DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Dictator Snubbed

In all his 17 years of power, Dominican Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina has never had to worry about winning elections. He has always rigged them so carefully that he was sure to win (TIME, May 12, May 26). But his methods have lost him friends in the hemisphere. The left-wing regime of Venezuela’s President Rómulo Betancourt has never recognized him; Cuban officials have denounced him.

Last week, another American neighbor turned on him. Guatemala refused to accept the ambassador proposed by Trujillo, formally broke relations with the Dominican Republic. Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo, who never forgets that his country got rid of its own dictator, General Jorge Ubico, in 1944, pointed a democratic finger of scorn. Trujillo, he said, had corrupted “republican practices into monarchical practices.” With rigged elections like last May’s, he added, Dictator Trujillo could rule “for the next four centuries.”