Dominican Republic: Trials of the Functionary

The U.N. General Assembly hears many violent denunciations and endless bland defenses. Rarely does it hear an abject admission of guilt and plea for forgiveness. Last week Joaquin Balaguer, 54, the fragile, weak-willed intellectual whom Dictator Rafael Trujillo left behind as President of the Dominican Republic, traveled to Manhattan to plead guilty to his leader’s crimes. “The barrier of silence has been lifted, said Balaguer. “After the death of the man who personified the Dominican state for 30 years, a new government has gradually been modeling its institutions according to the principles of representative democracy.”

In confessional tones, Balaguer went on to admit Trujillo’s official guilt in the assassination attempt against Venezuela’s President Romulo Betancourt in June 1960 (see following story). “I do not deny that the reprehensible act that almost cost the life of one of the leaders of Western civilization deserved sanction. But it is not fair that the punishment should continue after the death of the culprit.” He excused his countrymen for being “half-crazed after three decades of terror,” and then pleaded for an end to the punitive economic sanctions imposed against his country by the Organization of American States last year.

Testimony to Terror. Balaguer himself can testify to the terror—and its reward after 31 years of service to Trujillo. A bright lad from a middle-class family, he graduated from law school at 22 and quickly understood where the future lay under an iron-fisted dictator. Finding a job as a government prosecutor, he was the perfect functionary—meek, efficient, trusted. By 1936, Balaguer was under secretary for the presidency and the little man around the palace to perform odd jobs. He went on from diplomatic missions (to Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico) to Cabinet posts (Education, External Affairs), and finally, in 1957, to Vice President under the benefactor’s puppet President, Brother Hector. Last year, when Trujillo sensed growing resistance, he removed Hector and installed Balaguer to stage a “democratization” of the tight little island fief.

Today, with Trujillo gone, Balaguer is left to hold the restless country together —at least until the promised free elections next May. A strong man would find the task difficult. Cut off from much of its normal hemisphere trade and the normal bonus on U.S. sugar-quota sales, the economy is in near collapse. Politically, the tensions grow more dangerous each week as the long-throttled opposition rises to take advantage of the new “democratization” of Balaguer violently resisted by the dead dictator’s henchmen. Of little help is Ramfis Trujillo Jr., who commands the military and professes support of the new look, but holds the reins with an often ineffectual hand. The backlands are still Trujillo lands, and as opposition grows, so do beatings and shootings.

Hope for Coalition. The U.S. is counting heavily on Balaguer, and would like to see the sanctions lifted to shore up the economy. But Balaguer has critical problems that must be solved before he can convince the OAS that the Dominican Republic is a stable country proceeding toward democracy. He would like to form a coalition government that would include some elements of the old Trujillo regime along with the more moderate of the opposition groups.

But even among moderates, there are extremes in points of view, mostly over whether members of the Trujillo family should be permitted to stay or be forced out. Getting all the moderates into the same tent will strain even the compromising talents of Democratizer Balaguer.