PAGE TWO
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
FRIDAY, AUGUST 27. INS
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Mrs. Martin Blames
Cabral for
Dominican Fight;
By SUSAN COLLINS
Special To The Daily
THREE LAKES, Mich.-Frances
R. Martin, the wife of vacationing
ex-Ambassador to the Dominican
Republic John Bartlow Martin, is
in a position to have a clear, ar-
ticulated grasp of the events in-
volved in the Dominican Republic
this past spring.
The actual fighting, Mrs. Mar-
tin said in a recent interview, was
touched off by Donald Reid Cab-
ral, head of the government which
had replaced the non-Communist,
democratic government of Juan
Bosch by military coup on Sep-
tember 25, 1963.
Reid had heard that certain
members of the military were plot-
ting against him. When he sent an
emissary, then-Colonel Rivera Cu-
esta, to military headquarters, the
military locked Rivera Cuesta up,
took over the radio station, and
announced that they were taking
over the government in the name'
of Juan Bosch.
The defecting military, in which
Colonel Francisco Caamano Deno'
was not very influential in the'
beginning, according to Mrs. Mar-
tin, was soon joined in riot and
rebellion by confused masses of
street citizens, by leftist political
youth, and by a few hard-core
Communists. The fighting was on,
Enlightened Oligarchy
Donald Reid, explained Mrs.
Martin, a young businessman and
son of a Scotch immigrant, is a
member of the oligarchy - a.
group which is extremely con-
servative in other Latin American
countries, but not necessarily in
the Dominican Republic, where it
is "quite enlightened." After the
1963 coup, Reid was brought into
the government by a small group
of military men who were acting
on the part of the middle class,
rightist business leaders who fear-
ed Communism and disliked
Bosch. Mrs. Martin explained they
felt that Bosch was "handing the
country over to the Communists,
although Bosch is clearly not a
Communist nor was he handing
over the country to Communists."
"The Reid government was not
a repressive government," Mrs.
Martin said. Reid is "a decent
person personally." But his regime
was unpopular and was not "sup-
ported wholeheartedly by the Unit-
ed States government, because it
had been installed by the military
and not by election.
When the Dominican Republic
and the Reid government explod-
ed on April 24, President Lyndon
B. Johnson sent the Marines to
Santo Domingo four days later
and ex-Ambassador Martin in on
April 30. Martin was in the Do-
minican Republic for three weeks,
and returned when the Organiza-
tion of American States commis-
sion was formed and operating.
Since that time, Ellsworth Bunker
and the other OAS members have
been carrying on the commission's
work, helping the Dominicans
prepare to hold democratic elec-
tions in the country.
The Imbert junta was indeed'
formed in collaboration with Mar-
tin. "'Shot at from three sides'"
(loyalists, rebels, and Marines),
Mrs. Martin quoted her husband,
the men working to get a cease-
fire and form the junta had an ex-
ceedingly difficult time of it. The
rebels would have nothing to do
with General Wessin y Wessin,
who was "most directly responsible
for the overthrow of Juan Bosch,"
said Mrs. Martin. Wessin y Wes-
sin, a post-Bosch supporter of
Reid, was "absolutely unaccept-
able for even talking purposes to
the rebel side" because when the
fighting had been at its bloodiest,
he was in command of the loyal-
ist troops.
Someone Needed
Someone else was needed. An-
tonio Imbert looked like a logical
choice.
"This has never been said in
print, and I don't understand it,"
said Mrs. Martin, but Imbert "was
a member of the council of state
put in right after Trujillo's death.
He was one of seven 'presidents'
who had the sole aid of holding
democratic elections in the Do-
minican Republic.
Another thing that Mrs. Martin
pointed out about Imbert is that
he is an appointed general, "not
a professional military man." Al-
though Imbert is often mentioned
in the same breath as Wessin y
Wessin, an "extreme rightist rad-
ical," the two are not equatable,
Mrs. Martin maintains.
Imbert is a reasonable man, and
much more moderate, she said.
Private Life
Until the junta was formed,
Imbert was living "quietly in pri-
vate life." When President Bosch's"
military cantors in 1963 had de-
cided to send him into exile rath-
er than kill him, Mrs. Martin said,
he made one request, published in
the Santo Domingo newspapers at
the time. He said he wanted to go
into exile accompanied by his
"good friend" Antonio Imbert,
whom he trusted. Mr. and Mrs.Im-
bert did indeed accompany Mr.
and Mrs. Bosch into exile.
The first thing Imbert did when
the junta was formed, Mrs. Mar-
tin said, was to expel the old Tru-
jillo generals who were complete-
ly unacceptable to the people be-
cause of "past atrocities and cur-
rent corruption." Wessin y Wessin
alone refused to go.
The OAS' present objective,
Martin said, is to help the Do-
minicans set up a provisional gov-
ernment which will hold free elec-
tions, probably in six to nine
months.
"They seem to have picked one
'nan as president, Hector Garcia
Godoy," she said. Garcia Godoy,
a former diplomat who was the
Dominican ambassador to London
and foreign minister under Bosch,
is a member of the oligarchy, pro-
gressive and enlightened. The reb-
el side has accepted hih as provi-
sional president. "All these peo-
ple are friends of ours" (Mr. and
Mrs. Martin), Mrs. Martin said,
"no matter what side they're on."
Few Capable People
She commented on "how few
capable people" there are in the
Dominican Republic. "No matter
who goes down, he ends up inter-
viewing the same five or six guys."
Garcia Godoy, she said, was re-
luctant to join the Imbert junta
in May because he is one of those'
who, understandably, "having seen
so much governmental chaos were
reluctant to accept the responsibil-
ity of governmental position."
And some of the other quali-
fied men "seemed to put . selfish
political interest above the good
of the country" because whoever
is in the provisional government
cannot run for the elected presi-
dency.
Mrs. Martin was pleased with
the OAS-Garcia Godoy progress.
Questioned about a statement in
an article by Juan Bosch which
originally appeared in The New
Republic, to the effect that the
Kennedy years were a departure
from other administrations in re-
gard to putting new Latin Ameri-
can policies in action, Mrs. Mar-
tin agreed with Bosch.;
Alliance for Progress
She mentioned the Alliance for
Progress as "certainly the newest
and boldest of concepts in our re-
lations with Latin America." She
also cited the Peace Corps, and
added that President Johnson's
Latin American policies do not
really differ from those of Ken-
nedy.
On other subjects, Mrs. Martin
does not agree with Bosch. John
Martin, she said, firmly believes
that the Communists took over the
Dominican revolution, although
Bosch does not.
Martin's article for Life maga-
zine on the Dominican fighting
spells out who the hard-core Com-
munists were (". . . men who in my
time had been leaders of the
hard-core Communist parties -
Juan Ducoudray Mansfield of the
..- Partido Socialista Popular .. .
who had traveled in recent years
to both Soviet Russia and Com-
munist China, and in 1962 had
worked on broadcasts over Radio
Havana aimed at the Dominican
Republic; his brother, Felix Servio
Ducoudray Mansfield, Jr., also a
PSP leader, who in 1963 returned
to the Dominican -Republic after
having received indoctrination in
the U.S.S.R., worked for the New
China News agency in Cuba and
traveled to China on a Cuban
passport . . ." Martin's list goes
on and on). Other findings con-
firm Martin's-according to Time
magazine, "U.S. intelligence agen-
cies opened their files on 58 of
the Communists' and Castroites
playing a leading role in the
fighting." Time also printed an
impressive list.
Abandon
Mrs. Martin added: "When the
shooting started-when it looked
as if Wessin y Wessin's loyalist
troops were going to triumph over
the rebels, Bosch's political lead-
ers abandoned the rebel cause."
Members of Bosch's party, the
Partido Revolucionairo Domini-
cano, such as Molina Urena (a
"very decent man" who had been
a member of Bosch's congress and
in the constitutional line of suc-
cession to the presidency, and who
was briefly in the palace during
the revolution, according to Mrs.
Martin) went into asylum. Mrs.
Martin said that it is obvious
that Caamano "would not have
been his own master" had he won.
See DEFENDS, Page 3
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