"Santo Domingo is a volcano that is going to envelop all Latin America in flames!" shrilled Rafael Tavera, 26, a leader of the Dominican Republic's Castroite 14th of June Movement. In the war-weary city's rebel zone last week, there was a celebration to observe the sixth anniversary of an abortive June 14, 1959, invasion from Castro's Cuba. And before a howling, rifle-waving crowd of 10,000, Tavera spewed hatred at the U.S. "There will not be peace until the last invader is destroyed and the last Yankee property is seized," he cried. "We have blood in our eye, hair on our chest and tobacco in our bladder. There is only one road — war." Soon after came Colonel Francisco Caamaño Deñó, who triggered the vicious little civil war, named himself "constitutionalist" President, and says he is for democracy. "We will fight to the end!" roared Caamaño. "There will not be one step backward."
Less than 24 hours later, the city's fragile cease-fire erupted in the bloodiest fighting since the first days of the eight-week-old war. At 8 a.m., a U.S. 82nd Airborne noncom was inspecting weapons along the international corridor when a bullet plowed into his buttocks. From Colonel Caamaño's rebel positions in downtown Santo Domingo, a stream of rifle fire laced into the troops of the OAS Inter-American Peace Force. For half an hour it went on without a reply. Another paratrooper got it in the neck. At last, the order to shoot back came down from the IAPF commander, Brazil's General Hugo Panasco Alvim.
Tanks & Snipers. At an intersection, one of Caamaño's rebel tanks clanked up and fired into an 82nd Airborne command post, tearing off a radioman's leg. The paratroopers turned the tank into a furnace with seven rounds from a 106-mm. recoilless rifle. Near by, a careening rebel scout car ran into a barrage of M-14 fire that wounded two men riding in the rear. "I wasn't ready to start this crap again," muttered a U.S. paratrooper. He then squinted through his rifle sight and started working over a sniper-infested schoolhouse down the street.
At 11 a.m., with mounting casualties and continued rebel fire, General Alvim ordered his men into rebel territory. Behind a barrage of machine-gun and rifle fire from rooftop emplacements, platoons of paratroopers swept forward into a 40-block area, overrunning sandbagged street positions, searching houses and hauling out snipers. By late afternoon, the paratroopers were four to six blocks deep in the rebel zone, squeezing Caamaño's remaining men into an area barely one mile square. The U.S. troops now stood on the last hill before the ocean, looking down into the shattered rebel stronghold. After two days, the shooting gradually began to taper off. Four U.S. paratroopers were dead, another 39 wounded, along with five Brazilians.