A Hungry Mob

By Laura Lopez

Rioters protest price hikes

What started in anguish ended in fury. After an Easter week of vacationing on the beach, Dominicans returned to work Monday to find that the government had sharply raised the prices on most of their basic foods. Bread rolls went up to 5-c- from 2 1/2-c-, milk from 45-c- a quart to 55-c-, sugar from 26-c- per lb. to 31-c-. Several opposition groups immediately organized demonstrations across the country to protest the increases, which were instituted under the government's new austerity program. But their protests rapidly got out of control.

Soon gangs of unemployed youths were throwing rocks at stores accused of price gouging. As the rock throwing gave way to looting, the Dominican Republic was plunged into the worst rioting the country has seen in 19 years. President Salvador Jorge Blanco quickly dispatched armored trucks and helicopters to back up police. Soldiers fired into the crowds. According to newsmen on the scene, several agitators suspected of looting were summarily executed. In a battle that lasted two days, 55 were killed, 400 wounded and 5,000 arrested. Property damage ran into millions of dollars.

Resentment against Jorge Blanco, 57, began to grow in January 1983, when he announced the austerity program. The strict measures were imposed on the country by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the price for a three-year bailout loan of $430 million that a faltering economy desperately needed. The Dominican Republic is plagued by 30% unemployment, rising inflation that may hit 60% this year and a $2.5 billion foreign debt. Politicians on all sides felt that the measures placed an unfair burden on the lower classes, whose earning power has decreased by 50% in the past three months. The IMF medicine, they fear, will kill the patient.

Jorge Blanco made a state visit to Ronald Reagan in early April, hoping to secure U.S. support in persuading the IMF to soften its conditions when new loan negotiations began this month. But because the Dominican Republic is a democracy and has no leftist guerrilla threat, Reagan praised its stability and offered no more than the $135.7 million U.S. aid package already approved for this year and eased restrictions on an additional $34 million in direct cash aid. The Dominican Republic now stands to gain $40 million dollars, mostly from a 2.8-c--per-lb. duty exemption on its sugar exports to the U.S. Eventually the country will be able to receive equally preferential treatment on other products.

The help will not come soon enough, however, for the masses who took to the streets last week. Many are enraged at Jorge Blanco for using a heavy hand to quiet the protests. "He was too tough," said a doctor who worked with the wounded. "He could have displayed more humanity and reached out to the people." But government officials remained firm. Jorge Blanco has instructed some of his party members to begin negotiations with unions for salary raises for workers, in hopes of averting further riots. Undoubtedly he wants to avoid a repeat of the uprising that occurred 19 years ago last week, which was also sparked in part by opposition to IMF measures. In that incident, President Lyndon Johnson sent in 27,000 U.S. troops to avert "another Cuba." Ironically, Jorge Blanco and his party led that revolt.

The Dominican Republic's problems of poverty and a strained economy are mirrored almost everywhere in the region. Reagan's 1982 Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) has promised to stimulate economic growth in 27 Caribbean nations through the "magic of the marketplace," by offering cash grants, tariff exemptions and cheap loans. But the CBI has had little impact. Cash payments from the U.S. have been used mostly to pay off old debts; new tariff breaks benefited only a few nations. Many foreign investors shun the region. A major reason: continuing civil unrest.

The 14 island governments in the Caribbean already participating in the CBI generally lack the modern economic framework needed to profit from it. Officials estimate, for example, that it will be six years before the two-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda is sufficiently developed to attract foreign investors. Jamaica wants to use CBI aid for more advanced agricultural production, but it has long been unable to fill export quotas for basic crops like sugar and bananas. Despite the CBl's good intentions, many Caribbean nations remain crippled by low prices for their traditional exports, the rocketing cost of fuel, and continuing high unemployment. Until these problems are dealt with, the threat of more bloodshed from riots like those in the Dominican Republic last week is the shadow on the sun. --By Laura Lopez. Reported by Bernard Diederich/Santo Domingo

With reporting by Bernard Diederich