"Beautiful Murder"

In the tropical twilight of Ciudad Trujillo, the din of traffic along the sea front had hushed. A convoy of seven limousines drew up at the foot of the obelisk (white and floodlit like the Washington Monument), and from the car with the five-starred gold license plates stepped a beady-eyed little man. Bodyguards with their Tommy guns at the ready followed him to his customary concrete bench against the sea wall. There, opposite the statue of himself and within sight of the monument reared in his honor, His Excellency, Generalissimo Dr. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, Honorable Chief of State, Benefactor of the Nation, President and Dictator of the Dominican Republic, held his nightly court, with his favorites clustered around.

This is election week in the Dominican Republic, but El Jefe did little of the talking. There was no need to discuss the election; it was already rigged, with all the ruthless efficiency of the most thorough dictatorship in the Hemisphere. El Jefe cast a glance at the obelisk and its inscription: "I have put the ambitions of my youth and the brilliance of my career at the service of my country." Beyond such pap, inscribed far & wide on monuments through the Republic, he had no reason to worry about high-sounding ideologies. The dictator and President of the Dominican Republic has no ideology: he is no Fascist in the European sense. He is more a compound of the Oriental despot and the more corrupt of U.S. city bosses: from seizure, framed elections and the other activities of dictatorship, he and his henchmen have profited in the millions.

In the election (as usual), Trujillo is backed by the Dominican Party, to which everybody in his Government, everybody in his monopolies, and nearly everybody who wants to do business, has to belong. Last time (May 1942), the Benefactor ran on the other party's ticket too. This time he waved his wand, and two phony opposition parties were created.

Two deputies (Trujillo holds signed resignation letters from all Dominican deputies) were put forward as their candidates. One, Rafael Espaillat, has spent the campaign digging in the garden of his little farm outside Ciudad Trujillo. The other, Francisco Plats Ramirez, recently signed a routine resolution of praise for the Benefactor. ("A typist's error," he explains.) Neither man has made a campaign speech.

Preventive Measure. In 17 years as dictator, Trujillo has broken the spirit of the 2,000,000 Dominicans (200.000 whites, 1,200,000 mulattoes, the rest Negroes). Few dare even to mention his name in public, though in whispers they call him "Beautiful Murder." Seven months ago, 60 rebel soldiers plotted to oust him. For two weeks the Government did nothing. Then the plotters were sent to outposts at Pedernales (on the Haitian border), and at the town of Loma de Cabrera. When they had taken up their new posts, the conspirators were stabbed to death, a11 at the same time, on the same day.

All Dominicans remember the butchering of 12,000 Haitians in 1937. But not all have heard of the speech Trujillo made afterwards in Santiago's town hall. "I faced the Haitian problem squarely," he boasted. "I went to the border and saw the thousands of Haitians on Dominican lands. I considered every way out, but I came to the conclusion that there was only one way--a general massacre."

Today Trujillo would like to be a gentleman of ease, and loved by all, but time has infected him with the same terror he has spread. He wears a bulletproof vest, keeps his own food taster, and dines only in his own home. He arrives at diplomatic banquets after dinner is over, bringing three bottles of his own Carlos I brandy, from which the corks must be removed before his eyes, and from which he drinks only after others have drunk first.

One Man's Meat. In 17 masterful years of the Benefactor's rule, island businesses have been organized into monopolies and the profits are reaped by Trujillo and his numerous relations.

Since 1930 the dictator has averaged $1,000 a day from his salt monopoly. The national lottery, nominally run by his brother-in-law Ramon Savinon, nets $15,000 a month. Brother Anibal makes the mahogany concession worth $400,000 a year. But the slickest parlay is in cattle. The biggest cattle raiser in the Republic, the Benefactor operates the most modern slaughterhouse, and sets his own price on all cattle sold in the country. The slaughterhouse, built with an Export-Import Bank loan, nominally belongs to the state; so do the ships that carry Trujillo's beef to their Puerto Rican markets. Dominican soldiers load the ships for Trujillo. They also milk the cows on his model 200,000-acre ranch, La Fundacion.

Navigation. In a tiny country 4 1/2 air hours southeast of Miami, even as decisive a will as the Benefactor's must reckon with the U.S., and Trujillo has done it. He has built one of the Hemisphere's finest hotels in his capital to convince U.S. visitors that he "runs the country like a U.S. corporation." Many a tourist has gone away impressed. But U.S. hemispheric policy, which has tolerated Trujillo despite its icy hostility to dictators, is in a state of flux. When it takes more certain form, Trujillo may hear unpleasant tidings.

At 56, the Benefactor is not the lion who once surrounded himself with mistresses and caused 1,870 monuments to himself to be raised in his capital alone. Last week a onetime Canadian corvette, now called the Presidente Trujillo, lay in Ciudad Trujillo harbor; it was being fitted out with extra new cabins. Dominicans whispered that, elections over, the Benefactor would sail away for France and an operation for an old ailment.

On the bench by the bay, the Benefactor, as usual, said nothing.

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