811.4061 March of Time/23
The Dominican Minister (Pastoriza) to the Secretary of State
Mr. Secretary of State: In your reply to my note on the exhibition of the film “March of Time” and on the systematic attacks which are being made by some journalists of this country against President Trujillo and the Dominican people, you reproduce the final paragraph thereof, but, surely through an involuntary error in translation, the part with which I close the said paragraph is omitted. I venture, therefore, to transcribe to you in full the paragraph in question translated into English, for the purpose of giving you the exact idea which I meant to convey by using the phrase “y en communidad de intereses mezquinos”. The complete paragraph reads as follows:
“It is the wish of this Legation that the Department of State, basing itself so much on your cordial formulas and spirit of conciliation, may find a way to keep the attacks from being repeated which are being made systematically and in a community of petty interests against President Trujillo and the Dominican people by certain American journalists and Dominican revolutionists who constantly and openly violate the remarkable hospitality which this country offers to them.”
I wish to avail myself of this opportunity, Mr. Secretary of State, to declare to you that I am one of those who admire with true enthusiasm the traditional respect existing in this country for the freedom of the press and that I could never make any suggestion which would tend to solicit a limitation of the enjoyment of that freedom. I believe, however, that a campaign with revolutionary aspects such as is being carried on in this country by certain Dominicans in complicity with American journalists and film enterprises tends to pervert the high purpose of that freedom and to mock the noble essence of the principle on which it is based, as the said campaign results in prejudice to the moral interests of a friendly nation and may finally weaken, through the alarms produced by its misrepresentations, the benefit of the commercial relations between the two countries.
When certain American newspapers persistently depict the Dominican political situation as threatened by a sudden collapse and the health of President Trujillo as seriously impaired; when in the film “March of Time” perverse scenes are invented which give a completely false impression of the political and social conditions existing in my country and words are put into the mouth of the revolutionist Angel Morales containing a veiled threat of coming hostile action against the legally constituted Dominican Government, impressionable American business firms might feel it their duty to restrict and even to stop, as a precautionary measure, their business with the Dominican Republic.
Such restriction, at the same time that it would mean an evident loss to American and Dominican merchants, would lower the economic capacity of my country and would contribute to render more difficult the fulfillment of its international financial obligation, an obligation which, by force of unheard-of sacrifices and thanks to the spirit of economy imposed by President Trujillo, has been met up to the present in such a brilliant way as to have won the public congratulations of your Department of State to the Dominican Government.
The reasons stated above show clearly, Mr. Secretary of State, that the systematic campaign of lies which is being carried on against President Trujillo and the Dominican Republic does not affect solely the ruler of a friendly state and a nation which is constantly giving significant proofs of cordiality toward the United States, but also extends as to commercial interests of both countries.
It was for these reasons that I stated my profound displeasure in my note on the exhibition of the film “March of Time”, and it is in the light of those reasons that I feel it my duty and I feel disposed, as representative of the Dominican Republic and of President Trujillo’s [Page 483] Government, again to declare this gross campaign unjust and harmful and to repeat to you respectfully the wish that the Department of State may find a way to prevent the continuation of attacks and insults of an evidently revolutionary character against the Dominican Government and people.
I avail myself [etc.]