DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Presidential Wedding

In high Dominican society, one of the most enduring institutions has been the 22-year engagement of Hector Trujillo, 51, and Alma McLaughlin, 38. Both come from top families: he is the youngest brother of Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo and nominal President of the country; she is the daughter of onetime U.S. Marine Sergeant Charles McLaughlin, who stayed on after the 1916-24 occupation to become a colonel in Trujillo’s army and president of the Dominican Airline. Last week, before 1,600 guests in white ties and formal gowns, in a wedding party that included the dictator as best man, Alma marched under an archway of swords and took Hector in marriage.

Their romance blossomed in 1937, when Héctor, up from the ranks in the seven years of his big brother’s rule, was a brigadier general. The engagement was announced, and Hector approached the dictator about setting a wedding date. The strongman’s reply: a stern lecture on the duty of the youngest son to live with and take care of his mother: aging (now 93) Dona Julia Molina de Trujillo.

Hector obediently bided his time, called almost every evening through the years at the McLaughlin mansion on Doctor Delgado Street. For his share of the family fortune, Hector got a monopoly on peanut oil, and with the aid of prohibitive tariffs on other cooking oils, he got rich. As youth faded, he developed modest hobbies : collecting fine horses at his Engombe Ranch outside Ciudad Trujillo, collecting shoes (he has more than 200 pairs). The dictator tapped him for the presidency in 1952, but unobtrusive Hector had no pretension that the job gave him power. “Don’t ask me; I’m just the President,” he tells visitors. To avoid the bother of reading state papers, he has them brought on a tray and turned to the page he must sign; his handwriting is bold and handsome.

A fortnight ago Dictator Trujillo reversed himself on the marriage with a curt newspaper announcement just a week before the wedding. For society, the marriage creates a unique problem. Confusingly but officially, the Dominican Republic already has two First Ladies, old Dona Julia and the dictator’s wife Maria. Now plump and pretty Alma McLaughlin becomes the third.