Dominican Republic: Turn to the Left

The last surviving example of the medal-jangling school of self-enriching Latin American dictators is executing a cynical maneuver. After 31 years, the Dominican Republic's Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, a strongman of the extreme right, is turning left. He does so not from conviction, but in an angry tyrant's reaction to the determination of his neighbors—including the U.S.—to be finished with him, and to the mounting desire of his own people to do away with him.

Signals of the turn inside Trujillo's supertight Caribbean island nation are clear. After years of posing as Latin...

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