BOUND TO MERCY AND JUSTICE

The days leading up to Fr. Arthur Mackinnon's martyrdom

By James MacKinnon
September 2005

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In 1965, the Dominican Republic was still recovering from three decades of dictatorship under Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, who was assassinated in 1961. After his death, a social democratic government was elected, and then overthrown by a group of military officers. On April 24, 1965, rebellious army units rose up against this illegal government and this soon became a popular revolution. Four days later, announcing that the republic was slipping toward communism, the United States landed the marines. The revolution was quashed. Most historians now agree that the threat of a "second Cuba" was exaggerated, and that the U.S. government's actual objective was to prevent a return to democratic socialism in the republic.

In the narrow sacristy of the Monte Plata cathedral, Father Arthur MacKinnon donned his vestments. It was June 17, 1965, the day of Corpus Christi. He could hear the scuffing feet on the cathedral floor, worn concrete with a crack that ran straight up the aisle like the torn veil in the Temple of Jerusalem. The pews would fill for the morning Mass. Corpus Christi was a central solemnity of Catholicism, a celebration of a divine presence that the people could reach out for and taste and touch, but that was not the only reason they would attend today. The revolution – the civil war – had come to Monte Plata.

The first ripples had been felt weeks before, of course. In the first days, saboteurs had burned a bridge on the route to the capital, and the road itself was soon closed. In the capital city of Santo Domingo there was debate, protest, conflict, outrage. And here in the campo (countryside) – a wall of silence. Silence and hunger. For almost two months, all that the highest powers of the nation had delivered to Monte Plata was the military propaganda of Radio San Isidro.

Looking back, the revolution had been decided before it was even a week old. The first few hundred U.S. marines, observed by Fr. Paul Ouellette from the Scarboro House in Haina on April 28, had proved to be only a beachhead. The marines kept coming and coming, and then, on April 30, the paratroopers of the Third Brigade, Eighty-second Airborne Division touched down in San Isidro. There was no longer any doubt about why the Americans had sent in the troops. "There are signs that people trained outside the Dominican Republic are seeking to gain control," President Johnson had said in an address that day heard around the world. "Thus, the legitimate aspirations of the Dominican people, and most of their leaders, for progress, democracy and social justice are threatened." The crisis couldn't wait for the jaded bureaucracy of a multinational response, said the president.

...In little more than a week, the Americans had deployed an overwhelming force of 42,412 troops. They had turned a rebel victory – call it what it was, a people's revolution, men and women armed more often with hammers and shovels than guns, turning back the tanks of San Isidro – into a surrender.

One week after the invasion, Lyndon Johnson won the support of the Organization of American States. Still, only six other nations, five of them ruled by military regimes, contributed troops to the intervention. The White House brokered a Government of National Reconstruction under President Antonio "Tony" Imbert Barreras, one of the two surviving assassins of the dictator Trujillo.

It was only then that the war really came to Monte Plata. The police and soldiers at the local barracks had been tentative in the first weeks of the revolution. Now they could see that the old order would prevail. Everyone knew who had been talking revolution, who had tuned in to Cuban radio. Soldiers and policemen picked these people – their own neighbours – from the streets or from their homes. The terror was worse for its familiarity, a total extinguishment of hope.

What is the work of a priest in such times? For the Scarboro priests Joe Moriarty and Arthur "Padre Arturo" MacKinnon, the answer was stark. They had a duty to mercy and to justice.

And then, on June 16, the day before Corpus Christi, the local police lieutenant arrested 37 people, most of them young men. The town was in an uproar, but it was the mothers, the wives, the girlfriends who came to the casa curial, weeping, asking for help. Arturo went that afternoon to the barracks but was bluntly turned away. That night, four prisoners were released while 33 were loaded into trucks and taken – where? To San Isidro, their families were told, or the Palace of the National Police. No one knew what to believe, but everyone knew the rumours. Everyone had heard that shots rang out along the Yuca River at night, after the curfew, and that in the morning fresh graves would appear. Everyone knew the Yuca River. The main road from Monte Plata to the capital passed over it.

How many days had it been since Teresa Roedán de Andujar, a woman who felt Christ to the marrow of her bones, appeared in the doorway of the casa curial? She asked for Padre Moriarty, and Fr. Art explained that the pastor had been sent home to Canada on furlough, along with half of the Scarboro priests in the republic. Teresa appeared uncomfortable then, as if embarrassed. "I don't believe in dreams," she said plainly, "but last night I had a dream, and in it I was told that you needed to be very careful, because they are planning to kill you."

What had he felt then?

"There are people who have this power," he had said to her, "that when something is going to happen, it will be revealed to them and through them."

"Ay, padre, be careful!"

He managed a smile. "Don't worry yourself," he had said. Then he held up the permit that would allow him to leave on his own furlough just as soon as Joe Moriarty returned.

It was time to begin the Mass. Father Art had never been one of the great preachers, the men who gave the Gospel as though seized by the Holy Spirit; normally, he spoke from notes. Today, he would do without. He stepped out of the sacristy to stand at the altar, the congregation always so handsome in the church, the girls and women in their dresses with their straightened hair, the men in their button-up guayabera shirts, the poorest children barefoot. When there was no sound but the people breathing, he began. He was disgusted by the arrests, he said, his face calm. He had cancelled the sacred procession of Corpus Christi. It was a celebration of love for the human life of Christ, and that day in Monte Plata there was no love for human life.

Then he proceeded with the liturgy.

In the congregation a woman began to weep. She was sobbing, shaking. It was A¡da Flores de Santana, the wife of the army lieutenant in Monte Plata, and it was as though there was something in the homily that she could not bear. She was losing control, slipping into hysteria. Comforting hands took hold of her, helped her to stand, and led her from the church. Padre Arturo continued........

Scarboro missioner Fr. Arthur MacKinnon was killed by Dominican police on June 22, 1965. This article is excerpted from Dead Man in Paradise (Douglas & McIntyre, October 2005), a new book about the assassination by J.B. MacKinnon, a nephew of Fr. Art.

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