• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1089 0

lost his skill in legal intrigue, or his capacity for work, the only one, perhaps, after the fall into disgrace of Anselmo Paulino, that the Benefactor could compare to his own? The Walking Turd could work ten or twelve hours without stopping, drink himself blind, and the next day be in his office in Congress, in the Ministry, or in the National Palace, fresh and lucid, dictating legal reports to the stenographers or expounding with florid eloquence on political, legal, economic, and constitutional matters. Besides all that, he wrote acrostic, celebratory poems, historical articles and books, and was one of the best-sharpened pens used by Trujillo to distill the poison of “The Public Forum” in El Caribe.

“How are the businesses doing?”

“Very badly, Chief.” Senator Chirinos took a deep breath. “At this rate, they’ll soon be at death’s door. I’m sorry to tell you this, but you don’t pay me to deceive you. If the sanctions aren’t lifted soon, it’ll be catastrophic.”

He opened his bulky briefcase, took out rolls of papers, and notebooks, and proceeded to analyze the principal enterprises, beginning with the plantations of the Dominican Sugar Corporation and continuing with Dominican Air, the cement factory, the lumber companies and the sawmills, the import-export offices and commercial establishments. The music of names and figures lulled the Generalissimo, who was barely listening: Atlas Commercial, Caribbean Motors, Tobacco Products S.A., Dominican Cotton Consortium, Chocolate Manufacturing Company, Dominican Footwear Manufacturers, Granulated Salt Distributors, Vegetable Oil Processors, Dominican Cement Factory, Dominican Record Production, Dominican Battery Factory, Sack and Cordage Company, Read Iron Works, El Marino Iron Works, Dominican-Suisse Manufacturing, Dairy Processing, Altagracia Liquor Industries, National Glass Industries, National Paper Industries, Dominican Mills, Dominican Paints, Retreading Plant, Quisqueya Motors, Salt Refinery, Dominican Textile Mills, San Rafael Insurance, Real Estate Corporation, El Caribe newspaper. The Walking Turd left for last the businesses in which the Trujillo family had minority interests, barely mentioning that there was no “positive movement” here either. He said nothing that the Benefactor did not already know: what was not paralyzed by a lack of investment and replacement parts was operating at a third, even a tenth, of capacity. The catastrophe had already arrived, in spades. But at least—the Benefactor sighed—what the gringos thought would be the final blow had not succeeded: cutting off his supply of oil and replacement parts for cars and planes. Johnny Abbes García had arranged for fuel to come in through Haiti, crossing the border as contraband. The surchargé was high but the consumer didn’t pay for it; the regime was absorbing the subsidy. The State could not tolerate this hemorrhaging for much longer. Because of the restrictions on foreign currency and the paralysis of exports and imports, its economic life had come to a standstill.

“Practically speaking, there is no income in any of the enterprises, Chief. Only expenditures. Since they were flourishing before, they can survive for now. But not indefinitely.”

He sighed melodramatically, as he did when he gave a funeral eulogy, another of his great specialties.

“Let me remind you that not a single worker, farmer, or employee has been laid off, even though the economic war has gone on for more than a year. These enterprises provide sixty percent of the jobs in the country. Think of how serious this is. Trujillo cannot go on supporting two-thirds of Dominican families when all of his businesses are half paralyzed because of the sanctions. And so…”

“And so…”

“Either you give me authorization to reduce personnel in order to cut costs, hoping for better times…”

“Do you want an explosion of thousands of unemployed workers?” Trujillo categorically cut him off. “Add a social problem to the ones I already have?”

“There is an alternative, one that has been used in exceptional circumstances,” Senator Chirinos replied