Still in Business

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Under a molten summer sun, a portly figure in a Palm Beach suit set out from his seaside estate one morning last week for a constitutional along Ciudad Trujillo's palm-lined George Washington Avenue. Pedestrians were herded aside, but cars rolled by unmolested just a few yards away. Only a handful of aides guarded Generalissimo Doctor Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, 65, Benefactor of the Fatherland, Genius of Peace, etc., etc., etc., as he strolled confidently along. In the dictator's island fief, poincianas were blooming, sugar cane was growing, business was booming.

A hemispheric axiom has it that when a dictator falls afoul of Washington, his opponents are emboldened to try to topple him. This year, Trujillo is in bad grace with the U.S., which officially suspects that the Dominicans hired U.S. Pilot Gerald Lester Murphy to carry out the airplane-kidnaping of Trujillo Critic Jesus de Galindez from Manhattan 16 months ago. But to Trujillo's satisfaction, the axiom has not worked. The Dominicans are as docile as ever. The educated few who know of the Galindez-Murphy case (in some instances from Puerto Rican radio broadcasts) publicly refuse to comment, privately shrug: "What can we do?"

Getting Results. As the 27th year of the Era of Trujillo neared an end, the strongman was still working a seven-day week and still getting results. The gross national product in 1956 was well over $500 million. Exports last year (mainly sugar, coffee, cocoa) reached a record high of $126.5 million. Imports in 1956 were held to $108.3 million, leaving a trade surplus of $18.2 million. The record 1957 budget, nicely balanced at $131.5 million, will buy more schools, hospitals and roads.

Trujillo is essentially a brutally efficient businessman. Name of the business: the Dominican Republic. His basic maneuver is to squeeze other investors, including those from the U.S., out of profitable businesses. He sends his representatives to make what is often a scrupulously fair offer; the victims accept rather than face the tax and regulatory troubles that might follow refusal. Trujillo's cement, beer and electric-power monopolies were all acquired in this fashion, and he has nearly completed control of the island's biggest business--sugar. Most recent big U.S. firm to get out: the West Indies Sugar Co., for $36 million.

One Flop. In only one business venture--the tourist trade--has the dictator proved a flop. He spent $25 million erecting a gigantic "International Fair for Peace and Progress," opened the doors for business only three months before the Galindez kidnaping. The strongman was splashed with a storm of bad notices unequaled since he ordered the massacre of 15,000 Haitian migrant farm workers in 1937. As he steadily blocked FBI investigation of the double crime, magazines, newspapers, radio networks and U.S. Congressmen denounced him. The tourist traffic jerked to a halt.

Trujillo obviously hopes to ride out the storm, and to help him he has marshaled one of the most potent corps of propaganda agents that any foreign nation maintains in the U.S. But even if Galindez and Murphy are forgotten, the strongman's state has little chance of rivaling traditional Caribbean vacation lands. The few tourists who do visit it return to report a polite but lifeless people, depressingly adept at following the rules of appeasing egomania, but no fit company for a fling.

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