In the late autumn of 1946, José Adriano Trujillo, a World War II veteran and an adopted son of the Dominican Republic’s strong-arm leader, set out on a road trip from New York with a Jamaican friend. With Miami as their destination, the two reached Bunnell, Florida, around midnight and stopped for food at the Green Tile Café. Denied service on color grounds, Trujillo protested loudly in English and Spanish and, according to later reports, went to his car to retrieve a pistol. The proprietor called the police and the arriving sheriff’s deputy, after delivering a warning, shot and killed Trujillo.

This incident did not travel far in the media, and the State Department’s representative in Miami did not see fit to return from vacation to investigate it. José Adriano had clashed with the postwar South’s understanding of status and entitlement, one very different from his own. Yet the tragedy did not alter Generalissimo Trujillo’s clientelistic relationship with the United States or lessen his grip on the Dominican population. Years later, race continued to be a matter that Dominicans and Americans would sidestep in regard to one another, and as always, “law and order” prevailed over social justice in the rank order of U.S. priorities as far as Latin Americans were concerned.