A Trujillo Sponsored Assassination

[James Richards]

Gerry Hemming knew Johnny Abbes Garcia, so his contention that Ramfis Trujillo and Johnny Abbes Garcia helped fund the assassination may be based on some personal knowledge.

"HEMMING first met "Colonel Alberto Bayo" (Eduardo Perez Gonzalez) in early 1960. He and Howard Kenneth Davis introduced Bayo to Johnny Abbes who had lost his lucrative job upon Trujillo's death, and was plotting with a group of Haitian exiles to put together one of their periodic attempts to overthrow Duvalier. Realizing that the Haitians involved were short on military training, not to mention combat experience, Abbes was looking for some kind of commando group to bolster the eager but amateur Haitians. Bayo met with Abbes several times and Abbes was impressed. HEMMING related: 'In fact the two of them signed a formal agreement in Abbes living room that stated in return for helping overthrow Duvalier, the new Haitian regime would grant the Cubans bases from which they could operate against Castro.'"(From ajweberman Nodule 10.)

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Tim,

In that piece quoted from Weberman's Nodule, do you have any idea if the reference is to Eddie Bayo or Alberto Bayo as both names are mentioned?

Eddie Bayo is of course the anti-Castro fighter who supposedly went missing on Operation Tilt and Alberto Bayo is the one who guerrilla trained Castro and Guevara.

James

[Tim Gratz]

From the context I believe it is Eddie Bayo. The passage is talking about "Operation Red Cross" which I believe was another name for Operation Tilt?

[James Richards]

From the context I believe it is Eddie Bayo.  The passage is talking about "Operation Red Cross" which I believe was another name for Operation Tilt?

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Tim,

Eddie Bayo makes sense. The reason I asked is that I have been working on a bizarre connection between Alberto Bayo and Dennis Harber. Bayo wrote a book called, '150 Questions For A Guerrilla' which was translated by Harber.

All I have come up with is some contact in Mexico City.

Harber is one of those guys who is a real mystery. The image below shows Dennis Harber, Rudolfo Fasco and Bernardo De Torres.

James

[Tim Gratz]

Regarding the assassination of Trujillo, Abbes Garcia, and Ramfis' murder of the people he thought responsible for the death of his father, I suspect you will find this quite interesting:

http://www.repertorio.org/education/pdfs/StudyGuideChivo.pdf

Edited March 16, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

The play refered to in the previous post is based on the book "The Feast of the Goat" by noted Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. Below is an excerpt from the New York Times Book Review of the book (the passage relating to Abbes Garcia):

Assisting Trujillo is a cast of zombies that the author must have given himself nightmares raising from the crypt. By alternating fatherly affection with calculated silences, the dictator fosters a chronic, low-level panic among his spiritually gelded lackeys. The scariest is Col. Johnny Abbes Garcia, the Goat's intelligence chief, who dabbles in Rosicrucian hocus-pocus and claims to be able to read his victims' auras even as he burns them with lighted cigarettes and jolts them with voltage from an electric chair. Abbes Garcia is an archdemon of great refinement, a connoisseur of terror who prides himself on killing within a budget and on schedule. His henchmen scoot about the capital city in identical black Volkswagen Beetles -- a touch of macabre, comic genius. For Vargas Llosa, Abbes Garcia is the dictator's perfect psychic instrument, an externalized id. The pair's sinister duets, shot through with the uneasy familiarity of shrunken host and swollen parasite, are some of the book's most vivid, troubling scenes.

And consider this passage from the Wikipedia entry on "The Feat of the Goat":

Vargas Llosa dedicates a large portion of the novel to narrating the eventual sad fates of Trujillo's assassins. Principal among these stories is that of the ex-Secretary of the Armed Forces José René "Pupo" Román, who had a minor role in the conspiracy to kill the dictator. Román was tortured in the most brutal and horrendous manner possible for several months before dying by Trujillo's son Ramfis. Some of the tortures described in The Feast of the Goat are so horrific as to be incredible; nevertheless, the writer insists that he had to tone down some of the procedures used in the La Cuarenta prison in order to make them more believable, which is not to say more palatable.

(By the way, Vargas Llosa ran unsuccessfully for President of Peru in 1990.)

Edited March 16, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[James Richards]

Regarding the assassination of Trujillo, Abbes Garcia, and Ramfis' murder of the people he thought responsible for the death of his father, I suspect you will find this quite interesting:

http://www.repertorio.org/education/pdfs/StudyGuideChivo.pdf

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Tim,

The translated "The Feast of the Goat" is very good. The original Spanish version however is very powerful with the depictions of torture and cruelty gut wrenching.

An individual like Johnny Abbes actually existing is almost unthinkable. In the words of Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Absolutely right.

James

[Tim Gratz]

James wrote:

The original Spanish version however is very powerful with the depictions of torture and cruelty gut wrenching.

James is correct. Be forewarned, but as an example, open up the PFD file in my post #34 on this thread and read the first paragraph under ACT II on page 7. Sickening!

Edited March 16, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Pat Speer]

Trujillo had an extremely bad reputation, apparently well-earned. In the 1941 edition of John Gunther's Inside Latin America, ostensibly a travelogue, he relates Trujillo's slaughter by machete of thousands of Haitians. In John Gerassi's 1963 book The Great Fear, the number has increased to 25,000. Gerassi also recounts the experiences of Look magazine editor Laura Bergquist, who went to Haiti to uncover Trujillo's atrocities, and uncovered the existence of "Snowball, a dwarf--now jailed--whose specialty was biting off men's genitals."

Nasty stuff for a family magazine.

Nasty stuff anywhere.

[Tim Gratz]

That Ramfis and Abbes Garcia would systematically round up and torture anyone in the Dominican Republic remotely associated with Rafael's murder certainly adds support to Hemming's report that they funded the Kennedy assassination. Why would they not want to go after the ultimate sponsor of the assassination, the United States?

Clearly Rafael was an evil man who had murdered thousands of innocent civilians, and there was probably justice in his violent death. However, I still cannot condone the CIA's sponsorship of his assassination. Even if CIA agents did not pull the trigger, the CIA encouraged the assassination and supplied the weapons.

Compare how we handled Batista, when Earl Smith essentially ordered him out of Cuba. I suspect we had the same power we could have told Trujillo he no longer could count on US support for his wicked regime.

[Pat Speer]

Compare how we handled Batista, when Earl Smith essentially ordered him out of Cuba.  I suspect we had the same power we could have told Trujillo he no longer could count on US support for his wicked regime.

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After Trujillo tried to kill Betancourt of Venezuela, the OAS ostracized the Dominican Republic and looked to the U.S. to set an example. After all, we were angling for OAS support for the overthrow of Castro, since he was purportedly exporting terrorism, and a right wing exporter should deserve no less. And so the U.S. cut the Dominican's sugar quota and basically cut off ties, which had the same effect it had on Castro--it drove Trujillo closer to the Soviets. I can't remember where but I've seen several sources that assert Trujillo, the strongest and craziest anti-Communist in the hemisphere, was playing footsie with the Soviets by early 61, thereby writing his own death warrant.

[Ron Ecker]

the U.S. cut the Dominican's sugar quota and basically cut off ties, which had the same effect it had on Castro--it drove Trujillo closer to the Soviets.

I went back and read about the Trujillo years in one of my old college textbooks, Hubert Herring's A History of Latin America (1968), and found the following (pp. 451-452):

"President Eisenhower insisted that the United States put teeth into its condemnation of Trujillo by cutting off the Dominican share in the United States sugar allotment, and by refusing to increase it out of the share formerly allotted Cuba. . . . But Eisenhower's prudent suggestion was blocked by ardent admirers of the Dominican dictator in the American Senate; typical of these was Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana, who said: 'I wish there were a Trujillo in every country of South and Central America.' He and others carried the day by not only refusing to cut the Dominican allotment, but by increasing it by 332,000 tons. This odd largess reminded critics that the United States had supported that shabby tyrant for three decades."

Ron

[Pat Speer]

the U.S. cut the Dominican's sugar quota and basically cut off ties, which had the same effect it had on Castro--it drove Trujillo closer to the Soviets.

I went back and read about the Trujillo years in one of my old college textbooks, Hubert Herring's A History of Latin America (1968), and found the following (pp. 451-452):

"President Eisenhower insisted that the United States put teeth into its condemnation of Trujillo by cutting off the Dominican share in the United States sugar allotment, and by refusing to increase it out of the share formerly allotted Cuba. . . . But Eisenhower's prudent suggestion was blocked by ardent admirers of the Dominican dictator in the American Senate; typical of these was Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana, who said: 'I wish there were a Trujillo in every country of South and Central America.' He and others carried the day by not only refusing to cut the Dominican allotment, but by increasing it by 332,000 tons. This odd largess reminded critics that the United States had supported that shabby tyrant for three decades."

Ron

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I think I figured out the source of our confusion. According to From Imperialism to Transnationalism by G. Pope Atkins, Allender and Eastland prevented Ike from cutting the Dominican quota. However, he went ahead and added a two cent fee onto each pound of imported Dominican sugar, which was within his authority, thereby raising the price of Dominican sugar over that purchased from other countries.

It goes on to say: "In 1960.. Trujillo threatened to align with the communist world in response to the U.S. and Latin American rejection of his regime...Later that year Trujillo offered detente with Fidel Castro...Ih June, the same month Trujillo attempted to kill the President of Venezuela, the Dominican Communist Party was legalized...Trujillo also attempted to establish contacts and relations with the Soviet bloc...Sympathetic gestures were made toward Premier Nikita Khruschev, and Dominican emissaries were sent to Moscow. Trujillo was ignored, however..."

So I was correct in that Ike's actions pushed the Domiinican and the Soviets closer together, although there still was a ways to go. Nevertheless, it's easy to see how the Dominican could be seen as out of control and potentially drifting towards communism.

Edited March 17, 2005 by Pat Speer

[Shanet Clark]

Pat.

That would be a fatal position to be in ...

Are you familiar with former Prime Minister Michael manley of Jamaica's book "In the Shadow of Empire"

Jamaica had the audacity and independent spirit to actually recognize and work with the neighboring island (cuba) and Henry Kissinger and the CIA caused all kinds of problems in retribution, World Bank bonds were offered and withdrawn, urban riots broke out before elections and the social left was pushed out by the old guard Commonwealth party of Seaga....

[Pat Speer]

Pat.

That would be a fatal position to be in ...

Are you familiar with former Prime Minister Michael manley of Jamaica's book "In the Shadow of Empire"

Jamaica had the audacity and independent spirit to actually recognize and work with the neighboring island (cuba) and Henry Kissinger and the CIA caused all kinds of problems in retribution, World Bank bonds were offered and withdrawn, urban riots broke out before elections and the social left was pushed out by the old guard Commonwealth party of Seaga....

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Thanks for the tip on the book. We were busy-bodies in Grenada as well, although that may have been simply Reagan wagging the dog after terrorists slaughtered a bunch of unlucky marines in Lebanon. Nevertheless, it's interesting that we didn't lift a pinky when right-wingers rose up to overthrow the left wing administration of Maurice Bishop (Does that name sound familiar?) and only intervened when the people rose up in the streets to throw the right-wingers out. We then told the world we invaded to prevent a Cuban-backed revolution!

Speaking of America's good neighbor policy, I came across a book the other day that had the most ironic ending ever. The book, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, came out in 1972 and concluded with these lines: "There is today the beginning of a social movement that could change America in a radical way...Chile has demonstrated the possibility of choosing that course in a democratic election. Perhaps we Americans, whose votes have mattered increasingly less in recent decades, can restore the integrity of our own franchise through a similar display of self-determination."

If the writer only knew what Mr. Nixon and Mr. Phillips had in store for Mr. Allende.

Edited March 17, 2005 by Pat Speer

[Shanet Clark]

I know this sounds like "bircher" conspiracy theory, but the facts are that UNITED FRUIT COMPANY, as a corporate entity, acted as a state governing entity in Central America and South America throughout the 20th Century. This structure was embodied in the international programs and committees spearheaded by Nelson Rockefeller. The harsh authoritarian and totalitarian regimes were winked, propped up and often saved by the Kissinger Haig era foreign policy, (which of course we still live under)

The central american fascism was a by product of US arrogance and corporate controls in an absence of oversight. The fact that so much of the KENNEDY assassination circles around Mexico City and the WH station points to an equatorial and even old Nazi source for the events of 11/22/63.

Maybe the best way to put it is that the norms the US accepted and promoted in the south and central american theaters came back to Texas and the Gulf Coast on November 22nd....not exactly what Johnny Roselli and Lyndon Johnson claimed but similar, that the mindset of coups and dictatorships appropriate to the DOminican Republic, Haiti, Cuba and Guatamale spread to the USA....

Edited March 18, 2005 by Shanet Clark