When Martin went to the Dominican Republic in 1962 as American ambassador, the country had only recently emerged from thirty years of cruel and greedy dictatorship. The seven-man governing junta had little political support and could not rely on the loyalty of the armed forces, still commanded by officers trained under Trujillo. Economic conditions were bad. There was much disorder in the capital, where the Communists and the pro-Castro 14th of July movement were inciting and paying for antigovernment and anti-American riots. One of the brightest students studying English in the bi-national center told the ambassador’s daughter that he was earning money for a trip to the United States by participating in these turbas for fifty cents or a dollar a day.
Martin gives us an interesting, colorful account of his efforts to prevent the situation from getting worse during the next eighteen months. He was convinced that the country would lose its last chance for democratic government if the junta could not carry out its promise of a free election in December 1962, and he worked indefatigably with the politicians and the armed forces against efforts to overthrow the junta or to sabotage the electoral procedure. Sometimes his activities aroused resentment, but they helped to make possible the free election which put Juan Bosch in the presidency. The ambassador gave Bosch the same vigorous support that he had given the junta, despite the president’s obvious lack of ability and his ambiguous attitude toward communism. Bosch himself was not a Communist, Martin thought, but he wanted to win over the pro-Castro youth, and he seemed to have some understanding with the Communist leaders, one of whom was even permitted to run a Communist school in a government building.
Martin left after the armed forces ousted Bosch, but he was sent back to Santo Domingo at the time of the American intervention to help the new ambassador, Elsworth Bunker. He endeavored to find a political solution, first flying to Puerto Rico to discuss with Bosch the possibility of the ex-president’s returning to the Republic, and then helping Antonio Imbert to set up a provisional government. Imbert soon controlled most of the country outside of the rebel-held portion of the capital, and Martin was still trying to bring about an agreement between him and the rebels when McGeorge Bundy and three other high officials arrived from Washington with a new plan for a government headed by Bosch’s friend, Antonio Guzmán. Martin left the country soon afterward. Bundy’s efforts failed, and it was not until several months later that a settlement was reached through the patient and skillful diplomacy of Ambassador Bunker and the other members of the OAS peace mission.
The book gives an interesting picture of political and social life in the Dominican Republic and helps one to understand what happened in 1965. Martin criticizes some aspects of American policy. He thinks that the civil war might not have occurred if the American Embassy had kept in close touch with the politicians and the military, and that it might have been stopped in the first days of the revolt if Ambassador W. Tapley Bennett, Jr. had acted on the rebel leaders’ request for help in arranging peace talks. Martin suggests that the State Department might have made more convincing efforts to show that there was imminent danger of a Communist take over, and that it was a mistake to maintain a pretense of neutrality between the contending factions when in fact we could not be neutral. He points out that the apparent inconsistencies in American policy can be explained by the need to explore all possibilities, but he was clearly not happy about them. On the other hand he has “no doubt whatsoever that there was a real danger of a Communist takeover” (p. 705), and that the United States had to act when it did without waiting on the cumbersome procedures of the OAS. “What we did in Santo Domingto,” he writes, “was better than what we said” (p. 708).
