Roaming Through the West Indies

by Harry Alverson Franck

As in other lands under temporary or permanent American rule, from Haiti to the Philippines, a native constabulary was organized. The Guardia Nacional of Santo Domingo, consisting at present of a company of some eighty men in each of the fourteen provinces, has the same organization as the Marine Corps. Its members enlist for three years, and privates get $15 a month. Their uniform lacks only the hat ornament and somewhat more durable dye-stuffs to be an exact copy of that of our “leather-necks.” The only difference in equipment is the “Krag Jorgensen” instead of the “Springfield.” The officers are marines, usually sergeants, except in the higher commands and a very few natives who have climbed to “shave-tail” rank. All commands are given in English. A “non-com.” can put his men through the whole drill in that language, yet if you ask him his name, the answer is almost certain to be “No hablo Inglés.” Unlike the Gendarmérie of Haiti the Guardia is confined in its duties to matters of national defense; municipal police still keep order in the cities. We got the impression during our short stay that the Guardia officers were not quite the equal of those of the Gendarmérie. For one thing the pay is less attractive, though that of the men is fifty per cent. higher. Recently, too, all marine sergeants holding commissioned rank in the Guardia have unwisely been reduced to privates during their absence from their permanent organizations, with the unfortunate result that the few native lieutenants get more pay than their American captains, unless the latter are also commissioned officers of the Marine Corps. The native rank and file of the Guardia have a cocky, half-insolent air quite foreign to their simpler fellows of Haiti; they look as if they would be better fighters, more clever crooks, and not so easily disciplined.

The cacos of Santo Domingo are called gavilleros, caco in that country meaning merely thief or burglar. They are usually armed with “pata-mulas” (mule hoofs), which are rifles that have been cut down into revolvers, partly because they are too lazy to carry the whole gun, partly because the abbreviation is easier to conceal. In the olden days any one with a few hundred dollars could raise an “army,” especially by making copious promises of government jobs to everyone if—or rather, when—his side won. Not until the Americans came were these anti-governmental groups called bandits; they were dignified with the title of revolutionaries. Santo Domingo had long run more or less wild; many of its men preferred taking to the hills at fifty cents a day with rations and the possibility of loot to doing honest work at a dollar a day. As with all Spanish-sired races, the Dominicans have the gambling instinct well developed. They love the lotteries of life; they would rather take a chance on winning some big prize as bandits or revolutionists to toiling in safety at peaceful occupations. Then, too, many were forced to join these outlaw bands, lest their houses be burned or their families injured. The gavillero situation had been bad before the Americans landed. It became worse under the occupation, for reasons that we shall see.

To begin with, Arias released nearly all the criminals in the country during his revolt against the Jimenez government. These quickly turned bandits; later on they pretended to be patriots fighting the American occupation. As a matter of fact the majority of them were fighting for food, rather than for either political or patriotic reasons, but bombast is one of the chief qualities of the Latin-American. The forces of occupation might in some ways have handled this bandit situation better than they did; largely because of ignorance of local customs, partly because of inefficiency and a certain amount of brutality, they made something of a mess of it, or at least let it become more serious than it need have done.

Two regiments of marines are engaged in the occupation of teaching the Dominicans how to live without lawlessness—a scant 5000 of them among a population of 750,000. Unfortunately there are flaws in all organizations. There are marine commanders in Santo Domingo so just and broad-minded that they are almost loved by the naturally hostile population; there were others who have little real conception of their duties. The rascally, brutal, worthless, “Diamond Dick” class of American sometimes gets into the Marine Corps as into everything else and tends to destroy the good name of the majority. Boys brought up on dime novels and the movies saw at last a chance to imitate their favorite heroes and kill people with impunity: some of them, too, were Southerners, to whom the Dominicans after all were only “niggers.” The great majority of the forces of occupation were well meaning young fellows who often lacked experience in distinguishing outlaws from honest citizens, with the result that painful injustices were sometimes committed.

These ignorant, or movie-trained, young fellows were sent out into the hills to hunt bandits. They came upon a hut, found it unoccupied, and touched a match to the nipe thatch. They probably thought such a hovel was of no importance anyway, even if it were not a bandit haunt, whereas it contained all the earthly possessions of a harmless family. In their ignorance of local customs they could not know that the entire household was out working in their jungle yuca-garden. Or they found only the women and children at home, and burned the house because these could not explain where their man was. Or again, they met a man on the trail and asked him his business, and because he could not understand their atrocious imitation of Spanish, or they his reply, they shot him to be on the safe side. In still other places they burned the houses of innocent accomplices, because bandits had commandeered food and lodging there. If one can believe half the stories that are current in all circles throughout Santo Domingo, the Germans in Belgium had nothing on some of our own “leather-necks.”

A parish priest of Seibo, who seemed, if anything, friendly to the occupation, told me of several cases of incredible brutality of which he had personal knowledge. He could not divulge the secrets of the confessional, but he could assure me that many of the victims had been innocent even of hostile thoughts. The Guardia, he asserted, included some of the worst rascals, thieves, and assassins in the country, men far worse than the gavilleros, and these often egged the naïve Americans on to vent their own private hates. Scarcely a month before a sad personal experience had befallen him. On Christmas Day he had gone with acolytes to another town to attend a fiesta, when a drunken marine had fired his rifle twice into the wattled hut where it was being held and killed a boy of ten who was at that moment swinging the censer.

I cannot vouch for all the padre’s statements, but rumors of this kind were strikingly prevalent among natives and Americans all over Santo Domingo. On the other hand we must remember that the bandit-hunters often have no certain means of telling a gavillero from a “good citizen,” and they cannot always afford to give a man the benefit of the doubt. One is as apt as the other to look like an honest, simple, harmless fellow, and there have been sad mistakes on the side of leniency also, which have naturally led to over-caution. The Dominican is quite versatile enough to be a bandit one day and to be found scratching the ground of his jungle garden with his machete the next. Captured gavilleros have boasted that they hid their guns in a cane-field when a hostile force appeared, came out and helped the marines unsaddle, drank a round with them in the neighboring licorería, and recovered their weapons as soon as the hunters had taken to the trail again. The Guardia, too, has not always been free from spies. The difficulties of the situation, and the necessity of a wide knowledge of local customs and conditions on the part of those sent to handle it, is exemplified by the miscarriage of a plan to clear a certain district of Seibo of outlaws. The government of occupation ordered all “good inhabitants” to come into the towns on a certain day, so that the bad ones might be more easily corralled. But the gavilleros have a better news service than those who have no particular reason to keep their ears to the ground. The former learned of the order, concealed their weapons, and hastened into the villages, with the result that those who were shot were chiefly honest, simple peasants.

There have been several battles of importance between the marines and the gavilleros since the occupation. The latter are more worthy adversaries than the Haitian cacos, though the defeat of a band of four hundred by a score of Americans is not considered an extraordinary feat. Thanks either to his Spanish antecedents or to his revolutionary history, the Dominican has a ferocity and a desprecio of human life that makes it unwise to be compassionate. More than thirty marines have been killed in Santo Domingo, as against only four in Haiti. One band has announced a determination to completely exterminate the white foreigners, and makes a practice of horribly mutilating the dead and wounded. A persistent rumor has it that one of its leaders is an American.

The story of the killing of the bandit chieftain of Santo Domingo is not so heroic as the extermination of Charlemagne in Haiti—nor as definite. Vicentico and his men had overrun almost the entire province of Seibo. In July, 1917, one account has it, a gunnery sergeant who spoke imperfect Spanish went into his district unarmed and in “civies” and spent a week in winning the chief’s confidence. The Americans, he told him, had lost hope of defeating so expert a warrior and would make him a general and chief of the Guardia, with places for the best of his men, if he would disband his forces and support the occupation. Another version is that the real go-between was a “Turk” shopkeeper who had known him in other days. Questions of individual glory aside, Vicentico at length set out with seventy picked men to report to the marine commander. On the way he was suddenly startled to hear one of the wild birds of Seibo utter its peculiar shriek in a tree-top above him.

“You are betraying me!” cried the chieftain, whirling upon the “Turk”—or the sergeant—and covering him with his “pata-mulas.” “That bird has never failed to warn me of danger.”