Distorting the Dominican Revolution

...But Ambassador Martin did not have sufficient training to distinguish between a democratic and a Communist revolution: If the people were armed and occasional shots were fired, that was Communism...

...Martin thus gives an "ideological" foundation to the cry of "Wolf...

...Of course they were in danger, like everybody else, for the Communists were winning and we had nobody left to fight them...

...after each admission ignoring or even contradicting the implications...

...Because we were beaten," he said...

...On June 21, 1965, long before the publication of the book, Juan Bosch had commented on John Bartlow Martin's hysteria in an article for The New Leader ("A Tale of Two Nations"): "There really was no way of coming to an understanding with Martin...

...Everybody should read it, because that is exactly what was going to happen to us without the Marines . . . ." It was a 13 page report, dated "Ciudad Trujillo, September 1959" and titled "The Communist Technique of Coup d'Etat in Latin-America...

...Colonel Benoit's round black face????the French name comes from a Haitian ancestor????lit up...

...Presidential envoy "they wouldn't fight...

...Furthermore, Benoit was not empowered to make such a request for U.S...

...He accepted everything the cia said about the role of the "Castro/Communists," and faithfully reprints the various lists of Communists said by the cia to be everywhere????in the Presidential Palace, for example, or with the "military men" who were distributing guns to the people...

...Wasn't it reason enough...

...It is a quite extraordinary book: well written, even beautifully written in some of its journalistic excursions...

...he seemed happy that someone still remembered him...

...Martin's handling of the problem of Colonel Benoit????that is, his handling of the big, official lie used to rationalize the U.S...

...Everything else, however, is there...

...that I would get the hint and rise from mine...

...They told the rebels they would attack at once unless a military junta was installed...

...I hope that by now Ambassador Martin is convinced that none of this occurred...

...PERSPECTIVES Distorting the Dominican Revolution By Leo Sauvage Early last July, after witnessing Joaquin Balaguer's inauguration as President of the Dominican Republic, I went to the San Isidro Air Base to see whether anything had changed there...

...I thought for a moment that perhaps my Spanish had become rusty...

...In the same New Leader article, Bosch deals with the former Ambassador's obsession about Communism: "John Bartlow Martin knew, because he had been Ambassador in Santo Domingo for more than a year, that there were not enough Communists in my country to run a good hotel, let alone the country...

...He asserts that "the psp [Moscow line Communist] leaders met early that Sunday morning [April 25] and decided to try to seize control of the rebellion...

...Then, while I politely pretended to listen to the colonel in charge of logistics, my eye caught the nameplate on his desk: Colonel Pedro Bartolome Benoit...

...When I inquired why he had asked Ambassador W. Tap-ley Bennett for Washington's military intervention, he simply gestured toward the window and the wide campamento outside it...

...All had become extremists in the true sense of the word????men of violence...

...Bosch does not even seem unfair when he counts his liberal friend among the average "present day American officials" who "apparently do not believe there can be democratic revolutions" because "almost as a matter of principle, they seem to suspect that everyone who speaks of liberty and social justice is a Communist...

...He looked at me with big, blank eyes...

...I believe Bosch analyzed Martin much better than Martin analyzed Bosch...

...Si, Senor...

...We now have to find out whether Ambassador Martin's conception of the dangers of a "Castro/Communist takeover" is closer to reality than Colonel Benoit's fears of a regime like Betancourt's...

...on May 2, and before switching to the new position, he himself repeated the phoney excuse: "At a press conference, I said the U.S...

...It was such a development that Colonel Benoit wanted desperately to prevent in the Dominican Republic, and against which he asked for the help of the U.S...

...That night Bennett asked Benoit for this written statement and cabled it to Washington after midnight...

...There is the way he goes on...

...You should have seen the place here, the faces, the disorder...

...Tap-lev] Bennett from Washington at about 6 or 6.30 p.m...

...military intervention whenever and wherever the "loyalists" cannot bomb and strafe the people into submission, as at the Puente Duarte in Santo Domingo...

...troops at the time because he then was merely an Air Force officer...

...As he himself explained, he had not eaten or bathed in three days, and for three nights he had slept on the floor of the U.S...

...On this question, the book divides into two entirely different parts, and so, I am afraid, does Martin's career in the Dominican Republic...

...I was not able to locate in Overtaken By Events????but it may have escaped me????bennett's gory masterpiece about heads carried on pikes...

...But then he understood: "Oh, this thing of U.S...

...Prepared by Venezuelan refugees who had found a haven at Trujillo's court after the fall of General Perez Jimenez in Caracas, its stated aim was to show that his overthrow had led to the establishment of a Venezuelan Communist dictatorship...

...of course, the constitutional regime of President Romulo Betancourt...

...Suddenly he picked up a typewritten document and pushed il toward me: "Read this," he said...

...Ambassador Martin thus provides us with a time table which implacably destroys "the juridical basis for the Marine landing...

...Although Martin may not like the comparison, he often sounds like Herbert L. Matthews in The Cuban Story...

...A charming young lady in uniform took me on a boring tour from office to office, and I was informed of the routine activities of an air base...

...It is the theory that all violent revolts, through an automatic, fatal process, must turn Communist...

...None the less, Martin branded the rebels "Castro/Communists" and did his desperate best to prevent them from getting rid of those generals who were "willing to kill their own countrymen to prevent Bosch's return...

...It is the process itself????the fusion process of the bloodbath...

...they made Molo-tov cocktails from them...

...This base, a few miles outside Santo Domingo across the Ozama River, is headquarters for the Dominican military establishment and its perpetual plotting...

...I asked helpfully: "And you were afraid you could not protect the lives of U.S...

...lives but that in my opinion their purpose now was or should be to prevent a Castro/Communist takeover, because what began as a prd revolt [Juan Bosch's party] had in the last few days fallen under the domination of Castro/Communists and other violent extremists . . . ." This brings us to the heart of the matter...

...Wednesday," Martin states, "Colonel Benoit, on behalf of the junta, formally requested in writing that the U.S...

...By that time the first Marines had already landed...

...Or: "The most credible reports said that police were being shot at a paredon?wall????at Parque Independencia...

...he spoke of firing squads and of all kinds of crimes...

...A Russian would have understood on the spot that this was a typical democratic revolution lacking any organization????that is, just the opposite of a Communist revolution, which is carefully planned before it is allowed to break out...

...In addition, Martin repeats the various horror stories invented by the cia and peddled by Bennett to the American reporters...

...It did not matter what party each man once had belonged to, nor what his original motive had been...

...Several soon found out there was no evidence whatsoever for the alleged rebel atrocities and, to the great honor of the American press, said so in their cables...

...citizens to protect...

...But on the very next page, he writes, "By 6 p.m...

...Benoit proved to be free of diplomatic doubletalk and intellectual complications...

...Embassy in Santo Domingo...

...Well, according to his book, he, is still convinced that most of it did occur, though many of the stories were utterly discredited or formally recognized as false while Ambassador Martin was being overtaken by events...

...The Ambassador also makes it clear that there was no specific "earlier request" for troops, as claimed by Undersecretary Mann...

...Ambassador Martin went so far as to tell me on the night of our first conversation that heads had been cut off by people, and he even told me the places where the heads were displayed...

...On the morning of April 28, Martin reveals, Benoit only expressed the opinion that "loyalist" troops could not protect U.S...

...which permits the Latin-American oligarchies to rally Washington's support whenever they face popular resistance...

...Marines...

...That's why we needed the Marines...

...Not so Martin...

...As President Kennedy's Ambassador from March 9, 1962, to shortly after the fall of Juan Bosch on September 25, 1963, he had rejected the spurious accusations of "Communist infiltration" invoked by the San Isidro plotters to put an end to the country's first constitutional regime in more than 40 years...

...lives which he considered were in danger...

...very candid also, even startingly candid in some of its political admissions...

...And then, immediately below on the same page, he shows that the Johnson decision preceded Benoit's recognition of the danger to Americans: "Undersecretary [Thomas] Mann telephoned Ambassador [W...

...or whenever and where-ever, as at the San Isidro Air Base on April 28, 1965, the generals themselves are "demoralized," and a "disgusted" maag (Military Assistance and Advisory Group) officer tells the U.S...

...821 pp...

...This statement, the juridical basis for the Marine landing, said that Benoit, in his previous written request, had neglected to state that in his opinion American lives were in danger and he could not protect them adequately and for that reason was requesting 'temporary intervention' to restore public order...

...Marines had originally come here to protect U.S...

...and that, in any case, "by Thursday, the cia reported, the psp . . . was ready to do battle with the U.S...

...From then on, my only problem was to avoid looking in the direction of my increasingly nervous guide from Relaciones Publicas, who every two minutes or so rose from her chair in the hope Leo Sauvage, New York correspondent of the Paris Le Figaro, is the author of Autopsie du Castrisme, not yet published in this country...

...Marines...

...lives...

...All had forgotten for what they fought...

...I interrupted to ask whether he was the man who had headed the military junta of April 28, 1965...

...Obviously, in the eyes of the author of Overtaken By Events, preparing to stop the San Isidro tanks was preparing "the bloodbath...

...government give its 'unlimited and immediate military assistance' to put down the rebellion which, the junta declared, was directed by Communists armed to 'convert the country into another Cuba.' Benoit said nothing about protecting American lives...

...There was nobody left who could be relied on to go out and fight...

...citizens...

...I could not help thinking of my conversation with Colonel Benoit while reading Ambassador John Bartlow Martin's big-sized memoir of his Dominican experiences, so aptly titled Overtaken By Events (Doubleday...

...that the rebellion was triggered prematurely and therefore "seems to have taken the Castro/Communists by surprise...

...The cia received reports that rebels were executing loyalists at two walls, one at Parque Independencia, one on Calle Espaillat...

...Since any popular resistance in countries ruled by the local oligarchy through military dictatorship and police terror can only be violent, and since violence, according to Martin, leads inexorably to a "Castro/Communist takeover" even if there are less than 53 Communists around, it is not distorting his position to say that the former Ambassador favors U.S...

...There are two pages, in Overtaken By Events, where Martin produces a theory that, applied to Latin America, could only lead to further disasters...

...And here is how this "process" applied to the Dominican case: "The bloodbath drowned the ideals and purposes which had created the rebel force...

...The cia reported that an eyewitness saw Castro/Communist leaders joining them in that work near Parque In-dependencia...

...and instructed him to ask Benoit to put in writing for the record Benoit's earlier request for Marines on the ground that they were needed to protect U.S...

...Men and women like this have nowhere to go except to the Communists...

...military intervention in the Dominican Republic ????is particularly revealing...

...President Johnson had taken his decision: To land the Marines to protect American lives...

...Yet, as President Johnson's special envoy during the civil war, he unhesitatingly accepted the same accusations invoked by the same plotters for the same purpose...

...For, as he states himself in one of his most startling admissions, the San Isidro military, whom he calls loyalists "for clarity's sake," were not defending the government of Provisional President Donald Reid Cabral...

...At about 3 or 3:30 p.m...

...As Martin puts it: "It is not names of Communists, or numbers, that is important...

...Nor is it distorting his position to say that John Bartlow Martin agrees with Fidel Castro when the betrayer of the Cuban revolution proclaims that any social revolution in Latin America must be pro-Communist and anti-Yanqui...

...Completely routed, derroiados...

...There is the tormented exhibition of conflicting sincerities which ends up by undermining the overall credibility of the book...

...Even if we were to grant that the San Isidro military junta had some legal existence, Colonel Benoit was appointed to head it, according to Martin, "a few hours later," that is, after his alleged oral statement which Undersecretary Mann distorts and misuses...

...But while its literary qualities remain impressive through most of its 821 pages, something about the Ambassador's candor soon becomes painfully incoherent...

...It was evident that someone very intelligent had subjected him to a psychological third degree...

...7.95...

...All other doors are shut...

...They were, once again, plotting to prevent a constitutional reeime: "The Generals, though unwilling to fight for Reid, were willing to kill their own countrymen to prevent Bosch's return...

...After all, Martin has decided "all other doors are shut...

...That was the Ambassador who wanted me to put it in...

...That Venezuelan "Communist dictatorship" was...

...Having established all this Martin nevertheless is able to report without batting an eye how...

...Significantly, when Martin denounces "the senseless slaughter" as an indication of "the Castro/Communist takeover," and tries to explain how "the bloodbath was being prepared," he indignantly cites this example: "Rebels were forcing filling station operators to fill Coca-Cola bottles with gasoline for anybody on the street...