Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff, and Commies: The U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966 (review)

Cyrus Vance called the April 1965 U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic an illegal, unprecedented abuse of national might. Historical research into such recent and shameful moments in United States foreign policy must contend with the Kafka-esque process of government document declassification. As a result, many of the books produced from that research carry within them a contrapuntal tale that unfolds along with the historical events, the story of wresting pieces of the puzzle from official secrecy.

In this study of "Operation Power Pack" and its aftermath, Eric Thomas Chester offers both a readable narrative of the events of 1965-66 and a report on the "innumerable hurdles" (p. ix) still preventing access to the full truth. Although he succeeded in obtaining many new bits of information, he was turned away from a large number of key documents with "vague justifications" about national security.

This is a sadly familiar scenario, so common that historians interested in the post-World War II foreign relations of the United States usually have their own Josef K research experiences to relate. At the LBJ Library in 1986, I asked to see the minutes of an April 1965 Cabinet meeting that had recently been declassified after a Freedom of Information battle. The file contained a scratch pad with the name "Jack Valenti" written over and over again on its tiny pages, along with some circles and squares. If national security demanded that Valenti's doodles remain classified for 20 years, imagine the obstacles preventing scholars from learning what CIA agents were doing in Santo Domingo at that time!

Chester's account is tragic, in the sense of Greek theater, where everyone in the audience knows in advance what the sorry outcome will be. The fate of the rebel insurgents who fought for the Dominican Constitution was a tragedy, because they were doomed to failure from the start against the military heirs of the repressive Trujillo regime. After the underdog masses in the capital won the initial battle over the military regime, thousands of U.S. troops arrived from the sea and the sky, then pushed them into an untenable enclave in the inner city.

The slow trickle of facts about the ugly deeds committed in the Dominican Republic in 1965-66 is another tragedy, because there are so few surprises to be found among them as they finally come to light. These freshly won facts simply add details to the overall portrait of "United States control and manipulation of Latin America" (p. 218), a picture that specialists in the field are already used to seeing. Newcomers to the subject of Yankee imperialism, however, will find a good example of it in this approachable case study.

The author's pursuit of the details is admirable. Unfortunately, his efforts did not extend to Dominican sources, which present their own challenges to investigators. In fact, there are no primary or secondary works in Spanish cited in the volume.

The one glaring flaw in this otherwise sensitive rendition of U.S.-Dominican relations is its badly chosen title, taken from the words of anti-Communist hardliner Thomas Mann, a State Department honcho and Johnson's closest advisor during the crisis of 1965. Despite the favorable view of Juan Bosch and the Constitutionalists presented by Chester, who is a former vice presidential candidate for the Socialist Party and a member of the Wobblies, his title recycles the lies told about the insurgents and their followers. This calumny (which belongs within quotation marks, at least) justified the invasion then, and perpetuates negative stereotypes of the revolutionaries now.