THE RUNAWAY REVOLUTION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP68-00046R000200190097-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 19, 2014
• Sequence Number: 97
• Publication Date: May 12, 1960
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

!STAT
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The Runaway Revolution
"0 UR PROGRAM is part of -the revo-
lution," the Cuban Commu-
nist leader Bias Roca declared re-
cently. "It is a program which
reinforces and supports all )he meas-
ures, laws, and positive actions of the
revolutionary government and the
orientations of its leader, Fidel
Castro." And then he added: "It is a
program to illuminate the road
toward the historically inevitable
transition to socialism."
Bias Roca spoke like a man who
was satisfied with the way things
were going, who considered himself
and his party integral parts of
Castro's revolution and expected it
to go much farther. One of those
alarmed by both the tone and sub-
stance of the speech was a popular
radio and TV commentator, Luis
Conte Aguero. His reaction was espe-
cially significant because he was
known to be a personal friend of
Fidel Castro. In a speech before the
Havana Lions Club that was widely
reported in the press, Conte Agiiero
charged that the Communists were
"achieving their purpose, pulling us
instead of marching by our side."
The reaction against Conte Agiiero'
in the pro-Castro press was so violent
that the commentator decided to go
off the air in order to give himself
dine, as he put it, "to write and
think." When he drove up to tele-
vision station CMQ in order to
make a farewell appearance, an ob-
viously organized crowd of demon-
strators pressed forward and blocked
his way, shouting "traitor!" "counter-
revolutionary!" and "servant of
American imperialism!" After some
scuffling, the police restored order
and Conte Aguero rode away with-
out making the broadcast.
EVERYONE WONDERED what Fidel?
no one in Cuba calls him any-
thing else?would say. Everyone
knew that he and Conte Agiiero had
been classmates, that Conte Agiiero
had written Fidel's biography, and
that Fidel himself had appeared on
Conte Agiiero's program.
THEODORE DRAPER
\_
'Three days later, Fidel broke the
suspense on a "Meet the Press" type
of TV program. After four hours
of uninterrupted oratory, the friend-
ship was finished. Fidel raked up old
differences, ridiculed the biography
of himself, assailed Conte Agliero as
a "divisionist" and "confusionist,"
and practically accused him of work-
ing for the U.S. State Department.
On the subject of Communism, Fidel
refused to give ground. He took the
position that it was not his fault that
the Cuban Communists fully sup-
ported the revolutionary cause, and
that anyone who made an issue of
growing Communist influence was
actually serving the interests of
counter-revolution.
Fidel talks so long and so often
not because he has so much to say?
he makes virtually the same speech
every time?but because it is essential
to his conception of democracy.
The television and radio are the
means by which he conducts a per-
petual plebiscite; he knows how to
make most Cubans, especially the
women of all ages and classes, vibrate
to his somewhat grating voice, lugu-
brious eyes, and weary gestures. At
any rate, that night Fidel talked
his way out of another tight spot.
After Fidel's speech, Conte Agiiero
took refuge in the Argentine em-
bassy. The owners of the television
station on which he had spoken were
quickly punished: their bank ac-
counts were frozen, their studios
were taken over by the government.
And Conte Agiiero became another
Cuban exile in the United States.
This incident showed, not for the
first time, how Castro reacts to any-
one, even a personal friend, who
raises the issue of Communism. Yet
Conte Agiiero himself has made it
clear that there is no simple and easy
identification between Castro and
the Communists. In an open letter to
Castro, he wrote: "It is as evident to
me that your government is not Com-
munist as it is evident to me that
the Communists wish it to be such,
or at least that it should appear to
be such in order to speculate on your
name and fame."
General C. 1Cahell, .deputy
di-
pLSt1i-
gAgestifiedfied.: ,before the
senate Internal Security subcommit-
tee la ov,ember- We know that
the Communists consider Castro as a
representative of the bourgeoisie,
and were unable -to gain public rec-
ognition or commitments from him
during the course of the revolution."
He _ added that "Fidel's brother,
"ra'seri, a'"Nitagritstiose adviser, Ernesto
('Che') Guevara, are both strong -
friends of the Communist Party," but
"we believe that Castro is not a mem-
ber of the Communist Party, and
does not consider himself to be a
Communist."
But this still leaves unanswered
what Castro rs.and_what he cOnsiders
?
himseLfrto,be.
The Mountain and the Plain
Fidel Castro was first plunged into
politics in the University of Havana
between the years 1945 and 1950. He
and others of his generation soaked
up the traditional resentments
against "American imperialism,"
American investments, and Cuba's
economic dependence on the United
States. Some turned to Communism,
but many more were carried away
by an extreme if somewhat vague
form of nationalism containing some
elements of Communism but without
the specific discipline and ideology
of the party. To the Communists,
these young revolutionists were wild,
uncontrollable "bourgeois national-
ists" who sometimes served Commu-
nist interests and sometimes did not.
Castro came out of this nationalist
ferment, but not, at first, in its ex-
treme form. He entered politics as
a disciple of Eduardo R. Chibas, an
anti-Communist who built up a large
popular following by campaigning
against government corruption on a
Sunday-evening radio program. Chi-
bas committed suicide in 1951 by
shooting himself before the micro-
phone in a desperate attempt to
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awaken the Cuban people. Unfortu-
nately, he ran over his scheduled
time and was cut off the air just
before the fatal shot. Yet Chibas's
martyrdom benefited his party, pop-
ularly known as the Ortodoxos, and
it was heavily favored to win the
next election. Its victory would have
given Cuban .dernocracy another
chance.
ONE OF the Ortodoxo candidates
for congress in 1952 was Fidel
Castro. But his career in democratic
politics was cut short by Fulgencio
Batista, who once again, as he had
done in 1934, seized power. The
whole facade of liberal democracy
collapsed ingloriously. Batista's coup
made a revolutionary nationalist out
of Castro and others like him. They
abandoned the democratic path and
have never found their way back.
But Castro and the Communists
were still far apart. Af1Then Castro
organized his 170 men to -attack the
Moncada Barracks in the second
largest city, Santiago de Cuba, in
1953, and when he set ,out from
Mexico with eighty-one men to in-
vade Cuba in 1956, the Communists
wou:d have nothing to do with him.
They considered the little band of
twelve men who remained to fight
in the mountains of the Sierra
Maestra to be "petty-bourgeois
putsch ists."
Long .after the rebellion in the
Sierra Maestra had taken hold, Cas-
tro did not head a homogeneous
movement, and the larger it grew,
the less homogeneous it-became. It
included those who merely wished
to go back to the democratic consti-
tution of 1940 and those who de-
?manded "a real social revolution."
It included some who were friendly
to the United States and some who
hated it. It included anti-Commu-
nists and fellow travelers.
Until 1958, _Castro's strategy was
based on two fronts: el llano (the
plain) and la sierra (the mountain).
His sympathizers in the plain num-
bered hundreds of thousands; his
fighters in the mountain hundreds.
These fronts differed politically as
well as militarily. Castro's under-
ground representative in Havana, a
former medical student named Faus-
tino Perez, was an outspoken anti-
Communist. The fighters in the
mountain, conditioned by theirlard-
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ships, their increasing closeness to
the impoverished, landless guajiros,
and their own militant tempera-
ments, were much less critical of the
general principles of Communism
than of the tactics of the existing
Cuban Communist Party, which dur-
ing the war had changed its name
to Partido Socialista Popular (P.S.P.)
Castro did not expect to topple
Batista with a few hundred men in
the mountains. He rather hoped to
use his hide-out to encourage revolt
in the cities, where political deci-
sions were traditionally made. He
sent emissaries to organize Havana
and put Faustino Perez in charge of
preparations for a general strike
called for April 9, 1958.
The strike failed and the prestige
of Faustino Perez never recovered.
Castro arid those closest to him in
the mountains drew drastic conclu-
sions from the setback. They decided
that victory would depend principal-
ly on themselves and that their sup-
porters in the cities could play only
subordinate roles. The relative im-
portance of el llano and la sierra was
reversed; it was the first great vic-
tory of the extremists in la sierra.
Only the Communists could have
made the strike in Havana a success.
Though outlawed by Batista, they
enjoyed far more freedom of move-
ment than Castro's men, whom
Batista considered his main enemy,
and they had considerable strength
in some of the chief unions, especial-
ly the transport workers. I have seen
the "Declaration of the P.S.P.,"
which the Communist National
Committee issued on April 12, three
days after the strike fiasco. It accused
Castro's movement of having called
the strike "unilaterally," and in ef-
fect attributed its failure to the re-
fusal to consult them and reach an
agreement in advance.
I was told by a top Communist
leader that the official ?Communist
line toward Castro changed in Janu-
ary, 1958, one year before his victory,
and that offers of aid were made to
him. The offers, such as they were,
obviously did not extend to Faustino
Perez and the general strike. Late in
June of 1958, a Communist leader
was sent to the Sierra Maestra to
establish liaison with Castro's, forces.
This was the first step 'toward closer
ties between Castro and the P.S.P.
U.S. Support for Batista
American policy also played into the
hands of the extremists. In 1953, the
year that Castro declared war on
Batista at the Moncada Barracks, the
hew administration in Washington
sent a new ambassador to Havana,
Arthur Gardner, a businessman and
political appointee. Gardner insisted
on showing his affection for the dic-
tator publicly and effusively. In her
recent book on Cuba, -Mrs. Ruby
Hart Phillips, the long-time corre-
spondent of the New York Times,
writes that Gardner was so uninhib-
ited in his admiration of Batista that
he even embarrassed the dictator.
There is a photograph, often repro-
duced, of Gardner hugging Batista's
chief of staff, General Francisco.
Tabernilla, whose job it was to hunt
down Castro's rebels.
When Gardner's successor, Earl E.
T. Smith, came to Cuba a year and
a half before Batista's fall, he seemed
at first to represent a change in the
official attitude of the United States.
In blunt language Smith deplored
the brutal treatment of a peaceful
demonstration of women in Santiago
de Cuba. But just when the ma-
jority of Cubans were turning to
Castro, Smith turned against him.
He spent the last months of his am-
bassadorship vainly attempting to
arrange for an election under Batis-
ta's sponsorship long after Batista's
power had eroded, and such an elec-
tion was considered a subterfuge to
preserve the substance of Batista's
rule. The more knowledgeable career
diplomats in the embassy pleaded
with Smith to change his course, but
he refused.
Smith resigned precipitately a few
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days after Batista's fall, sent on his
way by an article in the influential
Cuban magazine Bohemia entitled
"Ambassador Smith: Servant of the
Despot." American arms to Cuba
were cut off in March, 1958, but the
U.S. military mission, which could
have been withdrawn in the event of
domestic or foreign hostilities ac-
cording to a 1951 agreement, re-
mained to the very end and largely
canceled out the effect of the arms
embargo.
Amoon of friendless and reckless
defiance characterized Castro's
revolution from the beginning, and
the sense of having won a miraculous
victory against heavy odds still per-
vades the revolutionary atmosphere
in Cuba. Certainly no Latin-Ameri-
can revolution was ever made in
quite the same way?in the distant
mountains, not in the capital; with-
out an economic crisis, except as
Batista's terror caused business to de-
cline in the last months of 1958;
without the active participation of
the army and only the passive sym-
pathy of the working class; and
without an ideology or a party
machine.
When Fidel Castro entered Ha-
vana a conquering hero on January
8 last year, no one knew what he
was going to do. It is doubtful
whether he himself knew, except
in the most ?general terms. He re-
nounced high office for himself and
spoke of elections in eighteen
months. He hand-picked a prime
minister and a president, neither of
whom he kept for long. Castro him-
self took over the office of prime
minister in February. He virtually
fired the first president, Manuel
Urrutia, in July during a television
program after Urrutia had raised
the issue of Communism. And in
Castro's first cabinet, nine ministers
have been replaced.
These shifts have reflected the
__Ayhanfzeasing,radicaljzationAc_Cas-
gicies. In large part, they have
repeated in a new form the old
struggle for power between the
mountain and the plain. In the vari-
ous reshufffings of his cabinet, Castro
has in effect taken power away from
the moderates in the plain and given
it to the extremists from the moun-
tain. Most of that power is now con-
centrated in the hands, of three of
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the old fighters?Guevara, Raid Cas-
tro, and of course Fidel himself.
The Triumvirate
There is no doubt in my mind that
the present regime could not hold
together or stay in power without
Castro. He permits himself on all
possible occasions to be called the
"maximum leader," and in this case
the title is justified. If ever there has
been a "cult of personality," it is
rampant in Cuba today. Castro's in-
terminable monologues may be the
despair of non-Cubans, but he knows
his own people. They dote on his
longwindedness, and he has over-
come practically every moment of
tension by making a speech that
somehow reaches the most illiterate
guajiros. For the first time in Cuban
history a leader has given them a
sense of human dignity and political
importance, and they have paid him
back by revering him.
Guevara's rise to the position of
No. 2 man in the Castro regime took
place at the end of 1959. When he
left Cuba on a three-month trip to
the Middle and Far East last sum-
mer, everyone assumed that he was
on the way out. On his return early
in September, he was named to a
relatively subordinate job as head of
the industrialization department of
the National Institute of Agrarian
Reform. "I don't know why," one
informed observer told me, "but as
soon as he got back, things began
to happen here." Amort the things
that happened was his improbable
appointment as president of the Na-
tional Bank. No one in Cuba under-
estimates Guevara's abilities, but he
does not get along well with many of
Castro's associates: his Argentine
background and quiet air of superi-
ority hold them at arm's length. Un-
like Castro, he speaks in calm, meas-
ured tones. Those who know him
well say that he has the best-trained
Marxist mind of all those close to
Castro. He owes his power to his
influence over Castro and he could
never take Castro's place in the affec-
tions of the Cuban people.
Raid Castro is generally rated the
third member of the ruling trium-
virate. He is an impetuous, hot-
headed young man of twenty-nine
who is credited with having done a
good job organizing the new armed
forces. Of the top three, Raid is the
most extreme in policy and most sim-
moderate in expression. He has atrong personal following in theiip
army and he would be the one
most likely to succeed his brother as
the nominal head of the government
if anything should happen to Fidel.
But it is very unlikely that he could
really take his'brother's place.
THEIR MAIN SUPPORT comes from
young men like themselves. As I
went from one government building
to another and traveled by jeep in
Oriente Province, I met the same
kind of young man again and again?
self-sacrificing, idealistic, all working
devotedly for the regime. There is a
rumor, half serious, that no one over
thirty has a chance of getting a good
government job and no one over
forty need apply.
Anyone with technical training
or almost any kind of education
is apt to be given responsibilities
that used to be reserved for men of
middle age. In many cases, these
young people are substituting zeal
and fervor for technical knowledge,
but they are going about it with
the most contagious optimism and
enthusiasm.
Nationalism and Socialism
In one respect, Castro's revolution is
classical?it was made by intellectuals
and professionals in the name of
workers and peasants. These intel-
lectuals have been intoxicated,
whether they admit it or not, by the
two great revolutionary forces of our
time to ,which countries seeking to
pull themselves out of poverty and
stagnation seem irresistibly drawn?
nationalism and socialism. National-
ism enables them to oust the old rul-
ing class with its close economic and
political ties to foreign capital and
to call forth the latent energies of
national pride and ambition; social-
ism provides them with a rationale
for installing themselves as the rul-
ing class of a new type, using the
full power of the state to change the
social order. In Cuba today, nation-
alism runs riot, but socialism, com-
munism, or any variety of collectiv-
ism must never be mentioned in
connection with the present regime.
To all appearances, Castro's revo-
lutionists are doctrinaires without a
doctrine. Soon after taking power,
Castro tried to give his movement a
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name, "humanism," to distinguish it
from capitalism and Communism.
"Capitalism may kill man with hun-
ger," he said. "Communism kills man
by wiping out his freedom." And
what is "humanism"? He once de-
fined it as "liberty with bread with-
out terror." But nothing has been
heard of "humanism" for several
months. Castro now says, "We are
building, not a theory?we are build-
ing a reality." What that reality
should be called he refuses to say.
INRA's Inroads
On paper, Cuba's agrarian reform
would not make the new system
socialistic. It limits landholdings to
a maximum of 3,300 acres in cattle,
rice, and sugar, and 990 acres for
other uses. It undertakes to compen-
sate the owners with twenty-year
bonds at four and a half per cent
interest. It promises each land work-
er a minimum of sixty-six acres. To
carry out these measures, the Insti-
tuto Nacional de Reforma Agraria
(INRA) was formed, headed by Fidel
Castro himself, with a Cuban geog-
rapher, Antonio Nunez Jimenez, as
executive director.
But Cuba's agrarian reform can-
not be understood on paper. An
INRA delegate, accompanied by a
couple of armed soldiers, usually ap-
pears at a farm and announces that
INRA is taking over everything but
a certain portion. He may return
later and cut the former owner's
allotment in half. Though the law
says nothing about farm machinery
or cattle, they also are appropriated.
The whole transaction is completely
informal; there are no hearings; no
inventories, no receipts. In some
cases, if the owners are willing to
accept INRA's offer, they may get
paid in cash. No one has yet seen any
bonds; the government says that
they are being printed. In one zone,
I was told early in April that Fidel
had ordered the first three hundred
titles to sixty-six-acre plots handed
out; obviously that ,portion of the
reform was far behind schedule.
In March, Nunez Jimenez report-
ed that 13,250,000 acres, almost half
of Cuba's total land area, will be
affected by the agrarian reform.
8,800,000 of these acres have already
been taken over, and the appropria-
tion of another 2,650,000 is now tak-
ing place with the end of the cane
U..... 19 10A11
harvest. By the middle of this year,
therefore, INRA will control about
forty per cent of Cuba's total land
area. Out of some of this land, it has
already formed 764 co-operatives and
plans to form five hundred more of
cane land.
WHEN I VISITED a rice co-operative
near the town of Bayamo in
Oriente Province, I saw how the sys-
tem works. The local INRA officials
were particularly proud of it. I was
told that the 1,500 acres had been
owned by two lawyers who had never
used them for productive purposes.
To prepare the land for rice cultiva-
tion an expensive irrigation project
was necessary, and when I was there
it was about two-thirds finished. A
large machine shop, a school, and
three of the houses planned for the
thirty-eight families that will work
on the co-operative had already been
built. I was told that the chief qualifi-
cation the workers possessed was that
they were the poorest in the neigh-
borhood. They were being trans-
ferred from the traditional one-
room, thatched-roof bohios, which
look like mud huts, to modern four-
and five-room cottages made of tile
and cement. The, attractive little
school was used for the children in
the daytime and for the adults, most
of them illiterate, at night. The
members of the co-operatives re-
ceived a daily wage from INRA
with the promise of shares in the
profits. The "administrator" was a
former rebel fighter who had been
an ordinary day laborer.
The cost of this one project was
estimated at $100,000. As a result of \
such co-operatives, Cuban rice has al-
ready become plentiful, but Cuban
housewives complain bitterly that it
is inferior to imported rice. When I
was in Havana, the stores were forc-
ing customers to buy one pound of
Cuban rice with each pound of im-
ported.
Except for one feature?the divi-
sion of future "profits," if any?the
entire co-operative system might just
as well be owned by INRA and the
members of the co-operative consid-
ered as employees of the state. The
capital, machinery, fertilizer, and
everything else are provided by
INRA; the production is entirely
turned over to and disposed of by
INRA. The co-operatives are expect-
ed to pay off INRA's investment and
most of the profits can always be
plowed back into the enterprise. In
practice, therefore, the system will
probably amount to a fixed-salary
plan plus an annual bonus, if and
when the co-operative shows a suffi-
cient profit. At a later stage, one
minister told me, state farms will be
introduced, especially in the cattle
industry, and some co-operatives
could easily be reclassified into this
category.
No matter what one may think of
the theory behind Cuba's land-
reform program and no matter how
the program turns out in practice,.
there is no getting around the fact
that for the poor, illiterate, landless,
outcast guajiros, the co-operatives
represent a jump of centuries in
living standards. They also represent
a vast increase of constructive activi-
ty in the rural areas that were for-
merly the most backward and stag-
nant part of Cuba.
BUT AGRICULTURAL co-operatives
are only one of INRA's under-
takings. Second in importance are
the tiendas del pueblo, or people's
stores, of which Nilliez Jimenez re-
ported that there were 1,400. These
stores are scattered in the hills and
countryside and their purpose is to
keep prices down by underselling the
small, isolated traditional tiendas.
They also provide at reduced prices
various types of._ goods that the
guajiros seldom saw before and
could rarely afford. For the time be-
ing, these stores have not been set
up in the cities. But urban store-
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they
are already wondering what
they will do if INRA decides to
compete with them. The whole sys-
tem is entirely INRA-owned and
INRA-operated without even the
co-operatives' pretense of independ-
ence.
Nunez Jimenez also reported that
INRA was operating 109 businesses
valued at $235 million; thirty-six
sugar mills out of a total of 161; 36
fishing and six frog co-operatives. It
has built 170 schools, three hospi-
tals, seven dispensaries, and twelve
clinics; and it runs sixteen radio
stations and eight tourist centers. In
Santiago, I ran across a.small INRA
group which, with the help of four
Mexican engineers, was prospecting
for iron ore. Hardly a day passes
without an announcement in the
newspapers that INRA has taken
over another farm or factory and
extended its other operations.
Cuba is still far from a state-owned
economy, but in INRA it has the
basis for one, and at the' present rate
of expansion INRA will soon dom-
inate the economic life of the coun-
try, if it does not do so already.
Latecomers on the Band Wagon
It is clear from all this that Cuba
is going through a social revolution
of a collectivist nature unique in
Latin-American history. It has no
name, party, or ideology, but the
reality speaks for itself. Once again,
therefore, we are brought back to
the question of where Castro stands
in relation to the Communists.
The Cuban Communist Party was
formed in 1925, the year before Fidel
Castro was born. Its present top
leaders, Blas Roca, Juan Marinello,
and Anibal Escalante, are old-tim-
ers who had faithfully followed
every twist and turn of Stalinist
policies.
Castro caught the Communists by
surprise in the early days of his re-
bellion, and it took them a long time
to accept him and his "putschist"
tactics. I have seen the open letter
the official Communists sent to all
the opposition movements, includ-
ing Castro's, signed by Marinello and
Blas Roca, dated June 28, 1958,
which still put forward the prospect
of overthrowing Batista "by means
of clean, democratic elections." It
may be true, as the- Communists
claim, that they decided to give
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Castro's rebels some aid in January
of that year, but they actually
jumped on Castro's band wagon only
in the last six months, after he had
demonstrated that he could win
without them.
Thus Castro and the Communists
were rivals for power for more than
five years, and Castro owed the Com-
munists very little when he finally
overthrew Batista. The wounds
opened iri this period were not im-
mediately healed. As late as Sep-
tember 10, 1959, nine months after
Castro's assumption of power, the
semi-official government organ, Rev-
olucion, appeared with a polemic
against the official Communists writ-
ten by Euclides Vazquez Candela, its
assistant editor. Last October, a col-
lection of writings entitled En Pie
was published by the present foreign
minister, Raid Roa, in which he re-
printed an article on the Soviet sup-
pression of Hungary in 1956 that
denounced "the crimes, disasters,
and outrages perpetrated by the in-
vaders," meaning the Soviets. He
also reprinted a review of Raymond
Aron's anti-Communist The Opium,
of the Intellectuals, and said, "The
central thesis of the book is objec-
tively impregnable."
For some months in Castro's first
year of power, there was visible evi-
dence of discord between at least a
considerable portion of Castro's
movement and the official Commu-
nists. The turning point seems to
have come last November. In that
month, the anti-Communist leader
of the former Havana underground,
Faustino Perez, was ousted from the
government, and Guevara came in
as head of the National Bank. At a
congress of the Cuban trade-union
federation that same month, the
Communists were hopelessly beaten
until Castro himself stepped in and
appealed for a "unity" slate which,
by including Communist sympa-
thizers, saved the official Communists
from a rout. Simultaneously the
process of expropriation speeded up
and INRA's type of collectiviza-
tion?the co-operatives and people's
- stores?gathered momentum.
BY THE BEGINNING of this year, a
new situation had emerged.
The official Communists moved in
to become the strongest single force
in the trade-union federation as the
result of a purge of "niujalistas,"
those trade-union leaders who had
held posts under. Batista's trade-
union boss, Eusebio Mujal. In Feb-
ruary, Soviet Deputy Premier Anas-
tas Mikoyan paid a triumphal visit
to Cuba, the Soviet exhibition in
Havana was a great popular success,
and the Soviet-Cuban trade treaty
was hailed as the best thing that
had ever happened to Cuba's foreign
trade. A few days later, the explo-
sion of a small plane- flying from
Florida made it impossible any
longer to deny that United States-
based planes had been dropping in-
cendiary bombs on Cuban canefields.
This and the explosion early in
March of the munitions-loaded
French freighter La Coubre, which
Castro himself implicitly attributed
to the United States government, set
off an anti-American propaganda
campaign bordering on hysteria.
There is,some question whether one
plane brought down by the Cubans
had been "arranged for" by the
Cubans themselves. The last moder-
ate in Castro's government, Finance
Minister Lopez Fresquet, resigned in
the middle of March, and the inci:
dent of Luis Conte Agiiero flared up
shortly afterward.
It is evident from this brief sum-
mary of events that an important
chlm.122Lpc . lace b_eli-IfETiP'N'ov?e-m-
ber, 1959, and arch, 1960. While
Mi oyan was holding cOurt in Ha-
vana, the titular head of the Cuban
Communist Party, Juan Marinello,
declared in a television address on
February 8 that "whoever raises the
flag of anti-Communism is a traitor
to the revolution." This principle
has actually been adopted by Castro
himself, though it is the most danger-
ous divisive force within his move-
ment and opens him up to the most
relentless attacks from the outside.
'We'll Do It Our Own Way'
The men around_ Castro still betray
a curious ambivalence about the of-
ficial Communists. On the one hand,
they regard old-time Communist
leaders like Blas Roca and Marinello
with scarcely concealed contempt.
They speak of them with aversion
for having served Stalin -so slavishly,
for having entered into an alliance
with Batista in 1940-1944, for having
backed away from force to overthrow
Batista, and for still remaining
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?
faithful to old-fashioned dogma.
They even consider the official Com-
munists too "conservative" and de-
clare with pride that they are doing
things that the latter regard as
foolhardy and romantic.
On the other hand, when those in
Castro's intimate circle are
where?..in essentials, they _differ-from
the Communists, they, see -be
stumped.lCastro himself thought that
he was crushing Conte Agilero when
he asked why he should persecute
the Communists if they do not differ
from him. He failed to see?or pre-
ferred not to see?that this left un-
answered the even more interesting
question of where he differs from the
Communists.
Not so long ago Castro did try to
differentiate his revolution from ,the
Communists', but that time has
passed. The change has coincided
with the increased tempo of expro-
priation and collectivization. It is
as if a broad, general bond connect-
ed Castro with the official Commu-
nists which he could not break with-
out betraying his own convictions,
and as if he knew, too, that even if
he decided to dump the official Com-
munists he would still be charged
with Communism.
CASTRO, like Tito, made his own
revolution by methods that the
Russian-controlled Communists did
not approve. This type of revolution
has now made its appearance in
different parts of the world by tak-
ing different roads and adopting dif-
ferent forms. Again and again, in
long, frank talks with some of Cas-
tro's closest associates, I was struck
by their insistence that "we'll do it
in our own way," and they obviously
considered their "it" to be on a par
with the Russian, the Yugoslav, and
the Chinese revolutions?different,
yet related.
The Cubans' evident feeling of
self-importance proceeds in large
part from the fact that they consider
their own revolution to be only the
first of nineteen other Latin-Ameri-
can revolutions. "The battle of
Cuba is the battle of America," said
Guevara last March. He, Raul Cas-
tro, and others place special em-
phasis on this larger mission. They
believe that if they succeed, Castro-
like movements will sweep the con-
tinent. And they are not merely
waiting; they are doing all they can
to stimulate and, in some instances,
to organize the movements. The re-
cent visit of a Brazilian presiden-
tial candidate, Janio? Quadros, who
said that he would follow Castro's
example if elected, made it seem not
impossible in Havana that the tail
might wag the dog. Castro's activities
in the Caribbean area are especially
reckless, and his press makes little
,distinction between the progressive
democratic leadership of Governor
Luis Muri.oz Marin in Puerto Rico
and the dictatorships of Somoza in
Nicaragua or Trujillo in the Do-
minican Republic.
Who Is Using Whom?
Thus it is a mistake to think of
Castro as merely a Communist stalk-
ing-horse or a Soviet puppet. His
ambitions go far beyond these mod-
est roles. In his own mind, he is
using the local Communists and
playink off the Russians against the
Americans. just who is using whom
remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the
Cuban Communists meekly play
second fiddle in Castro's orchestra,
and the official Soviet press refers to
Castro with cautious restraint.
One of Castro's young ministers
said to me with obvious conviction:
"Fidel is no Khrushchev; Fidel is a
genius! Remember that Mikoyan
treated Fidel as an equal when he
was here. Anyone who imagines that
Fidel thinks that someone in Mos-
cow or among our own Communists
knows how to make a revolution in
Cuba or in Latin America better
than he does?such a person does not
know Fidel."
Other reasons for Castro's reluc-
tance to accept the label of Commu-
nism, or any other label, are more
practical and opportunistic. The of-
ficial Communists have gone all out
in Castro's support, and they repre-
sent the only organized, disciplined
party in Cuba today General Cabell
estimatedmb
their_nuer at 'seenteen
thousand toward .the end of last
Ye1,770 many?Oeilianlidoubtedly
fill numerous subordinate posts in
the rapidly expanding revolutionary
bureaucracy. Of the three major
props holding up the new regime?
the army, the trade unions, and the
propaganda agencies?Castro strong-
ly dominates the first, he shares con-
trol of the second with the official
Communists, and he manages the
third with Communist assistance. If
he is not a prisoner of the official
Communists, he has become increas-
ingly indebted to them for their ex-
perienced cadres?available, as of
now, on his terms.
For the official Communists, the
setup is as favorable as they can
expect under present circumstances.
.They are hardly in a position to take
over Cuba without bringing down
upon themselves the full weight of
the United States in concert with
other Latin-American countries. They
would also encounter the militant
opposition of the Catholic Church,
which recently has begun to waver
in its benevolent attitude toward
Castro. They would run into the
deep-seated aversion of most Cubans
in all classes for any system of gov-
ernment that would admittedly be
Communist?one of the reasons why
Castro is so touchy about being asso-
ciated with the name.
CASTRO'S SUPPORT on taking power
was so overwhelming that the
opposition shaping up against him
today must include many former ad-
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19
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herents. The small horde of exiles in
Miami composed largely of Batista's
former henchmen, the twenty thou-
sand soldiers of Batista's former army
, walking the streets of Cuban cities
apparently jobless, and the expropri-
ated landowners and factory owners
make up a considerable body of en-
emies who, it may be assumed ,are
doing everything in their power to
overthrow Castro's regime. But the
real danger to his survival comes from
within his own amorphous "move-
ment," which is no more homogene-
ous today that it ever was.
The new opposition includes many
of the same people who made or
sympathized with the revolution?
students, prolessionals, intellectuals,
businessmen. A year ago, the Univer-
sity of Havana, always the seedbed of
discontent, was massively united be-,
hind Castro. Today the university is
seriously split, and though the ma-
jority still extols Castro, a sizable
minority, perhaps assmuch as a quar-
ter, has become disaffected?and
hence faces expulsion ,as "counter-
revolutionary." Castro himself indi-
cated the source of the opposition
in his TV demolition of Conte
Agtiero: "What happens in the
,middle class is that it vacillates, it is
greatly confused. On the other hand,
the guajiro and the worker are al-
ways clearer, that is the truth." '
The Cuban professionals and in-
tellectuals have reason for vacillation
and confusion. Castro offers most to
the guajiros, much less to the work-
ers, and nothing but liquidation or
drastic transformation to the middle
and upper classes. This distinguishes
the Cuban revolution fundamentally
from all ? previous Latin-American
revolutions, such as the Mexican,
which mainly benefited the middle
class.
The Castro regime desperately
needs the students, professionals, and
businessmen to keep the country's
economy .functioning from day to
day, but it welcomes them only as
employees of state organizations such
as INRA.. A typical INRA worker I
met had previously owned a grain-
supply business. INRA had taken
it over and had promptly hired him
to supervise its own grain distri-
bution. An architecttold me that he
had done very well during the build-
ing boom in Batista's last years; now
he. has gone ? to work for INRA,
Release 67.1 50-Yr 2014/03/19
which pays him much less but en-
ables him to survive.
In this respect as in .so many
others, the full ,import of Castro's
policies has become clear only in the
last few months and therefore most
of the new oppositlon is relatively
recent. At first the cut in rents of
thirty to fifty per cent and the reduc-
tion of telephone and electric rates,
mainly favored those. Cubans who
lived in $100-to-$250 a month apart-
ments and used telephones and elec-
tricity. But these concessions have
been counteracted lg the fundamen-
tal Changes that have undermined
this entire group?the wholesale ex-
propriations, the choking off of
American imports on which a large
part of .the Cuban business commu-
nity depends, the lack of any hopeful
prospect.
Cracking Down
Nor can Castro -be sure that lie will
not have trouble with some of the
urban workers. They constituted a
relatively piivileged. class under Ba-
tista and shoWed it by letting others
do the fighting. Now the workers are
being asked to tighten their belts
and for the first time to pay thirteen
per cent of their wages in taxes. The
trade-union federation virtually acts
as an aril' of the government and
devotes its efforts to political propa-
ganda rather than to economic de-
mands. The leader of the sugar
workers' union, Conrad() Becquer,
was the one who broke the news in
the middle of April that it was nec-
essary to freeze wages and maybe
lower them in the sugar industry. For
the first time in the history of the
Cuban trade-union movement, the
slogans for the May Day demonstra-
tion contained no demands for in-
creased wages.
Castro could hope to reassure the
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students, professionals, businessmen,
and better-paid workers only if he
agreed to define the nature of his
revolution. Without defining it, he
cannot set limits td it. But that is
?' something he will not or cannot do.
He is -merely-willing to say that the
revolution 18 not Communist, it is
not capitalist, it is ,uniquely Cuban.
Very:few:obhiS;early'supporters ex-
pecteilit"tOlg9.e: .t,,,Lfa..r,iand very few
of than rtOW'klahOtr much further
it will go.
Instead of reassuring the new op-
position,' Castro has cracked down
all the harder on any symptom of
opposition. That is why. the Conte
Agiiero incident disturbed so many
of his foriner supporters and why it
may be the turning point of his revo-
lution. By giving the real and poten-
tial opposition no means of free ex-
pression or organization,. especially
on the burning issue of Communist
influence? Castro is depriving his
opponents of any possibility of op-
posing him except in the way he
himself found it necessary to oppose
Batista?by arms.
The government now has a com-
plete monopoly of all television
and radio. It does not _completely
control the press but that may not
be far away. Havana still has two
independent papers with an opposi-
tion slant, Prensa Libre and Diario
de la Marina, and two "nonpoliti-
cal" papers, hzformaciOn and El
Crisol, but the first two survive un-
der constant threat of suppression.
Mario de la Marina has a limited
circulation mainly among the former
aristocracy and its existence bothers
the government the least, but Prensa
Libre has a relatively large circula-
tion- of more than 100,000 and its
suppression would in effect end a
free press in Cuba. As it is, these two
papers. tread very carefully; they can-
not afford the luxury of really criti-
cizing the government. The regime
is supported by three main papers
in Havana, Revolucion, Combate,
and La Calle, as well as the Commu-
nist organ, Hoy, and by every paper
outside Havana.
CASTRO once spoke of his revolu-
tion as "liberty with bread and
without terror." If he continues to
push too hard, too fast, and too far,
Ciba may yet have more terror with-
-out either bread or liberty.
@50-Yr 2014/03/19:
THE REPORTER