Propaganda War

"I wish to speak clearly," said the letter. "I was sent here by the Morgan, Rockefeller and Du Pont groups." It was signed "Bruce Palmer," commander of U.S. forces serving with the OAS soldiers in the Dominican Republic. Printed in Patria, the leftist daily published in Santo Domingo's rebel zone, the patently phony letter protested that Palmer should not be called "second-in-command" to Brazilian General Hugo Panasco Alvim, chief of the OAS forces, and concluded: "Who would be capable of supposing that a Brazilian could give orders to a white, blonde, Protestant North American?"

Even the editors of Patria did not try to pass off this document as authentic, merely intended it as a heavy piece of irony--the supposed humor of which many readers would miss. In its crassness, it was typical of the ludicrous, freewheeling propaganda war embittering the atmosphere in the Dominican Republic. Before the current crisis broke 13 weeks ago, Santo Domingo was served by three dailies with a combined circulation of 100,000. All three have suspended publication and have been replaced by wildly improbable, yellow-jaundiced scandal sheets.

Genocidas & Torturers. Real news was light last week: the OAS peace talks remained stalemated, and middle-reading liberal Hector Garcia Godoy continued to be the best bet for provisional President. Meantime, Junta General Antonio Imbert Barreras and Rebel Colonel Francisco Caamano Deno were holding their fire. Not so the new scandal press. After having its fun with General Palmer, Patria (which claims 7,000 readers) ran a picture of a Dominican beauty dancing cheek to cheek with a "Yankee invader." Read the caption darkly: "She will pay for her collaboration." The soldier, in fact, was a Brazilian medic.

In a now-it-can-be-told "exclusive," Patria announced that "Hitler and his Nazi assassins were disciples of the Yankees. The Yankees have shown themselves to be better teachers of crime than Trujillo." La Nacion, the official four-page tabloid voice of the rebel government, can be almost as shrill. It attacks junta troops as "genocidas" and "torturers."

Washed-Up Diplomats. Backing up the dailies is the rebel Radio Santo Domingo, which calls Imbert a "hog-jawed monster." Last week it broadcast a false report that Imbert's wife had ducked out to Puerto Rico and was awaiting her husband. "The flight has begun," the commentator chirruped, "and just as in the height of the Trujillo reign, it is the women and children first, and then the murderers of the people." On a more modest level are quippy posters and house organs put out by various political parties, including a rebel sheet that uses as its slogan a line from Horace: "It is sweet and honorable to die for the fatherland."

On Imbert's side there is no La Nacion or Patria. However, he does have his own Radio Santo Domingo, which recently attacked the OAS peace team as a "bunch of washed-up diplomats whose shortsightedness does not allow them to see beyond the thick crystal of their glasses."

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