Verdict on Santo Domingo
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Since the U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic last year, news men who covered the fighting there have laid down a barrage of hastily written books about the crisis, mostly echoing Senator William Fulbright's plaint that Washington was guilty of "overreaction." The most cogent and authoritative account of the affair, Overtaken by Events (Doubleday), was published last week, adding significant ly to history's vindication of President Johnson's action. Its author: John Bartlow Martin, 51, U.S. ambassador to Santo Domingo from 1962 to 1964, and, as Johnson's special envoy, one of the key American officials in the Dominican capital during last year's civil war.
Ohio-born Martin, a freelance magazine writer for 25 years, and a campaign speechwriter for John F. Kennedy, took perceptive daily notes throughout his diplomatic stint. He was appointed to the Dominican post by Kennedy during the power vacuum that followed the assassination of Dictator Rafael Trujillo. Martin's near-impossible assignment was to try to establish rudimentary democracy in a land that had known nearly five centuries of despotism. As he bade the ambassador goodbye Kennedy jestingly warned: "If you blow this one, you'd better not come home."
Intrigues & Failures. Martin proved an honorable and patient diplomat in Santo Domingo. He did his utmost to shore up the republic's first post-Trujillo constitutional President, Juan Bosch. In the end, it was Bosch who blew it. Martin pictures him as a suspicious and erratic tropical, whose Machiavellian intrigues and "very real failures to meet the people's needs" invited the military coup that set the stage for the 1965 crisis.
When Bosch was bounced, Martin —despite J.F.K.'s mock threat—was called home to demonstrate Washington's stern disapproval of the military-backed regime that took power. Four months later, crushed by President Kennedy's assassination in the interim, Martin forsook diplomacy to begin writing his book.
Two Objectives. In April 1965, Santo Domingo exploded once again, and Martin was summoned to the White House to serve once again in that hapless country. President Johnson made clear that U.S. actions would be guided by two main objectives: 1) averting a bloodbath and protecting American lives, and 2) preventing a Castro takeover. Hurriedly dispatched to Santo Domingo, Martin spent weary days negotiating with the rebels and mustering the facts to guide U.S. policy.
Martin reports that Fidel Castro's agents, exploiting the country's "politics of annihilation," had plotted ever since Trujillo's assassination "to seize control of the capital's streets, the first step in the classic Marxist revolutionary pattern." Francisco Caamano Deno, the rabble-rousing, opportunistic army colonel who led the revolt, was portrayed by New York Times Correspondent Tad Szulc as a well-meaning nationalist. Martin has a slightly different assessment: "I had met no man who I thought might become a Dominican Castro—until I met Caamano. He was winning a revolution from below. He had few political advisers in Santo Domingo at that time but Communists."