Canceled Junket

Out of the tightest little tyranny in the Caribbean Sea, through a heavy fog of censorship, fortnight ago leaked news of trouble in the Dominican Republic. The brisk little tyrant, Dictator-President Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, had planned a year and a half vacation in the U. S. and Europe, his first trip off his island, presumably in company with his lush mistress, Donna Maria. Trujillo planned to stop in Washington to renew the 17-month moratorium on the $16,000,000 debt the Republic owes U. S. bondholders. Meanwhile his Minister to the U. S., Rafael Brache, was doing the preliminary spadework with the U. S. State Department. Inasmuch as Trujillo's position depends on steady pay for his oversized army of 2,700, he obviously cannot afford fully to amortize the debt.

Last week observers could make what they liked out of the following facts. Last fortnight Trujillo called home Minister Rafael Brache. Defiantly Brache resigned, stayed safely in Washington. Trujillo hinted that he might take his vacation, passing on the power to his brother Virgilio and to his No. 1 toady, Vice President Peynado, but he might take it on his hacienda, Fundacion, just outside the capital. In a superb stroke of dictating, he ordered through the puppet Assembly a resolution calling on him please not to leave the Dominican Republic. Next day he topped this by having himself recommended for the Nobel Peace Prize "because of his Pacifist actions."

Finally, last week, he announced he had "yielded to unanimous popular demand," would not leave the Republic now. Through the censorship barricade easily passed dispatches ending ironically, "the news caused great rejoicing throughout the Republic."

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