The Cloud Over the Dominican Republic
HALPER, SAM
TWENTY-ONE YEARS AFTER TRUJILLO The Cloud Over the Dominican Republic JOAQUIN BALAGUER Santo Domingo Last May 16, the citizens of the Dominican Republic again thronged to the polls to choose a...
...The bureaucracies administering the vast economic interests Trujillo had swallowed 1.5 million acres of improved land, factories employing 60,000 workers, and the ripest plum of all, a sugar industry valued at $150 million and encompassing 12 of the nation's 15 sugar mills became a squalid source of graft and abuse that reached into Balaguer's own family and his Reformist party...
...Chestnut vendors being plentiful in Paris but rare in Santo Domingo, I chose the taxi driver...
...He also is regarded by a large portion of the populace as a Leftist, some say Communist...
...TWENTY-ONE YEARS AFTER TRUJILLO The Cloud Over the Dominican Republic JOAQUIN BALAGUER Santo Domingo Last May 16, the citizens of the Dominican Republic again thronged to the polls to choose a new President...
...Alvarez was the center of controversy as long ago as 197 4. That year a cry of "thief swept the country...
...Following his loss to Guzman, a tired and disappointed Balaguer departed for the United States...
...at times he had his face slapped by an angry Trujillo...
...Quietly and delicately a rival general closer to the people moved to curb the terror, and did so without remonstrance from the palace...
...A busi-nessmantoldme, "Oneof hislawoffice associates is a Communist...
...HadFernan-dito stolen money while he was heading the government's sugar operation...
...I asked him what he thought of the Guzman Administration...
...If he made money he was speculating in sugar out of the country...
...The PRD prepared fraud...
...My God," said my friend, paling...
...The scrutiny continued after the assassination in 1961...
...When I was two months old and my mother and father had to run from Trujillo, they abandoned me in the woods...
...Not monetarily but morally corrupt...
...No worse than lazy," said a prominent businessman close to Balaguer, "he kept the peace and persecuted nobody...
...A normally pessimistic editor who was a Balaguer supporter gleefully termed the scandals "adisaster" for the PRD and flashed a rare happy grin...
...Thirty-six hours before the polls opened a spontaneous demonstration for Balaguer erupted, packing downtown Santo Domingo well past midnight...
...He appeared on television tapping an empty pot, exhorting Dominicans (some 40 per cent unemployed) to "Vote Against Hunger...
...Another Balaguer ally was blunter still: "Balaguer is corrupt...
...At the party convention, with Balaguer attending, Alvarez Bogart got what he had been seeking: the Vice Presidential spot on the party's ticket...
...There was a lot of fraud...
...When the 1978 election returns showed Balaguer losing to Antonio Guzman, the generals stepped in on his behalf and their own to grab the ballots and abort the count...
...I should explain that foreign correspondents in need of oracular opinions automatically turn to chestnut vendors and taxi drivers...
...Balaguer had no organized party...
...I don't feel he stole from the sugar company," Balaguer replied...
...A former ambassador, renowned as a keen political analyst, was unimpressed with Blanco: "He is a mediocrity...
...Balaguer had let himself off easily in analyzing the defeat, but Reid Cabral had earlier assessed the PRD win more shrewdly: "They had an organized party...
...What of the enigmatic man who will take the Presidential oath on August 16...
...The young officers already have plans...
...Why the military intervention by the Army, where Trujillo's influence is particularly strong...
...He doesn't know economics, politics or international problems...
...After that there were many conspiracies to kill me, and I saved my life...
...In the shadows is the well-trained Left, a small group occupying key posts in agrarian and working-class positions...
...To make sure Balaguer knew his place, he was kept under police surveillance...
...Word went around that the PRD was switching numbers to divert the prize money to its campaign chest...
...RAFAEL TRUJILLO One of my dead sisters appeared on the voters' lists...
...Bosch, who is critical of practically everyone, speaks of Pena in an almost kindly way: "Pefla is the moderate of the PRD a man of very good intentions but nothing more than that, save a good presence...
...Aweek after the election, the shouting over, Balaguer was defensive in an exclusive interview with me...
...He is no danger to the democratic system...
...his words control him...
...Before seven months passed he was unceremoniously booted out by the military: Trujillo was gone, but his generals and colonels remained...
...Yet suppose Pefla Gomez, about whom there is much confusion and concern, turns out to be a hardnosed Leftist, or makes noises like one, which would have the same effect...
...His response: "We are not afraid here any more...
...Pefla could...
...In the last eight weeks before the election he showed his dangerous side...
...The real position of Pefla Gomez is to secure pacific solutions, the conciliation of all sides...
...President Reagan's new proposal for a tariff on imported sugar, designed to protect the United States' sugar crop (which is far higher-priced than even the Dominican Republic's), portends grave problems for the island...
...Less corrupt than Balaguer but less competent" was the verdict of a Christian Democratic leader...
...He will push to amend the Constitution...
...In pressing need of medical help for failing eyesight and a vascular problem in a leg, he received treatment in Boston and Houston, and had a tranquil rest at his niece's house in Queens, New York...
...With his humble country curate's mien, Balaguer was a perfect foil...
...Balaguer, who obviously knows the Army well, insists that the old authoritarian generals are through, and that the new generation knows enough to stay out of politics...
...ultra-diehards suggest that he handed Balaguer himself a cut, thus gaining a hold over the Reformist leader...
...He used people...
...Magluta and Guzman fought him, saying he is influenced by the extreme Left...
...The middle class benefited, too...
...He is cracked...
...he was forced to hide for 24 hours...
...Opponents of the PRD quickly linked it to drug trafficking...
...When I interviewed Balaguer a few days later, he kept shooting nervous glances at the heavy drapes in his office...
...They were told that might split the party, and the demand for a change petered out...
...The wild rampage that lasted for days and left thousands dead became known as the Bogotazo to all Latin Americans...
...I am predestined to that...
...A dour newsman takes a very different view: "Pena has terrified the country...
...Balaguer will be the winner...
...He spoke poorly, then Balaguer and Bosch spoke and he looked like a dwarf between two mountains...
...The blue-eyed, fair-haired son of a Dominican mother and a Scottish father, Donald is a model of Scot canniness...
...Moreover, rumor had it that he was responsible for the killing of a labor leader as well as two of the newsmen murdered by La Banda, reportedly because they were digging too persistently into the alleged malfeasance...
...After waiting three days for the results to trickle through the bureaucracy, they learned that for the second time since 1978 they had chosen a Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) leader...
...The two differed in their ways: Balaguer was soft-spoken where Trujillo was harsh, unassuming where Trujillo was imperious...
...All this came to naught, however, prompting disgusted party members to ask why in heaven's name Balaguer, who has shown he can be tough, did not simply drop Alvarez Bogart...
...The case went to the Attorney General and no further, but the whispering had a devastating effect on the outlook for Balaguer and his party in the election...
...The future...
...Guzman's tenure was on the whole undistinguished...
...A man of many promises," declared a mild-mannered editor...
...A more important figure than the Vice President-elect, Manuel Fernandez Mar-mol, Pefla Gomez is the party leader...
...Jorge Blanco will not make the trouble...
...First, dentist Frank Cabral, a member of the party's Election Committee, was discovered pursuing his hobby of tapping phones instead of filling teeth...
...He lacks knowledge...
...The Presidentelect dodged the question...
...The victor was lawyer Salvador Jorge Blanco, with 46 per cent of the vote versus 39 per cent for his opponent, Joaquin Balaguer, perennial candidate of the Reformist Party and the man who in 1960 was elevated to the Presidency by Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina...
...The effect of Alvarez Bogart was obvious he cost usatleast200,000votes...
...Balaguer scanted the needy countryside, though, and tolerated corruption as if it were a part of the normal cost of governing...
...Widespread gossip has it that Cabral eavesdropped on conversations between the President and his beautiful young lady love...
...Still, I believe the more conservative group will have more influence with him...
...The former ambassador quoted Pefla as follows: "I am determined to be President of the Dominican Republic tomorrow or after tomorrow or sometime in the future...
...Though the allegations were never proved, Alvarez Bogart was widely believed to have pocketed huge sums during his stewardship of the government's sugar holdings the figures range from $6.5 million to $40 million...
...Jorge Blanco's victory therefore seemed an upset...
...When he spoke it was in Aesopian terms...
...Last month also marked the 21st anniversary of Trujillo's assassination, but the dead tyrant' s shadow still casts a pall over this beleaguered country...
...Just before the election he said he would cut off the hands of people who tinker with the votes and try to defraud the PRD...
...We talked in an office in his memorabilia-cluttered home, a few steps away from a room that holds ophthalmological apparatus in readiness...
...Although the Guzman years were marred by economic decline, they were redeemed by a saving grace that I learned about from a taxi driver a while back...
...I saved my life many times...
...Prior to concluding our talk, Jorge Blanco did take up the matter of Jose Francisco Pena Gomez Secretary General of the PRD, a leading official of the Socialist International and the newly-elected Mayor of Santo Domingo...
...On top of these disgraces, in New York City the second secretary of the Dominican UN delegation and a Dominican Vice Consul were caught smuggling heroin...
...Then the diminutive old man appraised his party astringently: "Conservatives, not very aggressive or hardworking...
...A tremendous change in public opinion," he cried...
...The man to be watched is Pefla...
...A few days before the election, an astute, youngish businessman outlined the danger posed by Trujillo's legacy: "The young officers who today control the Army are scared of tampering with the election and will give the PRD a chance...
...They need not have been...
...An opposition politician observed: "He is a good lawyer, honest, austere, well-intentioned, but with little training in administration...
...He is an attractive package, but when Jorge is unwrapped you will find nothing," predicted a newsman...
...Should that lead to an old-fashioned Rightist golpe, the country will be in a helluva lot of trouble because we must make some liberal reforms here...
...An old-time friend of mine and of Pefla's gave me an inkling of the military's feelings toward the PRD's Secretary General: "On the day before the election, at 6 a.m., police with search warrants went to the homes of various PRD members, all of whom coinciden-tally shared one bond: their close association with Pefla...
...Reformist supporters the private sector, the middle and upper classes, large sections of the peasantry and the Republic's top editors were shocked...
...The possibility is there because, as the dour newsman has grumbled, "The influence of Trujillo persists, although no Dominican will admit it...
...The murder of Colombian populist leader Eleazar Gaitan in Bogota in 1948 precipitated a popular uprising...
...Because in the PRD there are no men capable of being President, not even Secretary of State...
...vague, recondite and baffling but when he acted his moves were Trujillo's, manipulated from a backroom in the palace...
...The police were looking for him...
...Repeaters were allowed to cast ballots five times...
...Balaguer characteristically turned a blind eye...
...He only looks conservative...
...We will reorganize the party, the struggle will continue...
...They installed a civilian triumvirate to run the country, headed by businessman Donald Reid Cabral...
...He pointed to Donald...
...We have the trappings of democracy, but still very little of the substance...
...Since the PRD won a two-thirds majority in the Senate, I asked what was to prevent the selection of an all-PRD judiciary...
...The PRD's "Constitutionalist" revolution ended in bloody defeat, largely through the intervention of some 22,000 U.S...
...They didn't havea chance...
...He is evasive on issues...
...The accelerating killings, including three newsmen among many others, finally persuaded him that it was time to retreat...
...A leading Christian Democrat said that the new President "doesn't compromise with Communists...
...Jorge Blanco disagrees: "Pefla G6mez is not a leader of the Left...
...And many thought it was about to further darken the political horizon when three PRD scandals suddenly seemed almost certain to rescue Balaguer's flagging campaign...
...But if Balaguer was an authoritarian like Trujillo, he knew limits, and unlike Trujillo he was not a sadist...
...Balaguer, a realist, accepted defeat...
...Once outside Balaguer's home, Reid Cabral said he would accept if Balaguer agreed to a purge of the party's officers...
...During his 12-year reign he instituted a bold, large-scale development program pretty much confined to Santo Domingo: The old, jam-packed capital was expanded into the environs with lovely parks and housing, a touch of elegance for the upper class...
...The abstention of 45 per cent [of the voters] was not due to people not wanting to vote," he complained...
...How will the military react...
...The second PRD embarrassment came when two party appointees operating the state lottery called out the winning numbers, then announced they were mistaken and substituted others...
...Balaguer leaned toward Donald Reid Cabral, our interpreter: "I want to get someone to lead the party...
...Their own reasons for writing off Balaguer prior to the surfacing of the PRD scandals ran deeper than they recognized...
...Between 900,000 and 1 million citizens were unable to vote...
...Nonetheless, two important questions remain to be answered: What will Pefla Gomez do...
...Even so, he made clear, he felt that Jorge Blanco's victory by 35,000 votes should have been a defeat...
...People say his wife is a Communist...
...They won a clean election...
...The next year, the Dominican Republic held its first honest election in anyone's memory...
...The cloud left by Trujillo was drifting away...
...He is vulnerable, though...
...Yet both were wily authoritarians, even if Balaguer was more civilized and less bloody...
...The lottery is virtually the only chance for a poor Dominican to ascend the economic ladder...
...Before he takes office August 16, Pefla faces three dangerous months, made worse for him by his spasms of threatening rhetoric, his irrationality and monstrous rage...
...they imported experts from Venezuela and Chile...
...As the PRD scandals threatened to reverse its course, Balaguer perked up...
...He didn't fight...
...In 1978 Cabral had been caught wiretapping Balaguer, whereupon the dentist fled the island, returning after the victory of PRD candidate Antonio Guzman...
...Some say the Army has changed from the days of Trujillo...
...Cars took 45 minutes to inch through the dense crowd...
...He still refused to deal with the defeat...
...Southern Military Command went to Santo Domingo, reinforced by sharp warnings from President Jimmy Carter in Washington...
...They found long lines...
...Bosch then lost at the polls in 1966 to Balaguer, who went on to win two more elections in succession...
...He played 'Vice President' with everybody...
...Very cautious, very elusive...
...The reason for these varied reactions to the President-elect becomes evident when one talks with him...
...During an interview Salvador Jorge Blanco laid out his plans for me, and they were both brief and baffling...
...German Ornes [editor of El Caribe] offered him TV time to kill him...
...Over the long months of Balaguer's absence, the bright, personable and determined Fernandito had toiled likea swarm of bees, makingpromises, lining up support, clinching deals...
...Growing public criticism was met by a mysterious killer gang called La Ban-da, under the control of a high-ranking general expert in such matters...
...Bounds are being set...
...While he was away, the confused, resentful, rivalrous Reformists drifted into the eager hands of Fernando Alvarez Bogart, the party's third vice president...
...The chief of police reportedly told friends that he was under orders to hound Pefla...
...Guzman's wife is supposed to be waiting for his term's end to sue for divorce...
...He has not defined the role of private property, the role of free enterprise...
...He believed in feeding the animal so it wouldn't attack him," says a knowledgeable Dominican...
...He himself heads a human rights group...
...But if the PRDistas start Leftist monkey business or appear to, the military will quickly move in and take over...
...This time Cabral was reported to be bugging his party leaders' phones as well, including those of President Guzman, who was striving to win the PRD nomination for his Vice President, Jacobo Magluta, and shut out Jorge Blanco...
...troops, commanded for public relations purposes by a Brazilian general...
...Concluded the former ambassador: "Pena Gomez doesn't control his words...
...Fernandito was said to have diverted some $7 million of the loot to Balaguer's sisters...
...He is a democrat, not an extremist...
...He ended the interview without any mention of the failing economy, rising inflation, increasing unemployment, or the fate of sugar output...
...A victorious Juan Bosch, founder of the PRD, poet, professor, writer as well as friend of Puerto Rico's Luis Mufioz Marin, Venezuela's Romulo Betancourt and Costa Rica's Jose "Pepe" Figueres, Latin America's Democratic Left ceremoniously took up residence in the Presidential Palace...
...Balaguer did make some desultory efforts to recruit a more acceptable Vice President, extending vague promises to such respected figures as Augusto Lo-ra, a highly thought of businessman and Reformist founder, and former junta head Donald Reid Cabral...
...If Pefla is killed, I asked our mutual friend, could there be another Bogota-zo, this time in Santo Domingo...
...Overnight the election picture shiftSamHalper, a longtime contributor to the NL, recently returned from an extended trip to the Dominican Republic on assignment for El Nuevo Dia ofSan Juan, Puerto Rico, where a different version of this article has appeared...
...By 1960, to placate a Hemisphere that was bristling at the name Trujillo following three decades of his rule, the dictator ousted his brother Hector as President of the Republic and handed the post to Vice President Balaguer...
...In short, the PRD's last-minute mishaps could not overcome the fundamental weakness of the Reformists...
...By the time Balaguer returned to Santo Domingo, Alvarez Bogart had a tight hold on the party and, apparently, its Presidential candidate...
...The cost of producing the Dominican Republic's principal crop is several times higher than the world price...
...Who...
...He attributed it to his own candidacy and the mystique of the PRD...
...he is sensitive to freedom and human rights...
...Under his plan, Presidents would serve one term and thereafter become Senators for life...
...if they are exceeded, the Army may well step in...
...It is my destiny to become President...
...Days before he had already asked Reid Cabral to become his successor...
...How did Jorge Blanco account for the PRD victory...
...In 1965, Bosch tried to recapture his office...
...Since his electoral victory, the generals have had their eye on Pefla Gomez...
...the judiciary would become a career service, independent of government, but the Senate would choose judges by vote...
...Outside observers with a sense of history meanwhile recalled the days when the Reformist standard bearer was an intelligent, effective tool and front man for Trujillo...
...Juan Bosch, who quit the PRD in 1973 to form a new party, scoffed: "He is in no position to hold executive power in a country like the Dominican Republic...
...A speedy United States intervention ensued: Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and the head of the Canal Zone-based U.S...
Vol. 65 • June 1982 • No. 12
