Armed Armistice

War planes darted overhead. One 21-gun salute after another boomed out. Within the pea-green reception room of the government building in the dusty Dominican border town of Elias Pifia, officials of Hispaniola's two little republics crowded close. Then Generalissimo Dr. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, Honorable Chief of State, Benefactor of the Nation, President and for 20 years dictator of the Dominican Republic, stepped forward and embraced coal-black Colonel Paul Magloire, newly elected President of Haiti and something of a strong man himself.

A few hours later, the symbolic act of friendship was repeated in the Haitian border village of Belladere. Guns banged again, champagne glasses clicked and officials of the two republics and their ladies danced Dominican and Haitian meringues. Before the historic day was over, the two Presidents had agreed to 1) take joint measures against Communism, 2) grant tariff and other trade concessions, 3) arrange supervision of migratory workers crossing the frontier, 4) work out rules for treatment of each other's political exiles.

Since Haiti and the Dominican Republic have long been two of the world's worst neighbors, it seemed a surprising reconciliation. Back in 1937 the Trujillo soldiery massacred 20,000 migratory Haitian workers; afterwards Trujillo quietly paid the Haitian government $750,000 damages and signed a peace pact. Eleven years later, he was allowing nightly broadcasts by an exiled Haitian calling on his countrymen to revolt. Barely a year ago, after a Haitian appeal, the Organization of American States found Trujillo guilty of fomenting another plot against Haiti.

What, then, did the new agreement mean, if anything? Simply that for all their mutual hatred and distrust, 3,000,000 Haitians and 2,000,000 Dominicans must go on living together on their island. "We cannot forget the past," said a Haitian sadly last week, "but we must make an effort to establish peace."

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