Triple Play

In Santo Domingo (known for 25 years as Ciudad Trujillo), a crowd of youths clutched the corners of a Dominican flag and raced through the streets, shouting "Liberty by Christmas!" They did not have that long to wait. For the crowds that gathered excitedly on waterfront George Washington Avenue to watch the U.S. missile cruiser Little Rock and a destroyer escort patrolling just beyond the three-mile limit, liberty had already arrived. The Trujillo regime came tumbling down in the Dominican Republic last week, and a chartered DC-6 bore off to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., 29 members of the Trujillo family. Would he ever return to the Dominican Republic? Generalissimo Hector Trujillo was asked. He answered nonchalantly, sure: "After all, it's our country."

Desperate Bid. For 31 years, up to last week, Hector was literally right. In the name of Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, the Trujillo clan ruled the island as their own and enriched themselves. After the old dictator was assassinated last May as he rode to a rendezvous with his mistress, the fiefdom fell into the uncertain hands of his son and heir, Rafael ("Ramfis") Trujillo Jr., 32, who with U.S. approval was doing his best to arrange a peaceful transition. Last week, returning from exile, Uncle Hector and his brother Jose Arismendi, made a last desperate bid to reessert the bloody dictatorship. It took a triple play to defeat it--by Dominican President Joaquin Balaguer, helped by a 37-year-old Dominican air force general named Pedro Ramon Rodriguez Echaverria, and by the U.S. Navy, which coolly provided just the touch of old-fashioned "gunboat diplomacy" to enable the Dominicans themselves to end the Trujillo era.

In backing Ramfis, in the hope that he could bloodlessly "democratize" Trujillo-land, the U.S. made it a condition that Uncles Hector and Arismendi stay away. They did for a while, then began to complain that young Ramfis was frittering away their fief, and blustered home to stop him. At that point, Ramfis gave up. After all, he had a reported $500 million stashed away in solid currencies in overseas banks. So he resigned as armed forces chief of staff and embarked with a consoling German blonde on the family yacht Angelita, bound first for the nearby island of Guadeloupe, then for the bright lights of Paris. That left a vacuum, which the uncles sought to fill. They tried to line up diehard Trujillo generals for a coup, and according to opposition reports were prepared to murder upwards of 1,000 enemies in one night.

Pilots' Defection. But the anti-Trujillo opposition was also mobilizing for trouble. Orders from Washington approved by President Kennedy sent the Little Rock, the aircraft carriers Valley Forge and Franklin D. Roosevelt and coveys of support vessels toward the Dominican coast. Aboard the Valley Forge were 1,800 marines, with helicopters to land them on Dominican soil. At the airbase near the inland Dominican city of Santiago de los Caballeros, Commanding General Rodriguez ordered the arrest of every Trujillo agent in the city whom the uncles were apt to count on for their bloodbath. His younger brother, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff Pedro Santiago Rodriguez Echaverria, persuaded 20 pilots at San Isidro, the main airbase in Ciudad Trujillo, to fly to Santiago.

The two uncles descended on President Balaguer at the presidential palace to remind him that he had once been a complacent Trujillo stooge and had better be again. By now, twelve U.S. warships boldly stood to in clear sight of the capital. Balaguer was not alone. General Rodriguez rounded up the support of several armed forces commanders by telephone, sent his planes to strafe four reluctant garrisons in the interior.

As they presented their demands to Balaguer, the Trujillo brothers found themselves surrounded by pro-Balaguer Cabinet officers and army men. U.S. Consul John Calvin Hill Jr. strolled in, joining Balaguer and the brothers. As if helpless in such a situation, Balaguer shrugged his shoulders, told the Trujillos that "if you don't leave, they'll invade us." Consul Hill joined in: "That's absolutely the best thing." Arismendi conferred alone with Balaguer another 20 minutes, then picked up the phone, dialed his wife and told her to "pack and get ready to go."

Yells from Castro. Latin American opinion, which recoils from the thought of any Yankee intervention, took this one in stride. Fidel Castro, with designs of his own on the Dominican Republic, claimed that the whole maneuver was merely designed to set a precedent for action against him. He sent delegates to the U.N. Security Council and the Organization of American States to denounce the U.S. intervention and demand that the U.S. forces be withdrawn. At the Security Council he won the approval of Russia's Valerian Zorin but only eloquent silence from Security Council members Ecuador and Chile. At the OAS, no other Latin American nation could bring itself to protest the toppling of the Trujillo empire, and Dr. Jose Antonio Bonilla Atiles, one of the Trujillo opposition, told the Security Council. " 'Blessed be the moment when the American fleet came to Dominican waters.' "

As the Trujillos flew out of Ciudad Trujillo, two principal opposition leaders--the National Civic Union's Viriato Fiallo and the 14th of June's Manuel Tavarez--flew in from San Juan. They found the road from airport to city a sea of celebrators, flinging flowers, weeping, clapping hands, tooting whistles. At the bridge that forms the main entrance to the city, more than 100,000 people joyfully stopped the caravan.

All over town the Trujillo statues and street signs came down. President Balaguer rushed a measure through Congress changing Ciudad Trujillo back to the name Columbus gave it, Santo Domingo. From jubilation, mobs turned to selective looting, cleaning out homes and businesses of Trujillos and their friends.

Powerful Dissent. At week's end, President Balaguer found himself in shaky control. He rewarded the two air force men by putting them in control of the armed forces--Pedro Ramon Rodriguez Echaverria as Secretary of State for the Armed Forces, Brother Pedro Santiago as air force chief of staff. Balaguer worked to form a transitional coalition government. In this he was backed by the moderately leftist Dominican Revolutionary Party of longtime anti-Trujillo Exile Juan Bosch, by Fiallo's middle-of-the-road National Civic Union, and by some elements of the leftist 14th of June. A risky intervention, done with speed and good intentions, seemed to be working.

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