Civil War in Cuba
PIMSLEUR, J. L.
EXCLUSIVE: An eyewitness report on Civil War in Cuba They had been missing for two weeks. Then they were found, floating in Matanzas Bay—bullet holes through the backs of their necks. The...
...To many downtrodden Cubans he is a kind of combination Robin Hood, George Washington and Gregory Peck...
...As a result, violence erupts daily all over the island—today in Havana, tomorrow in Matanzas, or Cardenas, Cienfuegos, Santa Clara, Camaguey, Holguin, Bayamo or Santiago...
...Thousands of Cuban families can tell similar stories...
...Castro, well aware of his political impotence, is dependent on his military forces...
...The revolt mushroomed into a coup which overthrew President Gerardo Machado, one of the most brutal of a long line of Latin American dictators...
...Since Cuba is an extremely wealthy island in terms of natural resources, the people resent the huge gap between a handful of the very rich and the great mass of the very poor...
...The evacuation of many farm families has made it more difficult for him to obtain food...
...The half-empty pistol, clenched in his right hand, proved that it was he who had opened fire...
...Batista, it is generally felt, is merely trying to make people forget that he was twice supported by the Communists in his own struggle for power...
...Even the sugar industry cannot for long absorb million-dollar losses from arson...
...Politically, Batista is living on borrowed time...
...He was taken to the police station for "interrogation" and beaten to death...
...the people of Matanzas knew that they would not be the last...
...In reality, rebel activities are the result of a great many legitimate grievances on the part of the Cuban people, who now look to Fidel Castro for redress...
...The Cubans had expected great liberal reforms from him, but he soon proved just another reactionary politician using public office for private profit...
...The police claimed they killed him trying to escape...
...Batista has replied with still harsher methods of suppression...
...As they tearfully sang patriotic songs at the victim's bier, an Army truck drove up and shook the cemetery with machine-gun bullets...
...Communism is really no problem in Cuba, although many opponents of the Government are labeled Communists at one time or another...
...The highly respected Professor Ramon Grau San Martin succeeded a provisional government as President...
...Nor is Castro leading a mere band of highwaymen...
...Many workers resent the Government because most national union leaders are Batista stooges and the Labor Ministry finds it profitable to double-cross the workers...
...Yet, the personal antagonism between the two men is hardly the crux of the Cuban problem...
...Another youth was arrested as a suspected insurrectionist...
...Covert antagonism turned to active guerrilla warfare, which Batista has been combating ever since...
...Ambassador Sumner Welles, ejected Grau from office and installed a former Machado associate, Carlos Men-dietta...
...That evening, the police informed his wife that he had been shot while trying to plant a bomb in downtown Havana...
...A widow tearfully told this reporter of her husband's death...
...When there are token trials of oppositionists, judges who fail to convict are dismissed and defense lawyers are intimidated...
...Next day, several hundred relatives, friends and sympathizers came to pay their final respects at the funeral...
...The tough, capable, efficient Batista, a man of considerable courage which turns to ruthlessness when he is desperate, has been running Cuba officially or unofficially for nearly a quarter century...
...In 1940, Batista held a fair election, which he won with Communist aid...
...Many Cubans look for better things from the new U.S...
...Only the Army remains loyal to Batista...
...On the surface, it would seem to be a conflict of personality and ideology between two strong men, President Fulgencio Batista and rebel leader Fidel Castro...
...As in every city in Cuba but HaJ. L. Pimsleur, who was recently an editor of the Columbia College Spectator, has just returned from Cuba, where he spent most of last summer...
...By February, he was strong enough to start guerrilla attacks on Army outposts...
...was instrumental in placing Batista in power and keeping him there...
...In essence, Batista is a "man of the people" gone sour...
...Ambassador, Earl E. T. Smith, who has already proclaimed his abhorrence of excessive police action...
...So long as he stays in the Sierra Maestra he is safe, but he can do little...
...This mockery of the Constitution, which the Cuban people hold very dear, was a mistake...
...A member of the Labor Ministry couldn't pay off the mortgage on his new house...
...Grau, Prio and Ratista...
...Ironically, matanzas is a Spanish word for "massacre"—after the butchery by a Spanish resident general of hundreds of Cubans who were protesting Spanish rule...
...Batista, characteristically oversimplifying his country's difficulties, attributes them to "the activities of a combination of criminal elements, including Communist collaborators, and a group of predatory oppositionists headed by former President Prio...
...It is all a big bluff, but one that seems to have a fair chance of working...
...Unlike many other Latin American rebellions which have been led by peasants or desperadoes, this one is largely headed by intellectuals...
...But, just as in Santiago, 450 miles to the east and center of the resistance, Government terrorism served only to inspire further resentment and swell the ranks of the opposition...
...Writhing on the floor in his last agony, he was released from further torment by a bullet through the head...
...He soon proved unacceptable to the United States, whereupon Batista, with the encouragement of U.S...
...On July 26, 1953, he led some 60 badly organized, poorly armed youths to their deaths in a futile attack on the Moncado Army garrison in Santiago...
...On July 12, however, Colonel Pedro Barrera, chief of operations in Oriente Province, was still announcing that Castro would be "eliminated very soon...
...Finally, because they have been betrayed so often, the Cuban people are distrustful of all professional politicians...
...Since then, there have been no strikes at the plant...
...Scarcely a city, town or village has escaped violence...
...By the end of August, Castro was still firmly entrenched in the mountains, and Colonel Barrera is the new military attache at the Cuban Embassy in Venezuela...
...Castro hopes he can make the Army just nervous enough to defect, or at least create enough dissension to render it ineffective as a fighting force...
...All of them alike, the flat, Spanish-style stucco houses peer at each other across the narrow streets...
...And Cuban mothers can hardly forget or forgive the torture and killing of their sons...
...It is our duty, they argue, to practice what we preach and intervene on behalf of democracy and against military dictatorship wherever the two are at war...
...So far, the campaign seems to be working...
...There, stripped, they were beaten with fists and bull whips while burning candles were held beneath their genitals and lighted matches inserted under their fingernails...
...Young boys of 15, found guilty of antiGovernment activities, are often given sentences of 10 or 20 years...
...The recent naval revolt at Cienfuegos suggests that he may be able to split the Navy—the weakest link in Batista's military machine—away from the Army...
...Army censorship and the nature of Castro's guerrilla operations make it extremely difficult to determine just how powerful he is...
...And accusation alone—by the Army, police or paid informers—is usually sufficient to convict • The people resent the fact that their schools are closed, their newspapers suppressed, their freedom to assemble curtailed...
...Cubans resent the arrogance of ministers who steal from them and utterly ignore the will of the people...
...The following incidents, reported to me by friends and relatives of the victims and by eyewitnesses, occurred in Matanzas in July and are repeated every day all over the island: • Three boys were arrested for passing out rebel leaflets and taken to headquarters for "interrogation...
...The administration of Col...
...Cubans resent Government censorship of press, radio and television, and suspension of the constitutional guarantees for which they fought so bitterly...
...But, more important, they trust him because they believe he espouses their causes and sympathizes with their plight...
...His best friend was killed fighting with Castro in the Sierra Maestra...
...To conceal their brutality, the police filled his corpse full of machine-gun bullets and hurled him off the roof, first clenching his fist, in a death grip, around a pistol...
...It's all a big bluff...
...Once a man of some ideals, he has lost touch with his people...
...In 1952, Batista carried out another coup for which the Cuban people cannot forgive him...
...The priest fell, and mourners scattered all over the graveyard...
...Cubans resent the placing of sadists in command of political prisons...
...Matanzas, 65 miles east of Havana, has a population of approximately 400,000...
...The bombings, derailments and other acts of sabotage throughout the island—perpetrated sometimes by Castro's men, sometimes by Prio agents or independent local revolutionaries—are all designed to remind the people of the cause of their troubles and ultimately force Batista's removal...
...and many Cubans feel that, in order to protect our investment, we have cast our lot with a military dictator whose political life depends upon safeguarding our interests...
...The two men were not the first to die...
...Most significant, however, is the fact that Castro simply hasn't the wherewithal to meet Batista's troops in an all-out battle...
...That is why his supporters in Santiago pin signs on the walls reading: "Viva Castro...
...On the contrary, the rebel leader is the scion of a wealthy family and, upon the death of his father, inherited $400,000 with which he organized and armed his rebel group...
...He was captured and spent over a year in prison before being released under an amnesty decree...
...His barbaric methods have served merely to spur further hatred and resentment...
...With the military solidly behind him, Batista can guarantee the "election" of his candidate (who, it is suspected, will be his brother...
...Castro constantly tries to lure the Government forces into the mountains because that is the only place where he stands a chance of winning...
...By J, L. Pimsleur vana, most of the streets are un-paved, dusty, rock-strewn footpaths —more fit for horses than for modern vehicles...
...Unemployment is a big problem which is getting bigger, and there is no such thing as nationwide unemployment compensation...
...Many of his victories seem to be Pyrrhic ones, since, with a force of only 500, he can afford to lose far fewer men than Batista...
...But they refuse to believe that Castro has Communist and criminal affiliations...
...Apparently, he is not in nearly so bad a predicament as Cuban Army dispatches would have the world believe, nor is he as well off as he himself claims...
...During the police interrogation, his arms were torn from their sockets...
...Colonel Manuel Ugalde has acquired Barrera's headaches...
...A poor third in that year's balloting, he seized power by force and annulled the election...
...After two hours of this, his intestines spilled out of his body...
...A week later, the woman was told the real story by a disgusted member of SIM...
...The air of fear and tension in Cuba is stifling, and everyone is clamoring for a solution...
...If the Army won't remove him, Castro hopes the pressure of individual and public opinion will...
...Nevertheless, Castro finds himself in a difficult position...
...The corpses of the two young men, ex-employes of an American rayon mill in Matanzas and known opponents of the regime of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, were intended to serve as a mute warning to would-be insurrectionists...
...The rebel leader is...
...Thev consider it hypocritical to pretend that we have no particular interest in or responsibility for the internal affairs of Cuba...
...When tragedy strikes so close to home, the emotional wounds heal slowly, hate runs hot, and those responsible are never forgiven...
...Without doubt, the era of Batista is coming to a tortured end...
...The Government's policy of counter-terrorism, far from subduing the populace, has only enraged it and created more civil disorder, greater sabotage and increased guerrilla activity...
...Last October, his cousin was shot to death along with nine other political refugees when the police raided the Haitian Embassy in one of the worst violations of international law on record...
...Batista found himself thrust into sudden leadership of the military...
...Many Cubans agree with Batista about the "predatory" nature of former President Prio, who has been aiding and abetting various saboteurs on the island...
...in his own war...
...In 1933, Sergeant Batista staged his famous "Shower Revolt" to win shower baths for non-coms...
...His confidence stems in part from the knowledge that Castro, as an outlaw, can organize no political opposition of his own...
...Nor can oft-disillusioned Cubans find any reason to believe that Castro, however high his integrity today, would be anv belter able to withstand the temptations of a fortune in graft than his predecessors...
...Meanwhile, Castro feels, Cuban big business may become nervous enough to urge Batista to step down for the sake of the country's economy...
...On July 26, the fourth anniversary of the launching of the present revolution by Fidel Castro, a boy was caught trying to raise the red-and-black rebel flag in the city square...
...Batista had several reasons for making the handsome gesture of withdrawing his candidacy from next July's elections (presumably in favor of a hand-picked successor...
...Castro's strategy is to alienate both business and labor from Batista...
...The Government's policy of "counter-terrorism" has caused untold suffering: arrests, interrogation, torture and execution, all carried out swiftly and efficiently in local police stations so that it never reaches the newspapers...
...Matanzans share with all Cubans their tension and fear, their desperate desire for a solution of the country's civil war, which explodes every few days into bitter clashes between rebel and Government forces...
...management paid it—to the tune of $35,000...
...They resent having soldiers and police break into their homes, often without cause and usually without a search warrant...
...What has turned Cuba into a battlefield...
...Although the cost of living is often comparable to that of the United States, wages are abysmally low...
...Recently, another friend was machine-gunned to death after he hurled a rock at a police car...
...Batista has had cause to regret that amnesty, for Castro fled to Mexico, raised a force of some 80 men armed with Swiss rifles and sub-machine guns, and returned to Cuba in December 1956...
...come and get us...
...Minister Rey replied by ordering the sadistic Police Chief Canizares to crack down harder than ever...
...This has left the opposition divided into a dozen petty factions led by former President Grau of the Autentico party, Jose Pardo of the Nationalist Revolutionary party, Mar-quez Sterling and Emilio Ochoa heading factions of the Ortodoxo party, and others...
...Weary of political strife, the Cubans might have quietly suffered all the injustices of the regime, had it not been for the torture-killings by Batista's police...
...So long as he remains alive, Castro is the symbol of their total resentment...
...If Batista goes, the odds are great against Castro himself gaining control of the Government...
...He was strung up to the flagpole by his feet and decapitated with a spray of machine-gun bullets...
...Smith's predecessor, Arthur Gardner, a good friend of Batista, made himself unpopular by his poor diplomacy, lavish spending and occasional derogatory remarks about the Cuban people...
...Even if the opposition to Batista were united, however, there is no reason to believe that the coming election will be any more honest than the machine-gun balloting staged by Venezuelan dictator Perez Jimenez or than Batista's own puppet election in 1954...
...of whom there had also hern great expectations...
...The appeals came from the leaders of such organizations as the Knights of Columbus, Rotarians, Catholic Youth and professional, clerical, charitable and scholarly groups...
...There was just one unfortunate discrepancy—the boy was left-handed...
...Whatever Fidel Castro's chances— and the odds are still high against him—the Cuban people have rallied to his cause...
...Outraged by these abuses, many Cubans deeply resent what they consider the United States' hypocritical foreign policy of so-called "traditional non-intervention...
...Hs is virtually a prisoner, hemmed in by Army encirclement...
...Once, for example, there was a strike in a Matanzas mill...
...he was taken to the prison hospital and, after a few days, released...
...Among the causes of dissatisfaction with the present regime are these: • The people constantly wonder what happens to the roads and sewers, schools and houses which are never completed because the funds mysteriously run out a month after work begins...
...After a few hours of interrogation, they were released "as examples to their friends" of the penalty for anti-Government activity...
...Pablito is just 22, and most of his friends are dead...
...Furthermore, many Cubans feel that, even if Castro took over, Cuban politics would soon revert to type...
...he has served it well, and it is returning the favor...
...They resent living under a military dictatorship in which the Army and police act as judge, jury and prosecution...
...as egotistical and hot-headed as Batista...
...The city has a long history of violence...
...Cubans especially resent the corruption of Batista's administration because he seized power by force...
...Only the protection of the tombstones enabled most of them to survive...
...This is in part because he appears to be the kind of dashing, romantic hero whom they revere...
...With $800 million worth of investments in Cuba, we practically own the country...
...In general, his raids on Army strongholds in tiny Oriente villages have been successful in helping to supply him with small arms, but he needs more...
...The faded pink and blue painted walls are peeling, and the graying plaster beneath is chipped...
...They suspect that the real reason for our policy of "non-intervention"—which apparently does not preclude shipping guns, tanks and planes to the dictator—is our fear that Castro might nationalize certain American-held industries on the island...
...They point out that the State Department did not hesitate to intervene against Communism in Guatemala but has never seen fit to intervene for democracy in countries like Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela...
...Many feel that he is more an emotional symbol of under-doggism and romantic heroism than a force capable of overhauling the Cuban political system...
...Management knew what to do...
...A rayon mill, two oil refineries, a textile plant and a shoe factory, all American-owned, comprise the bulk of the town's industry...
...But, because rival firms in Havana pay off Labor Ministry officials not to authorize subsidization of certain large plants in Matanzas, unemployment is a frequent problem, creating further resentment against the Government...
...They have faith in his long-range plans for land reform for the farmers, profit-sharing for factory workers, and a civil-service system to turn Cuban politics into something better than a highly lucrative racket...
...With what was left of his ragged force, about 20 men, he dug in, recruiting more fighters and buying food and supplies with the aid of the bitterly anti-Batista citizens of Santiago...
...In 1954, he staged a new election, in which he was the only candidate, to "legitimize" his Presidency...
...He hopes, at the same time, to inspire the people to join him in the event of an all-out march on the capital...
...What, then, is Castro's position...
...In 1944, another election returned Grau to office...
...Castro has been forced to turn away many volunteers—not because he doesn't need them, but because he can't feed and arm them...
...On June 1, Francisco Tabernilla, Army Chief of Staff, announced that Castro's forces "will be completely wiped out within the week...
...In a sense, he was right...
...There seems to be no possibility of a negotiated truce in the civil war, since President Batista regards Castro as "a common criminal...
...In the city streets or open fields, Batista's superior forces would prevail...
...He lost three-quarters of his men and almost all his supplies after a Cuban Coast Guard gunboat spotted his ship and ran her aground...
...But Castro managed to flee to the impregnable Sierra Maestra mountains in his native Oriente...
...He seems to have won the clashes at Cana Brava, Ubero and Bueycito, while losing at Palma Soriano, Majagua and Pala-dero...
...Then they explained that he had broken away while being questioned, fled to the roof and begun firing...
...A vicious circle is in operation, with neither Government nor rebels willing to compromise...
...But the outlook, right now, is not much brighter for Castro...
...The 31year-old son of a wealthy landowner from the easternmost Cuban province of Oriente, Castro first emerged seven years ago as a student leader at Havana University...
...Then there is a Matanzas youth— call him Pablito—who at 22 is old with bitter memories...
...Cubans sav that to pretend we can't interfere is absurd, since the U.S...
...One Batista supporter said to me: "Castro is merely trying to make everybody nervous by sitting up in the Sierra Maestra, beating his hairy chest and threatening to come down —eventually...
...The new man of the people, and Batista's chief adversary, is fiery, colorful Fidel Castro...
...As one student cynically put it: "However corrupt Grau and Prio were, we elected them and therefore allowed them to steal from us...
...A former official in the Prio Government, he was picked up for interrogation by SIM, the hated secret military investigation service, which was seeking information on Prio's financial support of anti-Government activities...
...As he walked away from the prison, he was shot in the back of the head...
...Today, he seems merely to be fighting to hang on...
...He will probably succeed only in paving the way for the military junta, which now rules Cuba covertly, to seize power openly...
...Nestled in the beautiful Yumuri Valley and built around Matanzas Bay in a perfect horseshoe, it is the ideal picturesque tourist spot—in time of peace...
...They all seem to be waiting patiently, forlornly, for the misappropriated public-works funds to turn up at the end of the rainbow of graft...
...They resent seeing men dragged from their homes, Gestapo style, at any hour of the day or night...
...A week later, Batista asserted that "Castro will be wiped out very shortly...
...When the contractor, usually a friend or relative of Batista, and various Army officers, Government ministers and local politicians begin to build themselves palatial estates, the mystery solves itself...
...Batista robs us without our permission...
...Frustrated and dissatisfied, they attempted to torture information out of him by twisting a wire clothes hanger around his genitals...
...And nowadays the citizens stare apprehensively from their long, grated windows, as if wondering when the next bomb will explode, the next bullet whine, the next body crumple...
...Among the men who have joined him in his Sierra hideout are the former president of the National Bank of Cuba, the son of the president of the First National Bank of Boston in Havana, the leader of the largest opposition political party, and the sons of many extremely prominent citizens—newspaper publishers, bank officials, physicians, attorneys, engineers, architects and political figures...
...Four years later, an aggressive former student leader, Carlos Prio Socarras, was elected President, but his government turned out to be as graft-ridden and inefficient as his predecessors...
...Such a man is Minister of the Interior Santiago Rey, who rejected urgent appeals by nearly every civic and religious leader in Santiago to put an end to the Government's reign of terror, which culminated in the mutilation and hanging of four boys from trees on the outskirts of town...
...The farmers of the Sierra Maestra resent the napalm bombing of their homes and fields and the forced evacuation marches of their wives and children, to prevent them from helping to supply Castro's forces...
...Since the man was running a successful refrigerator business in Havana and had been out of touch with Prio, who was in Miami, he proved of little help to his interrogators...
...Castro's bid for a "Civil Revolutionary Front" to choose a provisional President was rejected by the old-guard political leaders, all ogling the ill-gotten monetary rewards which await would-be Presidents...
...As a result of the lack of opportunity, education and technical training for women, many are forced into prostitution...
...They had had no choice but to shoot him off the building, and his fall ostensibly explained the livid bruises all over his body...
...Colonel Ugalde has since been relieved of his post...
...Every town in Cuba looks the same...
...The tourist trade is suffering, and every industry but sugar is feeling the pinch...
...Earlier, a youth of 22, a school teacher from a prominent Catholic family, had been picked up with four "bonds," issued by the rebels, in his pocket...
...Manuel Ugalde, at the Isle of Pines Prison off southeast Cuba, prompted an appeal to the UN Commission on Human Rights by anti-Batista groups in the U.S...
...We have come down from the mountains to post these signs...
Vol. 40 • September 1957 • No. 39
