Dominican Republic: To See & to Be Seen

Aboard a U.S. Air Force Constellation, a four-nation* OAS inspection team flew from Washington to the Dominican Republic last week to decide whether the diplomatic and economic sanctions leveled 13 months ago against the oppressive regime of the late Dictator Rafael Trujillo could now be lifted. What the OAS found was a nation torn by violence. Even before their plane crossed the island’s coastline there was trouble.

On the highway leading from the airport into the capital, 3,000 workers and students carrying placards reading “Give Us Liberty,” “Out with the Trujillos,” “We Are Starving,” gathered in early morning to await the OAS team. The impatient crowd hooted insults as a Mercedes-Benz purred by, its license plates bearing the familiar 95 reserved for Trujillo favorites. A rock clanged off a fender and the car slid to a halt. According to eyewitnesses, a secret police agent leaped from the Mercedes with a submachine gun.

“We are Dominicans. Don’t shoot,” cried Economics Professor Rafael Estrella Liz. The police agent fired a burst in the professor’s face, then sprayed the crowd. Another man, a mechanic, was killed, dozens wounded. The crowd dragged the body of Professor Estrella to the roadside, and for 1½, hours fought off police and firemen armed with clubs and high-pressure water hoses. The police managed to beat the crowd back, hauled the corpse away just 40 minutes before the OAS team passed by.

When the OAS cavalcade finally came down the road, 1,000 bedraggled people broke through police lines to engulf the cars and cheer the delegates. In Ciudad Trujillo, the biggest opposition group, the Union Civica, called for three days of mourning with a shutdown of all commerce. At night, military police, backed by tanks, patrolled the streets.

The Dominican Republic’s President Joaquin Balaguer and Ramfis Trujillo Jr., the old dictator’s heir, claimed that the disorders were the work of Communist agitators, insisted that the democratization was proceeding as planned, and that there would be free elections next May. Said Balaguer: “These scratchings are the inevitable consequences of high political passions. I have faith that the democratization of Dominican institutions is being carried out firmly.”

The OAS team would have to see.

* Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, the U.S.