MEXICO: Long Arm of Hate

Ever since Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina seized power in the Dominican Republic in 1930, his enemies have led precarious lives, no matter how far from home they fled. In 1935 a gunman burst into a New York City apartment and killed Sergio Bencosme, onetime Interior Minister of the Dominican Republic. In 1952 Andrés Requena, editor of an anti-Trujillo newspaper, was gunned down in another Manhattan apartment. Last year Jesús de Galindez. author of an anti-Trujillo book, disappeared, and all signs pointed to another assassination. All the while Trujillo complained that he could not understand his bad publicity abroad.

Last week Tancredo Martínez Garcia, 41, exiled leader of an anti-Trujillo party, stepped off the elevator on the third floor of a downtown Mexico City office building. From the staircase a voice called “Martínez Garcia.” Martnez turned and caught a bullet full in the face. The gunman, thought to be a professional Cuban gun slinger, grabbed Martnez’ briefcase, then scuttled from the building undetected. Only in one detail did the shooting vary from the pattern: the bullet ripped through Martnez’ cheek and neck, missing a vital spot, and the Trujillo critic will probably live.