Dominican Republic: The Coup That Became a War

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Led by tanks with 90-mm. cannon and armored troop carriers, the 2nd Battalion of the 6th U.S. Marines rolled across the red dust of a once trim polo field on the western outskirts of Santo Domingo and moved cautiously into the war-torn capital of the Dominican Republic. As the columns churned down Avenida Independencia, past the empty side streets, people suddenly appeared in windows and doorways. Some waved. Others stared. A few spoke. "I wish the Americans would take us over," muttered a woman. A man near by sighed and nodded. "Since they are here, we had better take advantage of it."

In counterpoint to those desperate words of welcome, the rattle and burp of rebel gunfire echoed from the smoking city center barely a mile up the road. Down the street went the marines, most of them green, all of them scared, grimly clutching M14 rifles, M60 machine guns and 3.5-in. bazookas. Now the firing grew in intensity, and rebel bullets whined past the U.S. troops. Near the U.S. embassy, two marines caught the full blast from a hidden machine-gun nest in an unfinished building a short distance away. Nine more were wounded before bazooka men came up to blast the nest to shreds.

At approximately the same time, a battalion of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division rolled out of San Isidro airbase, 14 miles away on the other side of the city. Linking up with loyal Dominican troops, the G.I.s drove up to the bridge spanning the Ozama River ?and into another volley of rebel fire. Three hours passed and the casualty toll mounted to 20 wounded before the U.S. forces could declare their objectives secured: the paratroopers to clear the approaches to the Duarte Bridge into Santo Domingo, the marines to carve a 3.5-sq.-mi. "international zone" out of the city as a refuge for U.S. nationals and anyone else who hoped to remain alive in a city gone berserk in the bloodiest civil war in recent Latin American history.

To the Wall! It was the first time that U.S. troops had gone ashore on business in the Caribbean since 1916, the first time since 1927, when marines landed in Nicaragua, that U.S. forces had intervened in any Latin American nation. Yet if ever a firm hand was needed to keep order, last week was the time and the Dominican Republic was the place. In seven confused days of coup, counterattack and mounting warfare, the small Caribbean island republic had experienced a bloodbath surely as violent, and certainly more prolonged than the Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles against Fidel Castro.

No one had an accurate count of the casualties as frenzied knots of soldiers and civilians roamed the streets, shooting, looting and herding people to their execution with cries of "Paredón! Paredón!" (To the wall! To the wall!) Some reports put the dead at around 2,000, with the wounded perhaps five times that. The Dominican Red Cross was burying people where they lay. In the hospitals, harried doctors were operating by flashlight and without anesthetics. Santo Domingo was a city without power, without water, without food, without any semblance of sanity. The rebels executed at least 110 opponents, hacked the head off a police officer and carried it about as a trophy.

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