Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, The American Republics, Volume IV

611.39/3–154

The Ambassador in the Dominican Republic ( Pheiffer ) to the Department of State

secret
No. 806

Ciudad Trujillo , March 1, 1954.

Ref:

• Embdes. No. 578 of January 27, 1953.¹

Subject:

• Foreign Relations of the Dominican Republic during 1953.

Relations With the United States

summary and conclusions

The graph of Dominican-American political and economic relations for 1953 fluctuated wildly, but military cooperation continued on a high plane. At the year’s end, violent attacks on American capital forced us to view the future darkly and to recommend reconsideration of our policy toward the regime.

a. narrative of developments

During Trujillo’s visit to the United States (December, 1952–March, 1953) Dominican press comment favored the United States, and the Jefe himself made several friendly statements to our press and public officials. He also approved the long-pending Military Assistance Agreement, and, following our December 1952 protest against his mistreatment of American companies, ordered a cessation of press and psychological warfare and a negotiated settlement with the Grenada Company.

But Trujillo clearly was not satisfied with his achievements in the United States. Two Presidents and two Secretaries of State received him; he was entertained at Blair House and by many prominent persons; and he was permitted to sign the Military Assistance Agreement in Washington. Nevertheless, the relative neglect of his activities by our press, his inability to make a big splash in the United Nations, our lack of enthusiasm for his proposal to convene the OAS foreign ministers to consider the menace of communism, our December protest, and perhaps other unknown affronts to vanity, seem to have given him a rankling, if unjustified, feeling that we had treated him shabbily. He may also have taken Mr. Cabot’s appointment as Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs as a personal affront, because Mr. Cabot had spoken frankly to him in 1930² about his commitment to keep out of politics. A deterioration in the Dominican economic situation probably exacerbated his discontent over the U.S. sugar quota, and he may have felt disappointment that the advent of a more conservative administration, headed by a military man, had failed to improve his position vis-à-vis the United States.

In any event, our political and economic relations cooled rapidly soon after his return to the Dominican Republic. The Dominicans dallied over ratification of the Military Assistance Agreement and their press began attacking American diplomats formerly charged with conducting our relations with the Republic. Trujillo left the country immediately prior to Assistant Secretary Cabot’s visit,³ and his henchmen extended him only grudging hospitality. The Dominican Embassy protested the publication of the Boletin of the Dominican Revolutionary Party in the United States and its circulation through our mails; and, late in April, Trujillo rudely and abruptly terminated a Point IV rubber project on which we had cooperated since 1942.

In the meantime we had become concerned about the Dominicans’ discriminatory tactics in behalf of their new merchant fleet, their refusal to permit exports of pineapple slips to Puerto Rico, evidence pointing to the implication of Dominican Consul General Bernardino ⁴ in the Requena⁵ murder, and our responsibility as Unified Command of the United Nations to ascertain whether or not the publicity-loving Benefactor would back up his press offer to send troops to Korea.

May saw a rapid deterioration in all save our military relations. The Acting Foreign Minister received our polite request of May 4 for confirmation that the Republic would send troops to Korea with agitation indicating that he anticipated an unpleasant meeting with his Chief; and the Generalissimo told a group of visiting INS reporters on that date that the State Department had opened great breaches in American unity by following strange policies—although he added that he expected great things from the new Administration. El Caribe of May 6 revealed an unexpected depth of animosity toward the foreign sugar companies, when it attacked them bitterly merely because a company financial statement had contained an innocuous reference to higher Dominican taxation. At about this time Trujillo also terminated a contract under which the South Porto Rico Sugar Company had managed his Rio Haina estates.

Ambassador Thomen requested an interview with the Secretary early in May to protest remarks derogatory to Trujillo, which Assistant Secretary Cabot allegedly had made while in the Dominican Republic. He withdrew his request almost immediately; but, on May 19 General Hermida, the Chief of Dominican Army Intelligence told foreign news services that Mr. Cabot had discussed and concerted plans with communist enemies of the Dominican Republic during his Caribbean trip. On May 20 Mr. Cabot’s name was linked with those of former Assistant Secretaries Braden and Miller in an El Caribe editorial highly critical of their activities. The local press published the Hermida charges on May 23, and it repeated them with various embellishments, and with the added support of a statement of the Under Secretary of the Dominican Foreign Office, on May 25 and 29.⁶

We originally viewed the attack on Mr. Cabot as an explosive manifestation of the Jefe’s disgruntlement caused by the factors previously outlined and triggered by our query about troops for Korea. The fact that Hermida’s statement attacking Mr. Cabot expressed doubt about the Dominicans’ ability to send troops to Korea while their own security was in jeopardy led us to view this matter as the precipitating incident. Trujillo’s later backings and fillings proved that he was indeed loath to send troops; but an interview of June 8 which the Chargé d’Affaires a.i. had with him revealed clearly that remarks attributed to Mr. Cabot while he was here and in Managua had set off the fireworks. But the attack cannot be classified merely as a passionate outburst followed by unconsidered action, because Trujillo quickly dropped his first impulse to act through diplomatic channels and carefully planned his campaign of character assassination. His efforts to isolate Mr. Cabot by displaying good will for the Administration and for Ambassador Phelps deeply underscored this deliberateness.

Reference has already been made to his May 4 press statement friendly to the Administration but critical of the Department. On May 14 Ambassador Phelps received word that the University of Santo Domingo wished to give him an honorary degree. The investiture on May 19 coincided with the release of the Hermida statement to the foreign press, and Ambassador Phelps’ friendly remarks at the convocation, in the presence of the entire Diplomatic Corps, were of course fully reported by the local press. Moreover, El Caribe’s editorial commending Ambassador Phelps also fired the first gun at Mr. Cabot. The Generalissmo later invited the Ambassador to an informal luncheon at the National Palace—extending to him an honor which had then been enjoyed by few diplomats; and, after the Hermida communiqué appeared locally, the Foreign Minister arranged a farewell luncheon in the Ambassador’s honor!

But the smear campaign failed so completely that Trujillo was ready and anxious to make peace by the end of May. It failed because of the actions and inaction of the Department and the Embassy, and because the obvious falsity of the charges made the world press wary of accepting them.

The Department’s disdainfully brief initial press statement dismissed them as too ridiculous to merit comment. It then ignored them until June 1, when it instructed the Embassy to request the recall of Bernardino, affirm that this request had nothing to do with the libels against Mr. Cabot, and assert that our Government was confident “that there is no truth whatsoever to those charges but that it now plans to take no action regarding them since it considers that the supreme issue confronting all of the American Republics is that of the menace of communism”. This instruction, received on June 5, was acted upon the same day.

Meanwhile, the Embassy had taken several steps to counter Trujillo’s obvious efforts to exploit Ambassador Phelps while maligning his superior. The Ambassador had planned to leave on June 4, and he had accepted invitations to farewell parties from the Acting Foreign Minister, the Panamanian Ambassador, and the Diplomatic Corps for May 30, June 1 and June 3 respectively. He had also made tentative arrangements to lay a wreath at the Alter de la Patria on June 3. When the Department informed him on May 27 that the wreath laying should not take place, he decided to leave on the morning of May 30, and he communicated this decision to the Acting Foreign Minister on May 28. The Embassy also recommended to Washington the cancellation of a proposed informal naval visit and requested permission to delay the transmittal of Senate and House Pan American Day resolutions to the Dominican Congress. The Dominicans may have noted that the resolutions had been delivered to the legislatures of other states, and may even have gotten wind of the cancellation of the naval visit. On May 30 the President and Mrs. Eisenhower attended a party honoring Dr. Milton Eisenhower at the Cabots’ home. Since many prominent Latin Americans were also present, the Dominicans undoubtedly received word immediately of this indication of the President’s confidence in Mr. Cabot.

These activities and calculated delays brought Trujillo back into line with surprising speed, as the following circumstances demonstrate: 1. El Caribe’s last article attacking Mr. Cabot appeared on May 29, the day following Ambassador Phelps’ announcement of his decision to expedite his departure. Its tone was defensive, stressing the right of the Dominicans to defend their own system of government. 2. The substance of the Department’s instruction of June 1 was presented to the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs on June 5. The Acting Foreign Minister informed the Chargé d’Affaires a.i. on the following morning that we would soon receive a note stating that the Military Assistance Agreement was in effect. 3. On the morning of June 8 we received the promised note, and the Generalissimo called in the Chargé d’Affaires a.i. for a personal interview, followed by an intimate luncheon. 4. During the course of this meeting, Trujillo said that he would send a thousand men to Korea if we wanted them, agreed to remove Bernardino from New York, made arrangements for the initiation of technical negotiations on Dominican financial support for MAAG, ordered that efforts be made to expedite the presentation of Ambassador Pheiffer’s credentials, and made fervent protestations of his friendship for the United States. 5. After the luncheon the Acting Foreign Minister promised to look into the matter of the long-stalled draft treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation.

These concessions initiated another of our many honeymoons with the Dominicans. The local press of June 9 gave favorable news and editorial coverage to the United States and lauded the press statement which Ambassador Designate Pheiffer released after paying a farewell call on President Eisenhower. An El Caribe editorial of June 10 told the Dominicans, in effect, that their relations with the United States were on a friendly basis once more.

No political or economic problems troubled Dominican-American relations from June 8 until the end of August. Ambassador Pheiffer arrived in Ciudad Trujillo on June 26 and presented his credentials on June 29. Trujillo made unusual efforts to win his friendship during July and August by showing him personal attentions and by ordering the Foreign Office to act favorably on several matters of interest to us, including a resumption of pineapple slip exports and requests for Dominican support for our UN positions. We were also encouraged to believe that we would soon receive favorable reactions to the Draft Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation, and the Dominicans sent us their check for the first semester peso expenses of MAAG with minimal delay.

[Here follow comments about renewed press attacks in the Dominican Republic on former Assistant Secretary of State Braden and Ambassador Ellis Briggs; see footnote 9, below.]

In any event, the Jefe renewed full-scale press attacks on American interests in November with a vituperativeness and volume never before observed. The sugar companies were the principal victims but the Cía. Electrica and the Grenada Company also received hard knocks. The language in which American interests were attacked might well have been Pravda’s, and the lavish use of terms such as “foreigners”, “whites”, and “foreign exploiters” extended their potential effects to all foreign enterprises.

Punitive laws and administrative pressures aimed at terrifying the companies and weakening them financially accompanied the press attacks. New decrees raised existing taxes on the sugar companies and imposed additional taxation. Government inspectors launched rigid and discriminatory drives to enforce labor and sanitary legislation. The press flayed the companies for not obtaining more of their cane from colonos, giving the definite impression, as did officials of the Development Commission, that they would be required to sell half of their lands to Dominicans for Banco Agricola mortgage bonds. To cap cruelty with incongruity, pressures were put on foreign as well as Dominican businessmen to place a legend on the envelopes of letters going to the United States complaining of our discrimination against Dominican sugar!

Negotiations to purchase the Cía. Electrica were accompanied throughout 1953 by various measures of psychological warfare; and, in December, the Government forbade the company to suspend service for non-payment, except with the permission of the authorities. It also hinted that the Company’s dollar remittances might be curtailed.

The Grenada Company, under attack for holding too much uncultivated acreage, began negotiating voluntarily to sell part of these lands to the Agricultural Bank in the hope of forestalling a more general expropriation.

The foreign oil companies, which had been living for two years under a threat that they might have to move their tank farms to a site outside the city, received a final removal notice in October. They were later forced to buy new sites at highly inflated values and a compensating increase in their sales prices was denied.

During this vicious campaign, our political and military relationships preserved an air of friendship and collaboration which soon became highly strained, at least on the political side. The Jefe continued to try to forestall a protest by making friendly personal gestures to the Ambassador, by acceding to several requests for support for our positions in international organizations, by agreeing, early in December, to remove Mr. Braden’s name from the monuments commemorating the cancellation of the internal debt, and by accepting administrative modifications in the Guided Missiles Agreement requested by our military authorities.

Despite these concessions we took a dim view of the future because of our growing conviction that Trujillo intends to possess, sooner or later, the properties of the American agricultural and electric companies. His recent efforts to strengthen his lobby and public relations in the United States, as summarized in the following section, argue, moreover, that he may be preparing a position from which to attack the Department or its officials in any future controversy over the protection of American interests.

[Here follows section B, a discussion of Generalissimo Trujillo’s efforts to improve his public image in the United States.]

c. the diplomatic balance of payments for 1953

The preceding narrative of erratic political relations, excellent military cooperation and attacks on private American business enterprises, suggests that it may be useful to try to allocate the events of 1953 in a rough diplomatic balance sheet, in order to permit a comparison between Dominican assistance to us and our aid to them.

1. Dominican Cooperation with the U.S.

a. In International Agencies.

Dominican cooperation in the United Nations and its agencies continued on the highly satisfactory level of 1952. The Embassy received favorable replies to requests for support for our positions on ten occasions, and the Dominicans voted for Dr. Luther Evans as Director General of UNESCO although we did not campaign for him.

Dominican cooperation in the Third Part of the VII Session of UNGA was “outstanding”. Our consultations on various items of the agenda for the VIII Session also produced satisfactory reactions, except on proposals for financing assistance to underdeveloped nations.

None of our requests for Dominican support on specific issues before the UN or specialized agencies was refused outright, but we received evasive replies when we tried to pin them down about troops for Korea and when we asked for their vote for the proposed merger of the administrative functions of the International Bureau of Arbitration with those of the Registry of the International Court of Justice.

With respect to Inter-American matters, the Foreign Office agreed readily in February not to allow any official Dominican representation in the Santiago CTAL Conference; and in October it endorsed our position that the X Inter-American Conference should be held as scheduled in Caracas.

b. Bi-Lateral Programs and Negotiations.

The Dominicans cooperated fully with our IAGS group throughout 1953. They acceded readily to requests for administrative modifications of the Guided Missiles Agreement and they gave full cooperation to our liaison officer.

The Military Assistance Agreement of March 6, 1953 was promulgated without publicity on April 16, and it was not until June 8 that we were told that ratification had been completed. But negotiation of the financial supplement required only a month, and the first Dominican installment for the local expenses of MAAG reached us on August 7.

Cooperation with our Point IV Mission was good, but less effective than in 1952. The Dominicans met their financial commitments promptly, but were slow in providing counterparts, transportation and other facilities for the agricultural and nursing programs, apparently because of budgetary difficulties. They terminated the rubber program peremptorily in April because the Generalissimo desired to use the Piedra Blanca lands for his cattle empire, but, when reminded of their obligation to give notice of termination, they complied readily.

Despite favorable indications, the Dominicans failed to give us their reactions to the 1951 draft treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation.⁷ We surmise that Trujillo’s decision to renew his attacks on American business interests led him to alter a tentative decision to negotiate.

c. In response to our representations.

Most of our representations to the Dominicans got quick and satisfactory results but we encountered delay in one case and sharp dealing in another.

Our request for the withdrawal of Dominican Consul General Bernardino from New york was acted upon to our complete satisfaction, as was an informal request about the presentation of Ambassador Pheiffer’s credentials.

We failed initially to obtain export permits for pineapple slips needed in Puerto Rico, apparently because the Dominicans were planning to install a plant for canning pineapple juice and were anxious to increase local pineapple production. But plans for the canning factory were dropped after its economics proved to be unfavorable and when Ambassador Pheiffer raised the subject early in July he was told that the matter would be reviewed. An open end permit was granted a few weeks later.

When it was learned, early in September, that the Generalissimo had included a reference to a secret military pact with the U.S. in an article prepared for a special supplement of the Herald Tribune, a chat with General Anselmo Paulino ⁸ elicited a promise that the reference would be removed and a statement that the Jefe had not been aware of its inclusion.

The incident of the plaques,⁹ although ultimately resolved favorably, showed the Jefe to be unpleasantly sharp in his dealings.

Our request of December that permission be granted the Dominican Embassy in Panama to issue multiple entry visas valid for one year to our diplomatic couriers based there was granted with minimal delay.

d. Other Friendly Gestures.

All distinguished American visitors received friendly press treatment and, with the exception of Assistant Secretary Cabot, generous official hospitality. The crews of our Naval vessels, which resumed informal calls at Ciudad Trujillo in the first quarter of 1953, got warm receptions from the press and public.

Ambassador Pheiffer had an excellent press upon his arrival and special arrangements were made for a rapid presentation of his credentials. After the presentation he was entertained at a private luncheon by the Generalissimo and President Trujillo. The Generalissimo later made exceptional efforts to facilitate the Ambassador’s trips to the northwestern and southwestern regions of the Republic.

On at least three occasions the Generalissimo released press statements friendly to the U.S. On July 1, he was quoted as having said that all nations of the Hemisphere should rally around the United States. On August 1 he told a group of Chiefs of Mission that no one disputes the greatness of the American people and that we now have our eyes open, although we are still necessarily a “little ingenuous because we have not suffered adversity”. On November 14 the press quoted the Generalissimo apocryphally as having told Ambassador Pheiffer that the Dominican Armed Forces would always be ready “to fight communism at the side of the Forces of the United States which your President, General Eisenhower, has commanded”. This statement took on added significance from the fact that it appeared in an article describing ceremonies at which Trujillo was presented with the Croix de Guerre with Palms by a French general.

When Senator Taft ¹⁰ and Chief Justice Vinson ¹¹ died, the Dominican Government declared three days of official mourning to show solidarity with the people of the United States.

e. Press and Radio Coverage.

The controlled Dominican press and radio gave extensive coverage during 1952 to events in the United States, our international activities, and our policy statements. Comment on President Eisenhower was uniformly favorable and the Administration’s announced policy of devoting more attention to Latin America was applauded, as was Dr. Milton Eisenhower’s visit and report.¹² AP and INS provided most of the foreign coverage for local press and radio, but many articles attributed to El Caribe special correspondents also appeared. News coverage was full but editorial comment infrequent, even on policy declarations of greatest importance.

This picture of favorable coverage was sadly blotched by the attack on Assistant Secretary Cabot, the campaign against former Assistant Secretary of State Spruille Braden and Ambassador Ellis Briggs, the occasional vilification of other American officials, and the outrageous assault on the American companies.

2. United States’ Assistance to the Dominican Republic

a. In the International Field.

The United States continued to carry a preponderant share of the political, financial and military burdens of defending the free world against communism. Trujillo occasionally acknowledged this, but his media of propaganda gave so much space to apotheosizing him as the original anti-communist that our efforts seldom received adequate recognition. While the Jefe controls all local media we cannot hope to present our case more fully, but we should not ourselves lose sight of the overwhelming magnitude of our contribution merely because Trujillo screams his anti-communism from the housetops, successfully represses the opposition to his own regime, and casts inexpensive votes in the United Nations in favor of measures and candidates supported by other anti-communists. We should never hesitate to present these facts in our diplomatic conversations as forcefully as the disparity between Trujillo’s actions and the exuberance of his declaration warrants. Indeed it is insolent of Trujillo to claim any assistance or gratitude when the modesty of his contribution is assessed in the light of our tremendous sacrifices and impressive achievements. The cumulative benefits reaped by the Dominicans from our efforts to contain international communism clearly outweigh their limited contribution and should put them in a posture of offering rather than expecting favors.

b. Bilateral Programs.

We continued, during 1953, to give the Dominicans valuable assistance through IIAA and IAGS, and we committed ourselves to additional aid under the Military Assistance Agreement.

Our expenditures for technical assistance totalled about $300,000. We built up our agricultural program by sending an additional technician; activated a nurses’ training program; sent technicians to survey prospects for electric development, deep well drilling, fishing, and nurses’ training; granted ten exchange of persons scholarships; and agreed to the expenditure of Servicio funds for the construction of an additional dormitory at the jointly-supported industrial art school. The only Dominican requests for assistance which were not approved by the Embassy were for a social worker and a health servicio. The request for a health servicio is still under consideration pending the receipt of additional information from the Dominicans.

IAGS, with a staff of six American employees, continued its useful cartographic work. Some of its first results were turned over to the Dominicans in 1953.

Late in March we sent a survey team to estimate support requirements for the Dominican units pledged under the Military Assistance Agreement. These may run to a million dollars in the first year. However, no MAAG personnel arrived until December, and no deliveries of matériel were effected in 1953.

c. General Cooperation.

During Trujillo’s visit to the United States, from December 1952 to March 1953, every effort was made to make him feel that he was a welcome guest, although his official status did not entitle him to the treatment of a Head of State or even a Foreign Minister. We supported Dr. Jesus Maria Troncoso for a Vice Presidency at the London Sugar Conference;¹³ and we expressed our appreciation to the Dominican Government in October for its cooperation in the Third Part of the VII UNGA Session.

In June and July we aided representatives of the Dominican national arms factory, who had attempted to export certain armaments from Germany illegally. We later helped the Dominicans to obtain export permits for German machinery for their arms factory, despite strong French opposition. We were generous in awarding military scholarships to Dominicans throughout 1953, and we offered to sell them jet aircraft as soon as they became available. We were not prompt in replying to a request for information for quotations on the prices of trainer aircraft, and we were very slow in delivering F–47 fighter planes which the Dominicans paid for in 1952. However, we sent seven technicians in January to help the Dominicans learn to service these aircraft, and the team remained until the end of February at the request of the Chief of Staff of the Dominican Air Force.

We returned friendly but temporizing replies to Dominican requests for support for their candidacies for an ECOSOC seat and to serve as host to the XI Inter-American Conference.

conclusions

Our relations with Trujillo in 1953 illustrate with sad clarity the appalling difficulties of dealing with a brillant but egocentric dictator. His unpredictability, vengefullness, pride, greed for praise and worldly goods, complete identification of his opponents with the communists, wily maneuverings, propensity for intrigue, and lack of a sense of proportion created an unrelieved atmosphere of uncertainty, while periods of limited optimism alternated with weeks of pessimism and conflict.

Trujillo gave us a weird mixture of abuse and praise. He cooperated well on anti-communist measures in the United Nations and in bilateral military programs, but he avoided sending troops to Korea. His violent attacks and encroachments on American capital contrasted fantastically with his efforts to attract new investments. The collaboration cost Trujillo virtually nothing in terms of men or money. Indeed, it could scarcely have been withheld by any anti-communist, genuine or feigned. His abuse of our present and former public officials and his attacks on American capital weakened our prestige here and elsewhere far more than his cooperation bolstered it. Even his support was not an unmixed blessing at times because of his unsavory reputation among the more democratic states.

It is our considered opinion that only an overriding need for Trujillo’s military cooperation can justify a continuance of our relations with him on any level other than that of polite but ineffusive diplomatic intercourse. Our cooperation can no longer be justified on the ground that the regime is beneficial to the continued political and social evolution of the Republic because its activities, since Trujillo went into the sugar business about four years ago, have been, on balance, damaging to the economic stability of the country and to the further expansion of property holding classes. Indeed the incipient Dominican bourgeoisie is now being squeezed brutally between the heavy millstones of Trujillo’s rapacity and the urgent needs of the working classes. It has been argued that our technical cooperation program is designed to help the Dominican people, and that they should not be deprived of it because of the errors of their leader. But it is unfortunately true that Dominican propaganda media hail all bilateral and international assistance programs as fruits of Trujillo’s diplomacy. Since they contribute appreciably to his prestige, it is naive to argue that we can avoid an undesirable linkage to his regime because they are designed to benefit his people. We will lay ourselves open to far more serious recriminations to the extent that our military cooperation strengthens Trujillo’s armed forces. These are maintained and utilized solely to prevent any subversion of his regime, as he himself made abundantly clear when he evaded the troops for Korea issue.

The Guided Missiles and IAGS programs which clearly are of primary interest to us rather than the Dominicans, are the only programs which do not produce an unsatisfactory identification of the United states with Trujillismo. The Guided Missiles Agreement probably is the only one the loss of which would be embarrassing to us.

Since this is the case, the long and unhappy record of our relations with Trujillo, the accumulation of evidence that his megalomania is becoming increasingly dangerous, his encroachments on the middle class and private enterprise, his apparent abandonment of sound economic policies with a resultant deterioration in the economic situation of the Republic, and the current assault on American investment, all suggest that a thorough reconsideration and reevaluation of our policy toward Trujillo is essential and perhaps overdue.

Should we decide to let our non-essential programs taper off gradually, there is no reason to assume that we could not, with the application of proper pressures, retain the concessions we require under the Guided Missiles and the IAGS Agreements. Continued if grudging collaboration with us on most anti-communist issues could scarcely be withheld because Trujillo is irrevocably and psychopathically wedded to an anti-communist policy. But we probably should assume his collaboration in future rather than ask for it. We should certainly emphasize the importance of our contribution more vigorously and persistently.

If we are to protect our influence in favor of representative government among other nations of the free world, regain the respect of the Dominican people, and protect American investors here and elsewhere, we must soon make it clear that Trujillo’s recent conduct and present policies are quite unacceptable, and that we are not trying to saddle the Dominican people with his regime indefinitely.

The leftist reactions which followed the death of Gomez ¹⁴ in Venezuela and the collapse of the Ubico ¹⁵ regime in Guatemala emphasize the possibility that a similarly violent swing may occur in the Dominican Republic. If we can subtly persuade the Dominicans that we are using but not supporting Trujillo, our chances of reaching a satisfactory accommodation with any successor regime will improve considerably. What we must avoid at all costs is the identification of the United States with Trujillismo to an extent which would make it impossible for even a conservative successor to cooperate fruitfully with us.

[Here follows discussion of the Dominican Republic’s relations with other nations, and its participation in international organizations.]

For the Ambassador:

Richard A. Johnson

First Secretary of Embassy

1. Not printed; it reported on Trujillo’s personality and policies (739.11/1–2753).
2. When Assistant Secretary Cabot served as Third Secretary in the Legation at Santo Domingo.
3. Assistant Secretary Cabot visited a number of Latin American countries during the period Apr. 6–May 3, 1953; documents pertaining to his trip are in file 110.15 CA.
4. Felix Bernardino.
5. Andres Requeña.
6. Reference is to a series of charges in Dominican newspapers that during his visit to Latin America, Apr. 6–May 3, 1953, Mr. Cabot spent much of his time discussing matters with Communist enemies of some of the governments he visited; documentation concerning this incident is in Cabot files, lot 56 D 13.
7. The referenced draft treaty is not printed; documents pertaining to negotiations between the United States and the Dominican Republic with respect to the draft treaty are in file 611.3942.
8. Anselmo A. Paulino Alvarez, Dominican Secretary of State Without Portfolio.
9. Reference is to the proposed plan of the Dominican Government to erect bronze tablets in Ciudad Trujillo and Luperón commemorating Generalissimo Trujillo’s retirement of the Dominican internal debt. The tablets were to bear legends attributing the debt to defense requirements arising from conspiratorial activities of the Dominican Republic’s enemies in neighboring countries, and the names of certain individuals, including former U.S. Ambassadors Spruille Braden and Ellis O. Briggs, as having been chiefly responsible for these activities. Documents pertaining to the efforts of the United States to have the derogatory references to Messrs. Braden and Briggs removed from the proposed tablets are in file 739.00 for 1952 and 1953.
10. Robert A. Taft (R.–Ohio).
11. Fred M. Vinson.
12. Between June 23 and July 29, 1953, Dr. Eisenhower visited the countries of South America, as the Personal Representative of President Eisenhower, to conduct a factfinding mission; see the editorial note, p. 196.
13. The conference was held from July 13 to Aug. 24, 1953; pertinent documents are in file 398.235.
14. Juan Vicente Gómez, President of Venezuela, 1908–1935.
15. Jorge Ubico Castañeda, President of Guatemala, 1931–1944.