Strongman's Whimsy

In the dingiest slums of Manhattan's Harlem, a humble, $3,000-a-year fruit peddler by the name of Adolfo Camarena got word last week from the Dominican Republic's President Hector Trujillo (brother of the nation's real ruler: Strongman Rafael Leonidas Trujillo). Camarena, Trujillo announced, was to be the Dominican Republic's consul in Los Angeles, at a salary of $18,000 a year.

There was method in the Strongman's apparent whimsy. An exile from his island country since 1937, Adolfo Camarena, 44, had long been a leader of the feverish, ineffectual group of New York Dominicans who unendingly plot Trujillo's overthrow. The dictator's courts had sentenced him in absentia to 30 years' hard labor. But finally, Trujillo's New York consulate persuaded Camarena to turn against the anti-Trujillistas. His reward was the Los Angeles job. "This is the opportunity of my life," said Camarena. Ten hours later he had quit his fruit business and boarded a plane for California.

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