Dream's End

Recurrent dream of many a homeless European and most refugee relief organizations is of pioneering colonies in the New World where refugees may live off the land, build themselves self-supporting communities. So far the only place this dream has come even close to reality is the Dominican Republic, whose boss, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, offers land and conditional citizenship to sponsored immigrants. There nine refugee settlements have been set up, eight for Spanish Republicans, one (mostly) for German Jews. But last week, looking the colonies over, reporters found the realities none too pleasant.

Of the eight Spanish colonies, started in 1939, five have already folded. Reasons: disease and barren land. On the remaining three are settled 400 of the 1,300 Spanish refugees in the Republic. On the northern Atlantic shore is the Sosua colony where about 250 refugees from the Nazis live, supported largely by charitable U. S. Jews.

At a Spanish colony, newsmen found conditions only a degree better than a concentration camp: 120 people without adequate tools, medical supplies, clothing or food trying courageously to coax a living from 20 arid acres, four milkless cows, a few pigs and chickens. A political fight has frozen the funds supposed to support the colony, which sinks deeper in debt every time it buys the meagre rations of coffee, rice and beans it lives on. Only bright spot was the morale and spirit of the colonists themselves who, ridden with anemia and malaria, work desperately hard, hold classes for natives.

At Sosua, backed by a bankroll of more than $1,000,000, things are somewhat better. The colonists have a good-sized dairy herd and some hope of raising cash crops on the excellent land. But Sosua, too, has problems. The colony has been expensive, unproductive to date, and is now in the throes of reorganization. There are 124 unmarried colonists, only twelve unmarried women, and around the settlement stand frantic signs saying "We Want Women." The non-Spanish-speaking refugees are continually getting into small squabbles with the Dominicans. The colony needs more farmers and fewer intellectuals. Above all it needs some kind of agricultural miracle to raise it above the poorhouse economy of the Caribbean.

Casting up accounts, observers decided that refugee colonies need more than dreaming. Concretely: cash, expert planning, hard-headed management.

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