Dominican Republic: Formula by Airplane

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Brigadier General Antonio Imbert Barreras, president of the loyalist Government of National Reconstruction, sat in his office in Santo Domingo's International Zone and pretended to sight along a rifle barrel. "I don't understand these Americans," he muttered. "They never come straight. How can they talk with people who have been killing their own countrymen?"

It was a question Tony Imbert asked again and again last week. The U.S. reply was getting a little scratchy from use: the one hope for lasting peace in the Dominican Republic was through a "broad-based" coalition government—and that meant talking to Colonel Francisco Caamaño Deño and his Communist-infiltrated rebels, who so far have killed 20 U.S. troops, wounded another 119. The sole U.S. condition was that no one from either extreme left or right could participate.

Yet as the ugly little civil war entered its second month, the U.S. seemed no closer to its objective than it was at the start. In ten days of exhausting negotiations, the best efforts of the chief U.S. mediator, Presidential Adviser McGeorge Bundy, were frustrated at every turn—either because of rebel demands or because of Imbert's refusal to dissolve his civilian-military junta. At last, Bundy returned to Washington with no solution in sight.

Losing Support. There was a wave of doubt about the man the U.S. had chosen to lead a coalition. A report popped up in the U.S. press that Antonio Guzmán, 54, onetime agriculture minister in the regime of deposed President Juan Bosch, had been involved in a 1964 bank scandal. According to the story, Guzman was a director of the Dominican Agricultural Bank, which reportedly came up $75 million short on an audit covering the period from 1963 to May 31, 1964. It was a bum rap. Ernst & Ernst, the bank's U.S. auditors, explained that the $75 million deficit was merely an administrative technicality to consolidate potentially uncollectable debts and questionable government bonds left over from the 31-year Trujillo dictatorship. Moreover, Guzmán did not become a bank director until April 1964, barely two months before the audit ended. But that was not the only point raised against Guzmán. Another: throughout the negotiations, he had refused to go along with U.S. suggestions that known Castroites and Communists be shipped out of the country as part of any political settlement.

As for "broad support," there were few cheers in the Dominican Republic last week, either for Guzmán, or Rebel Leader Caamaño, or exiled President Juan Bosch, in whose name the civil war was launched. From the start, Bosch had sat it out in Puerto Rico, exhorting his followers by telephone. He was still there; and in Santo Domingo, that sort of distance scarcely made hearts grow fonder. Bottled up in their 2-sq.-mi. downtown stronghold, Caamaño and his rebels still put on a brave show, sporadically sniping at U.S. troops and chanting a new version of a Castro slogan—"Caamaño, hit the Yankees hard!" Their audience was growing smaller. Under the U.S.-imposed cease-fire between rebels and loyalists, so many Dominicans had left the rebel area that one Marine told a newsman: "You wonder if anyone is left there."