Latinnews Archive
Latin American Weekly Report - 17 March 1972
Dominican Republic: Trujillo's legacy
The most prestigious French weekly, "L'Express", has been drawn into the sinister web of intrigue and murder among left-wing Dominican exiles in Europe. The only beneficiary is likely to be President Balaguer.
The unsolved murders in Europe of the Dominican Communists Maximiliano Gomez and Miriam Pinedo de Morales took another turn this week with the threat by Hector Aristy, leader of the pro-Chinese Movimiento 24 de Abril, to sue the French weekly magazine L'Express. Last month L'Express accused Aristy of having planned Gomez's murder, and of working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Since 7 January, when parts of a woman's body found in suitcases in Brussels last December were identified as the remains of Miriam Pinedo, the mystery surrounding her death has deepened. The second Dominican to die in Brussels in the last six months, Miriam Pinedo was the widow of the secretary general of the pro-Castro Movimiento Popular Dominicano, Otto Morales, who was killed in July 1970 by the Dominican police in Santo Domingo. The first Dominican to die in Brussels was Maximiliano Gomez, successor to Morales as secretary general of MPD, whose death by gassing in his bedroom had been accepted by the Belgian police as accidental. The circumstances of Miriam Pinedo's murder have reopened the Gomez case, and have led to an intense verbal battle between the various sectors of the exiled Dominican Left in Europe, with violent allegations flying to and fro. Gomez, nicknamed 'El Moreno', was exiled to Mexico in March 1970, when he was exchanged with 18 other political prisoners for Colonel Donald Crowley, the kidnapped United States air attache, and later moved to Europe.
There are as many theories to account for these murders as exponents of them. One, propounded by the Brussels newspaper Special, was that they were due to bitter rivalry between the pro-Castro (and pro-Soviet) MPD, and the pro-Chinese Movimiento 24 de Abril. L'Express, however, alleged that the business was much more complex, and that Gomez's death at any rate was due to personal rivalries and intrigue inside the MPD. It even claimed to have a tape recording of Miriam Pinedo confessing to a 'revolutionary tribunal' that she had murdered Gomez in revenge, because she had been persuaded that Gomez had coveted her husband's job and was responsible for having him put to death. According to L'Express, she also named Aristy as the CIA master mind behind the murder plan.
Aristy himself does not hide his friendship with both 'El Moreno' and Miriam Pinedo, but flatly denies any complicity in their murders, or working for the CIA. Interviewed by LATIN AMERICA in Paris, he blamed (United States) 'imperialism'. He was, however, scathing about exiled MPD leaders, particularly Maximo Lopez Molina, whom he accused of 'theatricals' for mysteriously disappearing from his Paris hotel last week, and then telephoning to say he had gone into hiding because he was in fear of his life.
Perhaps the most convincing theory is held by Jose Francisco Pena Gomez, secretary general of Juan Bosch's Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), who also lives in Europe; he believes that 'El Moreno' at least was murdered by agents of the Dominican secret police. Doubtless the real truth will be never be known, but two conclusions emerge from this sordid and tortuous affair. First, 11 years after Trujillo's assassination murder and intrigue are still an essential feature of Dominican politics; and secondly, that with a Left so easily divided among itself, President Joaquin Balaguer in Santo Domingo has little to worry about from that quarter. It also remains to be seen whether the French and Belgian authorities will in future be so keen to give hospitality to left-wing Dominican exiles.
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