The Hemisphere: Democracy for Dominicans

For 48 hours last week, the Dominican Republic's fragile new democracy disappeared beneath a military dictatorship that promised to be a throwback to the days of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. In a bold coup, Armed Forces Secretary Pedro Ramon Rodriguez Echavarria, a 37-year-old Trujillo leftover, dismissed the civilian Council of State and proclaimed his own tame junta. In Miami, two exiled Trujillos, brothers of the assassinated dictator, started cashing their cached U.S. dollars into pesos for the trip home. But having once tasted freedom after 31 years of tyranny, the 3,000,000 Dominicans were not...