Flourish & Exit

After playing a splashy role at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (TIME, March 9), Dominican Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo went on last week to new triumphs which were certain to get big play in the press back home. Appearing at the White House with two armed bodyguards, he was ushered in to see President Eisenhower for ten minutes. Then he bustled over to the State Department and signed the now standard Mutual Military Assistance Agreement* with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in a ceremony which lasted 3 1/2 minutes. ("Well, that's all there is to it," Dulles was heard to mutter as he put down his pen and stood up.)

That night Trujillo was host at a lavish reception in the Mayflower Hotel's Chinese Room and an adjoining ballroom. The decorations included 1,000 red roses; the buffet table was 50 feet long; the service was of gold; champagne bubbled from lighted fountains. "Washington hasn't seen anything like last night for a long time," gushed a Washington Post society chronicler.

But Trujillo had discovered at U.N. that there was no ardent welcome for an envoy who also happened to be the unsavory dean of Western Hemisphere dictators; he needed an excuse for a graceful exit from stage center. Fellow Dictator Joseph Stalin died just in time to provide it. "The developments of the past few days within the Soviet Union," Trujillo announced importantly, forced him to quit the U.N. and head for home to serve as Foreign Minister (for his dummy-President, brother Hector). He left the impression that in the days of confusion and tumult sure to follow Stalin's death, the world could at least feel certain that there would be a firm hand in the Foreign Office of the Dominican Republic (pop. 2,170,000).

*Other signers: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay. The agreements provide for U.S. arms aid as authorized under the Mutual Security Agency's $51.6 million program for Latin America.

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