The Uncertain Solution

The OAS leaflets literally papered Santo Domingo. "We address ourselves to the Dominican people in order to seek their support," read the message from the OAS Peace Committee. "To day we offered to both contending sides our proposal for a final settlement. It is, we believe, a fair and reasonable proposal. Neither side will win or lose." The question in the Dominican Republic last week was whether the rebel side, led by Colonel Francisco Caama-fio Deno in downtown Santo Domingo, even wanted to play the game. After weeks of tortured negotiations, the OAS team finally thought it had a solution acceptable both to Caamano and to Brigadier General Antonio Imbert Barrera, leader of the loyalist junta that controls 95% of the country. It consisted of a 55-article "Institutional Act," or temporary constitution, and a ten-point "Act of Dominican Reconciliation"--in effect, the formal truce that would hopefully end the country's three-month-old stalemate. The Act of Reconciliation called for a provisional government headed by Liberal Hector Garcia Godoy (TIME, July 16), use of the OAS peace-keeping troops as a police force if the President so chooses, military reinstatement for all rebel troops who were in uniform before the revolution, collection of all civilian arms by the provisional government, and general amnesty for both sides. Wrenches & Jeers. Privately, Imbert bridled at several points, primarily the blanket amnesty that was accorded the rebels. But he grimly accepted the OAS solution and, at a meeting in his office with the three-man OAS peace committee and Garcia Godoy, offered his own chair to the provisional President-to-be. The monkey wrenches were coming from Caamano and his rebels, who acted as if they had not even been consulted about many of the points and used the whole thing to whip up sentiment against the OAS's "foreign invasion." When the OAS team, headed by the U.S.'s patient Ellsworth Bunker, arrived in the rebel zone after presenting its proposal, it was met by a jeering, gun-waving mob of 400 that hooted anti-OAS and anti-Yanqui slogans. The meeting in Caamano's headquarters lasted two hours, and the threatening mob was still on hand when the OAS men climbed into their car and departed. At a press conference, Caamano said that while the constitution was satisfactory, the Act of Reconciliation, or the truce agreement, was not. He demanded that his own officers, and not the provisional government, collect the rebel arms. Caamano also insisted that the OAS peace-keeping troops leave the country just as soon as the provisional government takes power, and that all his own troops be incorporated into the Dominican military, regardless of whether or not they were in uniform before the revolution. As for the soldiers on Imbert's side, many of them were guilty of "genocide," and would have to be ousted before the rebels would ever consider coming to terms. Persuasion or Pressure. Sooner or later, the OAS probably will get both sides to agree to a settlement--either by persuasion or pressure. Last week the OAS cut off the funds with which civil servants in the rebel and loyalist sectors have been paid. The OAS noted that it had "made substantial contributions to avoid the total collapse of the Dominican economy. This emergency program is at an end since funds for such activities have been exhausted." The U.S. has also been supplying vast amounts of food to Caamano's rebel zone--and could cut off those supplies if the rebels persist in refusing to yield their stronghold. Yet how long any settlement or provisional government will last is a moot point. After 31 years of savage Trujillo dictatorship and subsequent vacuum, the hatreds of the Dominican Republic run deep, and there are thousands of people on both sides who are just aching to have at each other. Added to that is the Castroite 14th-of-June group, which controls almost 2,000 of the 7,000 armed rebels and is busily schooling hundreds of eager, new recruits in the fine art of street fighting, explosives and guerrilla warfare. The school, explained one instructor, is for training "guerrillas who will keep the struggle going in the city even after a political settlement, if necessary."

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