POINT OF EXPLOSION
A threatened blood bath appears to have again brought Santo Domingo close to civil war. The new crisis began October 18 when troops at the San Isidro base, armed with tanks and artillery, suddenly invaded sectors of the city still held by armed civilians.
The move was apparently inspired from outside the island. Léo Sauvage wrote from New York October 22 to the Paris daily Le Figaro: "Prom Miami, backed by everything that is reactionary in the Pentagon and still more, naturally, by the inevitable and uncontrollable CIA, General Wessin y Wessin continues to openly instigate the Dominican reactionaries in the name of the same principle [the fight against Communism] ."
A further precipitating factor in the new rise in tension was the reactionary move of the regime headed by Hector Garcfa Godoy to disarm the civilians. This was to begin October 21. Functionaries of the government's justice department, accompanied by armed patrols, were entrusted with this operation -- one of the basic goals of th U.S. occupation of the island.
Colonel Caamano was reported to have given his approval to this; but it remained to be seen if even his popularity could overcome the very healthy suspicion of the armed civilians. The arms happen to be their main protection, Without them they can be slaughtered like helpless sheep.
The reluctance of the civilians to give up the arms which they seized in the first days of their insurrection last May was reinforced by the surprise move of the San Isidro troops. The impatience of Gen. Wessin y Wessin may have upset the delicate disarming operation undertaken by Garcefa Godoy.