Dominican Republic: Unheroic Return

In Santo Domingo his supporters were chanting “Juan Bó! Juan Bó! El Presidente!” and making eager preparations for their leader’s return, two years to the day after his overthrow and exile by the Dominican military. Yet in San Juan, 250 miles across the Mona Passage, Juan Bosch, 56, the deposed President and the man in whose name the bloody Dominican civil war was launched last April, could hardly look or act less like a returning hero.

Slumped in a chair on his patio, Bosch stared dully at the rain cascading from the roof of his suburban home. He insisted he was not going home to run for President in the elections scheduled in six to nine months. “I am not well equipped to be President next time,” he said wearily. “The revolution is not finished. To be the President during this period will take a younger man. It is a task for a giant, not a man.”

Chewing on a thumbnail, Bosch continued: “I am going back because my party calls me. You now have something new—the capacity of the people to fight. This can be channeled for good or for ill. 1 shall return to try my best to channel it for the good. But I don’t know the situation.”

Fanning the Flames. In the eyes of many Dominicans, the main thing Juan Bosch’s return will contribute to the situation is trouble. As President he proposed some badly needed social and economic reforms. But they never got off the ground during his inept administration, and Communists infiltrated deep into his government. After he was deposed and exiled, he became a writer-in-residence at the University of Puerto Rico; when the April revolt erupted, there he sat, making no move except to issue pronouncements that only fanned the flames. In general, he backed the rebels and denounced the U.S.

Twice the U.S. offered to fly him home in hopes he could impose some leadership on the rebels, who were waging a vicious sniper war against peacekeeping U.S. troops. Twice Bosch refused. “I am not the man to correct mistakes caused by U.S. intervention,” he said. “I am not prepared to deal with the thousands of Communists that American actions are creating.”

When Provisional President Héctor García-Godoy took office four weeks ago, Bosch decided to return. Garcia-Godoy asked him to wait until the country cooled off. But this week he went.

$1 Billion Indemnity. A bomb scare delayed his flight from San Juan for an hour while the chartered airliner was searched. When Bosch arrived in Santo Domingo, a few scattered shots greeted his caravan as it sped from the airport into the old rebel zone of the city; no one was hit. Then before 60,000 screaming supporters, he began to speak again—and to “channel,” as he said, “the capacity of the people.” Cried Bosch: “The next President must take a suit before the World Court in The Hague, asking $1 billion in damages from the U.S., so the interventions will never occur again.” As for other members of the OAS peace force, Bosch demanded $100 million from Brazil, $20 million from Nicaragua and $1 million from Paraguay, “a poor country.”

All of which only raised the Dominican Republic’s already feverish temperature, and made it likely that the OAS troops would have to stay longer.