A Revolution Delayed

...Last week's revolt, begun to restore Bosch, was quickly infiltrated by Communists, if indeed they were not among the instigators...

...He was the best chance the Dominican Republic had to make the peaceful social revolution that it needed, but he was a poor vessel for this great purpose...

...In tipping off the Dominican brass that it shared their misgivings about Bosch, the Pentagon undercut the State Department whose astute Ambassador, John Bartlow Martin, was trying to help Bosch...

...There had been Communists in the conservative Union Civica itself...

...And even though President Johnson has used all the right words in explaining the Marine operation—words like "freedom, democracy, social justice"— events of these last weeks will be seen in Latin America as proving Castro's dictum and as justifying his course...

...I remember looking all over the Cibao region for that revolution on the Sunday after the assassination...

...But he was able to continue torturing oppositionists in an air-conditioned underground chamber in his own private jail at Kilometer Nine outside of Santo Domingo...

...Win or lose, however, the Communists will emerge after a while in their own right as the men who will really make the promised revolution, for the Bosches are finished...

...When Ramfis took off in November 1961, President Joaquin oppositionists, Trujillo's oldtime stooge, now left in complete charge, fiddled around experimentally with the needed social revolution...

...This was a token revolution and a phoney, demagogic one, but it was enough to give Balaguer prestige among the lumpen-proletariat and peasantry—today he might well win an honest election...

...One way or another, the delayed revolution will come some day...

...The middle and upper classes that dominated the U.S.-supported Consejo, however, tended to play down basic change...

...the Dominican Army, like most in Latin America, is exquisitely dependent on the Pentagon for its important military hardware as well as for some of the uniforms, training, prestige and whatever else goes to make up a Latino army...

...bargain with the dictator's son turned out better than many thought it would...

...But what else could be expected...

...will never allow a genuine social revolution in Latin America...

...As planned, he helped keep some of the old dictator's worst gorillas in check...

...they were personally so completely involved with the status quo that it was hard for them to move...

...The long-delayed social change provided an ideal medium for breeding Communists...

...The Communists' tactics in this last phase are obvious: making the united front from below, they worked up toward the top of the rebel leadership...

...decision to dump Trujillo in 1961...

...Communists had had relations with members of the Consejo...

...Trujillo's death came off on schedule, but the rest of the plan did not...

...Any newsman who spent time in the Dominican Republic in the last few years can recall half a dozen informal briefings during which many of the same names were offered...

...official in the Dominican Republic, flew off to Washington and that evening was in President Kennedy's office...

...Done because of honest revulsion over Trujillo's inhumanity, this was the sort of U.S...

...Bosch failed because of 1) his own incompetence, 2) a lack of trained second-echelon planners and administrators, 3) an inability to delegate authority to the little talent that he did have, and 4) most decisively because the Dominican Armed Forces feared him as a pro- Communist and ousted him as soon as they got a wink from the U.S...

...black operation that seemed laudable...

...Still, there was even then a chance to effect a revolution peaceably...

...It must be said, too, that the decision was accompanied by a fair amount of nonsense spread by some State Department men who should have known better...

...The decision may have been necessary when taken, but the career foreign servicemen who will have to live with it know what an abyss has now opened before us in Latin America...

...A pity that it could not come, as originally intended, under U.S...

...Faced by tough problems, he had a tendency to get into bed or take other evasive action...

...auspices...

...Trujillo's killing was to be followed, according to the U.S.-supported plan, by a maneuver to trap his venomous relatives, ship them out of the country and turn Over the government to democrats and liberals under whom the Dominican Republic would try to make up for its 31 lost years...

...Thus, in Washington's eyes and in the eyes of many decent Dominicans, there was little alternative but to intervene against Bosch's popular force...

...If it was President Johnson's intention to keep the Communists out of leadership posts, he would have done better to have sent the Marines to help Bosch's Constitutionalists to a quick victory...

...The U.S...

...The next day, downcast and in fear of his life, Henry Dearborn, the top U.S...

...That, in retrospect, was the last chance for the social revolution to be made peacefully...

...They were not a new phenomenon, an import sent specially to assist Bosch...

...In Peronist style he began handing out property here and there to the poor, awarding confiscated cars to chauffeurs, shares in government enterprises to the workers, etc...

...Pentagon...

...Ramfis (who, like Wessin, ran the government from the command spot at San Isidro airbase) was forced to allow the faint beginnings of political parties, the return of exiles, the beginnings of a free trade union movement...

...It doesn't like to cross the Pentagon...

...satellite, Washington helped to arrange his assassination, even supplying the guns and afterward supporting the family of at least one of the plotters...

...In December 1962 the great chance came...

...at one time they controlled its executive committee in the capital...

...Should Wessin take over without hindrance from the U.S., which seems doubtful, the grapes of wrath0 will multiply fast and the next time, or soon after, the Communists will probably make good on their power bid...

...This wink was pivotal...

...Sam halper, who is a staff member of Time-Life Books, was formerly Time's Caribbean Bureau Chief...

...This policy began with the U.S...

...That there were only 58 more or less important Communists is the surprise...

...at the UN, and a fawning U.S...

...A leading Fidelista, Manuel Tavarez Justo, leader of the June 14 Movement, who later was killed while trying to lead a pitiful revolt in the hills, was at one point in Washington working with the State Department along with Union Civica leaders, in the planning of the post-Trujillo government...

...The postponement persisted under Ramfis, although the U.S...

...He was a non-Communist Leftist, a Democratic Socialist...

...a much longer list could be compiled for Peru or Ecuador...

...and they feared stirring up the largely- Trujillista Army...

...Though Trujillo had been the staunchest of anti-Communists, an invariable voter with the U.S...

...Bosch looked ideal...

...would honor, failed when the revolt was quickly quashed...

...policy in the Dominican Republic was something to be proud of...

...Embassy claim to newsmen in Santo Domingo that 58 Moscow- and Havana-trained Communists had been spotted among the rebels is unimpressive...

...To correct these dangerous inequities before the warped forces contained within them exploded, a controlled social revolution was also planned...

...But friends knew him to be a man with genuine character defects...

...Not that the Consejo members were unaware of the need for it: They were obsessed by their responsibility to do something for the masses and being, in the main, men of genuine good will, they tried to reach out for change, but they could not bring it off: They feared opening the floodgates...

...What makes this turn of events particularly painful is that not so long ago U.S...

...There, to hold the lid on an increasingly uncertain situation, the bitter decision was made to allow Ramfis Trujillo, the late dictator's son, to keep control of the Dominican government, under certain guarantees...

...This, done against the protest of Dearborn, naturally postponed any real change...

...The Dominican Republic's first honest election in 30 years was held, the Consejo bowed out and writer Juan Bosch became President with a program of democratic social reform...

...The seven-man Consejo that succeeded Balaguer in February 1962 was good enough as a governing institution—in fact, amazingly good —but it, too, postponed the revolution...

...Those years, spent under the lid of a brutal, repressive dictatorship, had left the country with a lopsided structure—politically, socially and economically...

...It should have been obvious, once the forces of exiled President Juan Bosch started fighting General Wes-sin y Wessin's Rightists, that the waiting Communists would immediately try their classic united front-from- below maneuver, meaning that the longer the fighting lasted, the closer the dedicated hard-fighting Communists would come to taking over leadership of the rebels...

...Instead, Washington elected to fight alongside Wessin while holding its nose...

...Fidel Castro has often said, "You'll see, the U.S...

...A contingency plan for some Dominican Army units to start a military revolt in the hills, and then broadcast a plea for belligerency status which the U.S...