Dominican Democrat I had a talk the other day with
Dr. Juan Bosch, who is to take up the presidency of the Dominican Republic in a fortnight's time. He is a quiet man, undemonstrative and scholarly—not at all like the popular notion of a Latin-American politico—and his faith in the good sense of ordinary people has survived half a lifetime of exile. His party, the Dominican Revolutionary Party, fought the recent elections (the first to be held for decades) on a calm and reasonable note. The Right, therefore, accused them of being Communists; the Communists and Castrists of being 'lackeys of US imperialism'; and they won the presidential and legislative elections with a comfortable majority—which agreeable result has confirmed Dr. Bosch in his optimism. 'The only real danger to Dominican democracy,' said Dr. Bosch, 'will come neither from Cuba nor from the ancien regime, but from any failure to meet the people's legitimate economic and social aspirations.' Thirty years of. Trujillo have left a massive legacy of underdevelopment, mass un- employment, and corruption. He told me that the old gang are estimated to have salted away some $250,000,000 in foreign banks before leav- ing the country, together with. hundreds of pack- ing-cases of valuables which the new govern- ment is trying to recover. Much of the residual anti-Yankeeism, the Castro-Communists' main stock-in-trade, can in Dr. Bosch's opinion be dis- persed by obtaining closer economic and cultural links with other Western countries.
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