Two Governments, Face to Face

Resplendent in a freshly pressed uniform, a stocky, scar-faced man wearing brigadier general's rank marched stiffly through the ruined doorway of the Dominican Republic's Congressional Assembly Hall. He was a Dominican national hero, Antonio Imbert Barreras, 44, one of the two surviving assassins of Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Honored with a general's commission, he had been living quietly in the background. Now he had come as the anti-Communist head of a new five-man loyalist junta, replacing the three soldiers installed by Brigadier General Wessin y Wessin a fortnight ago, hoping to pacify his small Caribbean country torn by one of the bloodiest civil wars in recent Latin American history.

"Citizens," said Imbert, after taking the oath of office, "our capital is in ruins. Our national life is in pieces. Dominicans of all sectors have come forth in order that we can form a government of national reconstruction. We do not desire anything other than the salvation of our fatherland." Imbert's junta was composed of a lawyer, an engineer, an air force colonel from Wessin y Wessin's government; in a gesture to the rebels who had started the revolt in the name of deposed President Juan Bosch, he included a pro-Bosch editor.

Imbert appealed to the rebels holed up in downtown Santo Domingo to surrender their weapons, guaranteed their safe-conduct "without reservations." He called for peace, unity, bound himself "to cooperate totally" with the Organization of American States, and, with the U.S., struggle to bring at least a semblance of sanity to his battered, forsaken land. He claimed he had control of all 25 Dominican provinces and 90% of the capital district. He asked all public employees to return to work, promised that his government would start paying salaries promptly.

Another Fidel? Thus, late last week, the Dominican Republic got a loyalist government that could assert its right to govern against the claims of the so-called "constitutionalist" government of Rebel Colonel Francisco Caamano Deno, 32, the officer who triggered the revolt on April 24. Caamano's political background is murky. He is quarrelsome, opportunistic, a plotter who, in the words of one U.S. official, "has the potential of becoming another Fidel Castro." His father, Lieut. General Fausto Caamano, was boss of Trujillo's secret police, took a leading part in the 1937 slaughter of 15,000 Haitian squatters. Young Caamano joined the navy in 1950, proved so contentious that he was bucked to the marines, next to the police, finally to the army. He helped in the 1963 coup that exiled Bosch, and plotted against his successor.

Caamano was the man who personally arrested Junta Chief Donald Reid Cabral at the start of the rebellion, and who ordered rebels to shoot U.S. troops if they entered his territory. Early last week he rounded up 15 of 27 senators, 41 of 74 Deputies from Bosch's old Congress, and after a pro-forma poll, announced himself "elected" President to serve the remaining 33 months of Bosch's term. He ridiculed U.S. charges that Communists played a major role in his regime. "There are no Communists in the movement," he said--then gave a clenched-fist salute. And backing him up is his newly appointed "Minister of Government," one Hector Aristy Pereira, an equally shadowy figure who calls himself a businessman, has been playing with Dominican political fire for twelve years and says proudly: "I was the man to look for whenever there was plotting going on."

To hear Caamano and Aristy tell it, there was scant possibility of conciliation with Tony Imbert's new government. They declared it "completely unacceptable," scorned it as a U.S. tool. In a telephone call to the exiled Bosch in Puerto Rico, Caamano said that he was girding for an all-out attack momentarily by loyalist forces under U.S. cover. To newsmen, Aristy insisted that the U.S. had "violated" the neutral international zone carved out by U.S. Marines merely by letting Imbert's junta meet in the Congressional Assembly Hall.

Backs to the Sea. And so the bitter fight went on. All that prevented resumption of the bloodbath last week was the presence of 21,000 U.S. Marines and paratroopers, who had cut a line through the heart of Santo Domingo. According to the official military explanation, the line was a "communication route" linking the international refugee zone in the west with the Duarte Bridge leading east to San Isidro airbase 14 miles away. What it really did was pinch Caamano and his 12,000 armed rebels into a 2-sq.-mi. area with their backs to the sea.

Parts of Santo Domingo behind the U.S. lines began to breathe again. Ex-Junta Chief Donald Reid Cabral met with newsmen in the international zone to describe how non-Communist officers had spirited him away from a crowd of Reds screaming for his death on the day of the revolution. People began to move in the streets. Shops opened. Off-duty U.S. troops fed C-rations to children while six-wheel U.S. trucks lumbered through the city passing out powdered milk, flour, rice, cooking oil and beans. "I don't like all this," said one Dominican, "but if it weren't for those boys, I might not be around to complain."

In the rebel sector, the smell of rotting flesh and burning rubble still sickened the air. Heavily armed bands of youths roamed the area, yelling "Viva la constitution! Viva Bosch!" "Let the Yankees come and get us," snarled one submachine gun-toting rebel. All through the week snipers continued to flit from house to house, pecking away at U.S. troops hemming them in. One night a rebel motorboat in the Ozama River made life difficult for the 82nd Airborne. "Eventually," explained a laconic paratroop captain, "we got tired of that, so we sank it." In other action, the paratroopers blasted another motorboat and set fire to the freighter Santo Domingo, which rebels were using as a sniper's nest.

Hate Chant. Even after a formal cease-fire was signed by Caamano, the rebel radio kept up its hate chant: "Shoot the foreign invaders! Shoot the foreign invaders!" The opportunity came too often. Taking a wrong turn at the 30th of March Avenue, two paratroopers in a Jeep blundered into rebel territory, swiftly realized their mistake and pointed their rifle muzzles down as a signal of truce. They were cut down in a flurry of fire. Next day a marine convoy of two Jeeps and a three-quarter-ton truck again drove by accident into rebel territory. Four marines died, one was wounded, two captured. At rebel headquarters, Caamano and Aristy gloatingly interrogated the marines before U.S. newsmen. Then they let them go. "You see, I am a humanitarian," said Aristy.

The sniper fire kept on. At week's end, a group of snipers popped up in the evacuation base at Haina, twelve miles west of Santo Domingo, and killed a marine warrant officer, while three more paratroopers were wounded in the city proper. By now, the U.S. casualty toll was 13 dead, 72 wounded. Offshore cruised a 32-ship U.S. task force. On board were more U.S. Marines ready and waiting.

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