Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR DOMINICAN DEBACLE Mr. Theodore Draper's reply to Daniel James' letter in your November 11 issue leaves me shocked and puzzled. James' letter, manifestly, is not an attempt "to...
...Instead of "completed," Gill wrote "began" (se initio...
...I lived in Mexico over 20 years ago, long before Mr...
...I believe that I was the first correspondent to go there in many years in 1951, and my two articles on Trujillo's regime in the Reporter that year brought me a threat of physical violence from the thug who was then Trujillo's Consul General in New York...
...James is a friend...
...Cambridge, Mass...
...He accuses me of an "uncritical appraisal" of Bosch...
...But since Mr...
...October 14) certainly had no "mawkish sentimentality'" in it...
...Has he ever been beyond Tia Juana...
...One of the best answers to this line of attack on Bosch was given by President Kennedy on November 18...
...Jose Figueres...
...I was sent by the Reporter to write articles on Guatemala and Mexico in 1950, also quite awhile before Mr...
...I like my Cuban friends, by the way, and I am sure that they join me in asking, who indeed has committed moral suicide...
...It is interesting to note that Mr...
...We had, on the one hand, an unmanageable situation after 32 years of a sickly Dominican dictatorship in the era of the world Communist revolution...
...I then, in effect, discussed the kind of reasons given by Mr...
...On the charge that Bosch was soft on the Communists, I never had any doubts that this was untrue, and I do not have any now...
...I suppose that these are Theodore Draper and John P. Roche's feelings...
...James quotes it (P...
...And I knew that Volman had been a well-known anti-Communist, whatever his personal vices or virtues may be...
...8. On reflection, I think that Mr...
...James' original letter because my article ("Bosch and Communism," NL, October 14) had been an answer to precisely such attacks on President Bosch...
...I am assured by mutual friends, is a wholly honest anti-Communist journalist...
...James' book about Cuba is not, for one who has read it, "an intellectual monstrosity...
...James a little more if only he could join an issue fairly or even get the facts straight...
...His opening "No" to the coup was merely the introduction to a lengthy "but" which, in fact, amounted to nothing but an apology for the coup...
...No two sets of circumstances are identical...
...He made that and similarly harsh judgments in a UPI interview dated November 4 which, unfortunately, was published only in Latin America-an area considerably removed from Draperland...
...He quotes a Cuban publisher who was in Havana at the time...
...and, on the other hand, a President who was an intellectual, an artist, a democrat and an inspired social reformer...
...could be those of being too great rather than too little a man for the situation...
...James does not...
...3. In my article I wrote: "It is impossible for an outsider to pass judgement on all the political disputes that arose in Bosch's short term in office...
...James' first letter tried to say anything, it said that Juan Bosch deserved to be overthrown and that the Dominican Republic was the better for his overthrow...
...One of Mr...
...James' most important theses is the claim that Fidel Castro "received his final indoctrination in Communism" in Mexico...
...It might also interest your readers to know that Bosch's Senate President...
...In the controversy over the coup d'état in the Dominican Republic, Daniel James has referred to a long and casual conversation that he and I had during the flight back from Santo Domingo to Miami after the inauguration of the Bosch government...
...James' patronizing reference to "newcomers to the Latin American field" and to his sneering question about Tia Juana...
...I would have respected Mr...
...Rorty insist on a bill of particulars, I will oblige them...
...It is, on the contrary, honest and able reporting-better, in some respects, than that of Draper on the same subject...
...I made it clear that I was not attempting to "appraise" Bosch and that I was only dealing with some questions in principle...
...Juan Casanovas, whom a rump Dominican Congress elected "constitutional President" of the Republic agrees with the Betancourt-Figueres thesis I enunciated in my original letter that Bosch fell largely because he was "inept and incompetent" (Casanovas' words...
...James' position but Mr...
...James' time...
...James more if he had come out openly and forthrightly...
...James' book is largely made up of unchecked, uncorroborated hearsay, rumor and gossip by truly second- and third-hand sources who as often as not, could not possibly have had any direct knowledge or special authority...
...The only "hard" piece of evidence is almost ludicrous...
...But most of all, I resent the kind of tactics which makes it possible for Mr...
...James ever set foot there...
...It is shocking that Mr...
...Let the reader now reread James' quotation, substitute the right word, and see how far it bears out James' thesis As for all evidence contrary to Mr...
...Washington, D. C. Daniel James Theodore Draper replies: 1. I did not consider it necessary to react in detail to Mr...
...John Roche's article ("The Return of the Syndicate," NL...
...I cannot remember my words, but I do remember my feelings...
...He quotes exPresident Prio who was so knowledgeable about Castro's Communist sympathies in Mexico that he gave him the money to buy the yacht to invade Cuba from Mexico...
...They are also mine...
...His limitations (and who is free from limitations...
...Undoubtedly, I was worried about the future...
...I do not know Volman, and whether he has been "an element of discord in the Latin American liberal community" has no bearing on anything I wrote about him...
...I could go on like this through a good part of James' book, but I think there are more important things to do...
...This is pure gratuitous invention on his part...
...I am sure that, as a democrat, he handled this difficult relationship to the best of his ability, which is not small...
...4. I would enjoy debating with Mr...
...One example will have to suffice...
...It is useless to compare President Bosch's attitude toward Communism and Fidelism with President Betancourt's strong policies today...
...Columbia, N. J. James Rorty In my letter I did not question Theodore Draper's talent for vituperation and personal abuse-apparently a political hangover he cannot surmount-but only his uncritical appraisal of deposed Dominican President Bosch, a man who, by his own admission, "I do not know . . . personally...
...I can only assume that, in a more sober moment, he will somehow gather the courage (and the newspaper files) necessary to reply to my letter in a manner befitting a rising pundit on Latin America...
...James cannot evade the responsibility of having struck quite a number of low blows, and he got from me only what he deserved...
...2. If Mr...
...However, I must confess I have never been to Tia Juana...
...To distort what I wrote into "groundless sympathy" for Volman not merely misses the point...
...If he is ever able to do so, I shall then be only too glad to debate with him my book on Cuba-against his own third-hand writings on the subject-any time, any place...
...There is no democratic government anywhere in the world which would not be overthrown tomorrow if the type of reason advanced by Mr...
...Jamesthat two other democratic leaders were worried on his inauguration day, that the government party had had factional difficulties, that Bosch "proved to be a dud"prevailed...
...Even as Mr...
...It is a quotation from a book written by a Mexican, Mario Gill: "The first stage of the revolution of the Sierra Maestra was completed in Mexico: the theoretical and technical preparation of the invading group...
...James' letter, manifestly, is not an attempt "to justify and defend the overthrow of one of the few unquestionably democratic governments in Latin America...
...Rorty objects to my characterization of Mr...
...James to refer to my "groundless sympathy" for Sacha Volman...
...And if friends can indulge in attempts at dispassionate analysis of a man who is in power, they should be morally inhibited from so doing, particularly in public, in hours of distress...
...The lowest one of all merits nothing but silent contempt...
...5. I am baffled by Mr...
...James should try to drag him into testifying against Juan Bosch on the basis of a private conversation which obviously had nothing to do with the point at issue...
...James and Mr...
...But it is possible, and even imperative, to take a stand on the kind of reasons given to justify his overthrow...
...6. I base my work on Cuba mainly on the traditional materials of historical research, namely, what is said and published in Cuba...
...James' Mexican thesis, and there is some, not a word...
...7. If anyone is owed an apology, I think it is ex-President José Figueres of Costa Rica...
...Even if Figueres came away from the inauguration "extremely worried," that is a far cry from lending his good name to any kind of extenuation for a coup...
...55), the implication is somewhat farfetched, because Gill does not say that it was the first stage of a "Communist" revolution...
...It is inadmissible to invoke human weakness, in a world where we are all so weak, to justify a coup against so honestly elected a government...
...The important thing, however, is this: Aside from my friendship with Juan Bosch, there is a matter of principle involved in the overthrow of his government...
...it betrays a serious lack of scruple...
...Hence my puzzlement...
...All I knew was that Volman's name came up in connection with the charge of "Communist infiltration" of Bosch's regime, and Volman was actually forced to leave the Dominican Republic in that first frantic search for "infiltrators...
...But the cream of the jest is yet to come: James' entire construction rests on the mistranslation of a key word...
...Draper an acquaintance with whom I have had no quarrel and who...
...As for the Dominican Republic...
Vol. 46 • December 1963 • No. 25
