Getting the Business

Lordly Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, longtime dictator of the Dominican Republic, has had a generally critical U.S. press ever since 1930--Year One of the Era of Trujillo, as the country's official documents call it. But he has not lacked for private defenders in the U.S. "He can be a charming fellow," one explained recently. "You can get drunk with him, sing songs, swap gamy jokes. The picture isn't all black. He's done a lot of good for the country." El Benefactor Trujillo kept order and paid his debts, the refrain went on, and above all, he was a friend of the U.S. and U.S. business.

Last week the dictator callously pulled the rug out from under his apologists. Four new Trujillo laws went into effect, aimed squarely at the two U.S. sugar companies--the West Indies Sugar Corp. and the South Porto Rico Sugar Co.--which grow and mill 70% of the country's sugar. One of the new laws empowers Trujillo's sanitary inspectors to fine the companies and shut down their mills for health-code infractions; another requires the companies to pay production taxes on their full sugar quotas whether the mills are running or not. Two other laws levy a 15% income tax on top of the production tax, and require that Dominicans be hired as superintendents and supervisors with the same salaries and privileges as the foreigners they replace.

Even more far-reaching is a threat to the companies that has been boiling up for the past few months: a program Trujillo calls land reform. Having made the gesture of turning over 59 parcels of his own sugar holdings to loyal Trujillistas, the Benefactor now wants the U.S. companies to give up part of their land to local planters, for compensation to be determined later.

With Trujillo's press attacking them steadily, and with his sanitary inspectors likely to drop in any time to assess heavy fines for a loose roof tile or a leaky pipe, the U.S. companies can not be sure what their eventual fate may be. This week representatives of West Indies and South Porto Rico are scheduled to fly from New York for a meeting at which they hope to find out what the Benefactor really wants--and why the boss so often defended as friendly to business has been giving business the business.

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