Schorri’s criticism of my article can be answered briefly. Apart from his personal diatribes (which tell us more about his politics than the subject matter), his main point centres around a defence of the leadership of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (prd). In the course of his discussion he omits facts and events which discredit his arguments, while misconstruing what information he cites from my article. In addition he commits a number of errors of fact which even a casual observer of Dominican politics is not likely to make. The June 14th Movement is not a ‘Trotskyite’ group. If Schorri does not accept my description of it as a national-popular Fidelista group he can refer to fellow ‘democratic socialist’ Theodore Draper, ‘The Dominican Crisis: A Case Study in American Policy,’ Commentary (December, 1965).

Secondly, the June 14th, the mpd and the several communist groups have not had ‘almost complete freedom of action’. There have been wholesale arrests of their militants, numerous assassinations and they have been forced to function in a clandestine manner. When I was in the Dominican Republic, for example, all my interviews were held in private houses as the leaders feared to show up at the party headquarters. It is not clear what Schorri means when he criticizes Balaguer for allowing the Left freedom of action. Is he implying that the Left be eliminated by Balaguer so as not to ‘confuse’ their activity with the prd? One could mention several other inaccuracies, but I shall pass on to the main issue: the nature of the prd and its leadership under Bosch. On page 65 I discussed the contradictory nature of this party: its poly-class electoral base, ‘largely composed of the urban poor, the industrial workers, public employees’ and the ‘professional groups, shopkeepers, small and a few larger manufacturers’. I mention the prd’s mildly anti-imperialist ideology and it links to the pro-imperialist groups of Figueres, Munoz Marin and Leoni in Latin America. I might have also added Juan Bosch’s enthusiasm expressed in his interview with this author for Bobby Kennedy (who was notable by his silence during the us invasion of the dr). I mentioned that the class conflicts in Dominican society re-emerge in the conflict between the militant prd masses and the Party leadership. Then I proceed to enumerate several historical and empirically verifiable incidents and policy measures to indicate this:

1. Bosch’s conservative and cautious policy toward the sugar workers and agrarian reform in 1963.

2. The support by prd congressmen (whom I named) of anti-labour legislation under Balaguer.

3. The collaboration of pro-Boschists in the Balaguer Cabinet.

4. Bosch’s request to the State Department for permission to land in the dr during the us invasion.

5. The decision of the Bosch leadership to demobilize the populace during Balaguer’s first month of office under the slogan of ‘a constructive opposition’.