments and people of Latin America know Trujillo for the tyrant he is, even if North Americans may not...
...Scores of others "disappeared" and were never heard of again...
...Trujillo had no qualms about calling him a "Communist...
...Trujillo holds the undated resignations of all officials of the Government, including members of the legislative and judicial as well as the administrative branches of the regime...
...The letters are written by Trujillo, and the person against whom they are directed is thus put on guard that he is being watched by the dictator, and he is duty bound to send in a grovelling type of reply in which he assures the public—and Trujillo—that he did not do the things of which he is accused, and that he has never faltered in his loyalty to The Chief...
...This same technique, with some refinements, is widely used by Trujillo to this day...
...Father of the New Fatherland" and "Restorer of the Nation's Financial Independence...
...It is not an exaggeration to say that if Trujillo stays in power indefinitely, the cause of democratic government in the Caribbean area is lost for a long time to come...
...Army Command School in Fort Leavenworth refused to give General Rafael Trujillo Jr...
...During and immediately after Trujillo's first "election" campaign in 1930...
...Last month Eastland...
...No reply was made officially to Trujillo's threat to "refuse" U.S...
...Trujillo showed during that incident that he had no ideological or other opposition to the Communists...
...and officials of the American Government go far back in his history...
...As for the first claim, it is to be remembered that in 1946...
...legislators have been even worse...
...The megalomania of Trujillo has no bounds...
...In 195o...
...What purpose this group can have, except to be used in mounting an invasion of one of Trujillo's neighbors, is hard to see...
...He keeps in his hands all aspects of the Government, with the President, the heads of the armed forces, the chief of the secret police, as well as those detailed to watch the secret police, all reporting to him...
...Louis F. Thomen...
...He forced out of business the American who had built a shipyard for him near the capital city...
...is an old story...
...an exiled Dominican labor leader, who disappeared mysteriously from Havana in 1951...
...than he is pro anything else—except Trujillo...
...They regard America's continued backing of Trujillo as the rankest violation of our pretensions to be leading a world crusade for democracy and against totalitarianism...
...More recently, he has had his picture taken shaking hands with an aviator whom Trujillo claimed to have used as an agent to entice exiles to their death in the Dominican Republic...
...apparently nothing was done about it...
...Finally, Trujillo has gathered within his own hands, or those of his family, most of the country's tangible wealth...
...He maintains it by being the most hardworking man in the country, arriving in his office early and leaving late...
...Trujillo has lasted longer than any other Latin American dictator save one in history: Only Porfirio Diaz, who ruled Mexico between 1875 and 1910...
...admirals to make a "courtesy call" on Trujillo at exactly the moment when he was engaged in fighting an invasion attempt by exiled opponents...
...He got his start as a lieutenant in the National Guard organized by the United States when it was occupying the Dominican Republic during and after World War I. He has many friends still in the U.S...
...He needed an "opposition" for this purpose...
...No member of the Trujillo Government today can be sure that tomorrow he will not be in disgrace, in jail, or even dead...
...His titles are without number...
...Murders have been carried out in neighboring countries as well as in the Dominican Republic...
...The U.S...
...In doing so...
...The exiles are divided into two well-defined groups, one under Communist influence, the other composed of such democratic elements as the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano and Vanguardia Revolucionaria Dominicana...
...When he sees fit...
...Trujillo's regime has been the most absolute tyranny in modern Latin American history...
...In recent months, the Dominican regime has boasted of a Foreign Legion which it was organizing, with recruits from Francisco Franco's former Blue Division, die-hard Nazis and other similar elements...
...Gambling is the monopoly of one of his brothers, vice of another...
...In 1953, when Cabot became President Eisenhower's first Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs...
...He has created a dozen different orders of merit, and has conferred upon himself the highest grade of each...
...However, Trujillo does not extend his terroristic methods only to his enemies: he uses them, likewise, on his associates...
...There are hundreds of plaques, monuments, statues and busts of Trujillo in squares, parks and along the streets of the capital city alone...
...The highest mountain in the country was titled after him...
...was dictator of Venezuela for only 27 years...
...A few years before, another anti-Trujillo exile in New York, Sergio Bencosme, suffered the same fate...
...Finally, Trujillo's "allegiance" to the struggle against Communism disappeared with the statement that the Dominican Republic really had no reason to allow the U.S...
...The United States, in spite of the fact that it has taken more abuse from Trujillo than from any other ruler this side of the Iron and Bamboo Curtains, has consistently acted as if it did not want to hurt Trujillo's feelings...
...The Congress of Guatemala officially accused Trujillo of having been involved in the assassination of that country's president...
...Upon Trujillo's invitation, extended through the late Ramon Marrero Aristy, the top Communist leaders returned to the Dominican Republic...
...He has leveled the same charge over and over against Governor Luis Munoz Marin of Puerto Rico...
...Trujillo "recommended" to the National Electoral Board that they be legally recognized as a party, and they were for a few months given complete freedom to operate, particularly in the labor movement...
...Trujillo's attacks on the U.S...
...Hence there is a real battle for survival going on between Trujillo and the democratic regimes of the area...
...may well cast the die in the Dominican Republic...
...saw fit early this year to sign his name to a eulogistic statement praising the Trujillo regime which appeared in a paid supplement to a New York metropolitan newspaper...
...aid if the certificate were not granted...
...As chief of the only legal party in the country, the Partido Dominicano, Trujillo is authorized by the Dominican Constitution to name the replacement for any member of Congress who "resigns," and his brother, the obedient President of the Republic, names the dictator's choice to any other office...
...he sends in these resignations, sometimes quite capriciously, with the affected person learning about his "resignation" in the newspapers...
...That the U.S...
...The democratic leaders of the Caribbean area know full well that if Trujillo remains in power, their regimes and their very lives are not safe...
...He had his Congress pass a resolution saying that the Dominican Republic would no longer deign to receive any more U.S...
...does not take a position in favor of democracy in the Dominican Republic, it will leave the struggle against Trujillo in the hands of Communists and fellow travelers...
...A Dominican exile in Cuba, "Pipi" Hernandez, was murdered several years ago...
...In 1957, two gangsters in Trujillo's hire were captured in Costa Rica, where they admitted they had been sent to assassinate President Jose Figueres...
...hundreds of his opponents were found murdered in the streets of Santo Domingo and along country roads...
...In 1958, Dr...
...In 1952, Andres Requena, editor of an anti-Trujillo newspaper in New York, was murdered gangster-fashion in the streets of that city...
...Trujillo conspired constantly against that regime, using as his agent Pedro Estrada, who later became chief of the secret police of the Perez Jimenez dictatorship...
...and the period since 1930 is officially known as "The Era of Trujillo...
...he served no interest of the U.S., but gave a great assist to the Dominican tyrant...
...The most recent case was Dominican Secretary of Labor Ramon Marrero Aristy, who apparently had some idea that he might be a "compromise" candidate for the presidency if Trujillo's regime toppled...
...It has had a series of ambassadors in the Dominican Republic who have been distinguished largely as apologists for the Trujillo regime...
...Officially, the ambassador is said not to have known who the man was, but the fact that the aviator was to be introduced to the diplomatic corps had been announced on the Dominican radio and in the Dominican press a day before their meeting...
...Virtually all of the manufacturing enterprises of the nation are owned by him or a member of his family...
...Government continues, it is likely to have a catastrophic effect on this country's relations with the rest of Latin America...
...One of Trujillo's refined methods of harassing the members of the Government is that of sending "letters to the editors" of the two newspapers allowed to publish in the capital...
...Two of Trujillo's proudest boasts have been is that he is America's No...
...During the last ten years he has forced most of the country's sugar mills, including those owned by North Americans, to sell out to him at the prices he offered them...
...on the other hand, feel completely without friends and utterly frustrated...
...And in spite of the impressive body of labor and social legislation which he has enacted in recent years as window dressing, these laws do not apply to Trujillo enterprises...
...He is engaged in a life-and-death struggle, not only with elements of his own people but with several neighboring Caribbean republics, a struggle which may well determine the future of the whole region for a long time to come...
...1 enemy of Communism, and that he is the best friend the United States has in the hemisphere...
...to use its territory for missile-launching stations "in its quarrel with the Soviet Union...
...talk of democracy was in the air, and Latin American dictatorships were falling in quick succession, Trujillo felt the necessity of going through the motions of an election...
...If this attitude of the U.S...
...Carlos Castillo Armas...
...Tancredo Martinez, a leader of the exiled Vanguardia Revolucionaria Dominicana group in Mexico City, was attacked by two gangsters and shot through the mouth, but lived to tell about it and identify his assailants...
...was shown most clearly in the summer of 1958...
...On the other hand, Trujillo entered into negotiations with the Communists, who until that moment had been virtually non-existent in the Dominican Republic but had a very small group among the exiles...
...Even Juan Vicente Gomez, the famed "tyrant of the Andes...
...when the U.S...
...So, on the one hand, he created two fictitious opposition parties, complete with presidential candidates, one of whom was also running for deputy on Trujillo's own Dominican party ticket and who openly endorsed Trujillo's candidacy for chief executive...
...Trujillo ordered the removal of all Dominican military personnel studying in the U.S...
...And that this is in fact the position of this country was amply indicated by the fact that the Navy saw fit to send three U.S...
...At that time...
...He is not only Generalissimo in a country that has not fought any wars in a century, but is also "Benefactor of the Fatherland...
...two senators, James Eastland and William Jenner, saw fit to go to the Dominican Republic as Trujillo's guests, and to address his puppet congress...
...Trujillo s regime is not going to last very much longer, if only because of the fart that he is becoming an old man...
...In fact...
...By Robert J. Alexander WITHIN A FEW MONTHS Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina will celebrate his 30th anniversary as dictator of the Dominican Republic—if he is still in power...
...delivering speeches of praise for Trujillo's "defense of democracy...
...If the U.S...
...when World War II had just been won...
...No other opposition group was given such freedom by Trujillo...
...attitude is the more serious because there is a bitter struggle going on between Trujillo and several of his neighbors...
...should take a position of continued friendship for the Dominican dictator in these circumstances passes understanding...
...a certificate of graduation, on the grounds that he had seldom attended the course of which he was presumably a student...
Vol. 42 • August 1959 • No. 30
