Word: trujillos
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...letter was to be read leaked out in advance, and record crowds jammed 624 churches across the country. Women wore family heirloom jewelry and dressed in black as a sign of mourning and protest. They listened in hushed excitement as the letter boldly and dramatically demanded rights that Trujillo has systematically denied for 30 years-privacy of home and family, the right to emigrate, the freedoms of conscience, press and assembly...
...letter said its six signers had written to Trujillo to suggest a plan to end "the excesses, dry the tears, heal the wounds." In return, "we have promised special pledges in order to obtain from God the boon that none of the members of the [Trujillo] family shall ever experience the sufferings that today afflict the hearts of so many." Thunderstruck by open Catholic opposition, churchgoers left early Masses, talked nervously in church courtyards, returned to hear the letter read again at the next Mass. Collection plates overflowed with cash and donations of jewelry...
Until now, Trujillo and the church have got along well. Archbishop Ricardo Pittini, Primate of the Americas, is now 83 and blind, but four years ago he signed a letter to the New York Times praising Trujillo and saying that "this 'dictator' is loved and honored by his people." Trujillo signed a concordat with the Vatican in 1954, and has served as godfather at Catholic baptisms of at least 3,800 children. His government is building a magnificent church...
Stripped & Handcuffed. Pastoral or no pastoral, Trujillo did not pause in his drive to put down the rebellion. Inside the jails, his well-bred prisoners-doctors, engineers, sons of government officials, university professors, industrialists-were systematically humiliated by being stripped, handcuffed and tossed into communal cells. Trujillo's courts hauled 40 of them out of jail, quietly tried them and handed them 30-year sentences. Departing from normal practice, U.S. State Department Spokesman Lincoln White volunteered that the U.S. was "concerned" about the effect of the arrest of plotters on "basic humanitarian principles in the Americas...
...perils of battling bishops were clear to Trujillo. He sent his Foreign Minister hurrying off to the Vatican in an attempt to turn off church opposition. "When you pick up the newspapers and read that I am dead, you will know I have retired," Trujillo once said. He clearly plans to make a hard fight to survive...