Troubled Days
In a paddyfield far out in the Dominican countryside, a bare-chested campesino whipped his straining oxen. "Go, you lovelies!" he cried. "Get up, you bastards!" Across the rich corn and platano fields of the Cibao Valley, fair-skinned, barefoot women toted gourds from roadside fountains to their thatched shacks, while nearby mounds of rice lay drying in the sun. In the mountains to the north, a grizzled farmer, Vicente Santiago, 65, worried his head over his ten children, his ten hens, his three acres of coffee, platano and corn--and little else. If there was trouble in Santo Domingo, it was of no concern to him. "The governments in the capital do not mean anything to us," said he. "No matter what changes there, everything is the same to us here."
The old farmer reflected a curious detachment in the Dominican Republic four months after the abortive revolution. To the people of the country's farms and villages, Santo Domingo might as well be on Mars. What concerned them most was the sorry shape of the sugar, cocoa and coffee markets, the absence of rain, the shortage of food, the need to get pencils and books for the kids returning to school--in short, the same things that concerned them before Santo Domingo erupted.
The mood of disengagement was even more pronounced in the republic's second city, Santiago (pop. 75,000). There, last week, the movie houses were packed, and a chic fashion show drew a capacity crowd. Well-stocked shops were doing a bustling business, Rotarians held their regular dinner at the downtown Hotel Mercedes, the local civic band played its customary Sunday-afternoon concert in the park, and the binational Dominican-American Center held its usual graduation ceremony for the students who had been learning English.
Economy Damage. For all this appearance of detachment, the little republic was beginning to feel a deeper deterioration of the already troubled economy. The revolt closed major banks in Santo Domingo's rebel zone, thus hobbling the flow of credit throughout the country. A peso shortage cut down business outlays and salaries, and government tax collections dropped from $15 million to $5 million a month. To help out, the U.S. is putting cash in the hands of laborers through $6,416,000 in emergency grants for road and irrigation projects. That is at best a stopgap move. The country, which barely got through with a gross national product of $824 million in 1964, will probably end up with a G.N.P. for 1965 of $700 million.
It was in Santo Domingo, of course, that the damage was most evident. Day by day, the civilian population there was growing more restive, and the pressures for settlement increased. Last week, a group of top capital businessmen petitioned Chief OAS Mediator Ambassador Ellsworth T. Bunker to press for an end to the "deterioration of all our activities, economic as well as educational and civic."
No Cash. Typically, the end seemed close at hand--and yet not quite within grasp. The bitter hatred between the loyalist forces of General Antonio Imbert Barrera and Colonel Francisco Camaano Deno's rebels had hardly diminished. The rebels claimed to want a provisional government; yet rebel youths were taking daily training in street fighting and guerrilla warfare--under the leadership of men of the Castroite 14th-of-June group. Last week Loyalist Imbert's radio was howling at the OAS, issuing scare warnings of imminent violence, insisting that his junta was in fact "the provisional government of the Dominican Republic." The OAS countered with pressure. Imbert has received no U.S. cash to pay the $10 million July salaries of his government, and now the OAS warned that there would be no further U.S. money for his unrecognized regime. At week's end--for the first time since the revolt--rebel and loyalist representatives met at an OAS conference table for preliminary settlement talks.
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