In Santo Domingo (known for 25 years as Ciudad Trujillo), a crowd of youths clutched the corners of a Dominican flag and raced through the streets, shouting "Liberty by Christmas!" They did not have that long to wait. For the crowds that gathered excitedly on waterfront George Washington Avenue to watch the U.S. missile cruiser Little Rock and a destroyer escort patrolling just beyond the three-mile limit, liberty had already arrived. The Trujillo regime came tumbling down in the Dominican Republic last week, and a chartered DC-6 bore off to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., 29 members of the Trujillo family. Would he ever return to the Dominican Republic? Generalissimo Héctor Trujillo was asked. He answered nonchalantly, sure: "After all, it's our country."
Desperate Bid. For 31 years, up to last week, Héctor was literally right. In the name of Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, the Trujillo clan ruled the island as their own and enriched themselves. After the old dictator was assassinated last May as he rode to a rendezvous with his mistress, the fiefdom fell into the uncertain hands of his son and heir, Rafael ("Ramfis") Trujillo Jr., 32, who with U.S. approval was doing his best to arrange a peaceful transition. Last week, returning from exile, Uncle Hector and his brother José Arismendi, made a last desperate bid to reéssert the bloody dictatorship. It took a triple play to defeat it—by Dominican President Joaquin Balaguer, helped by a 37-year-old Dominican air force general named Pedro Ramón Rodriguez Echaverria, and by the U.S. Navy, which coolly provided just the touch of old-fashioned "gunboat diplomacy" to enable the Dominicans themselves to end the Trujillo era.
In backing Ramfis, in the hope that he could bloodlessly "democratize" Trujillo-land, the U.S. made it a condition that Uncles Héctor and Arismendi stay away. They did for a while, then began to complain that young Ramfis was frittering away their fief, and blustered home to stop him. At that point, Ramfis gave up. After all, he had a reported $500 million stashed away in solid currencies in overseas banks. So he resigned as armed forces chief of staff and embarked with a consoling German blonde on the family yacht Angelita, bound first for the nearby island of Guadeloupe, then for the bright lights of Paris. That left a vacuum, which the uncles sought to fill. They tried to line up diehard Trujillo generals for a coup, and according to opposition reports were prepared to murder upwards of 1,000 enemies in one night.
Pilots' Defection. But the anti-Trujillo opposition was also mobilizing for trouble. Orders from Washington approved by President Kennedy sent the Little Rock, the aircraft carriers Valley Forge and Franklin D. Roosevelt and coveys of support vessels toward the Dominican coast. Aboard the Valley Forge were 1,800 marines, with helicopters to land them on Dominican soil. At the airbase near the inland Dominican city of Santiago de los Caballeros, Commanding General Rodriguez ordered the arrest of every Trujillo agent in the city whom the uncles were apt to count on for their bloodbath. His younger brother, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff Pedro Santiago Rodriguez Echaverria, persuaded 20 pilots at San Isidro, the main airbase in Ciudad Trujillo, to fly to Santiago.