Trouble Inside Cuba

...Castro himself underscored the importance of the Las Villas fighting when he personally assumed the direction of the Government campaign there along with his brother Raul, the Minister of Defense, and Guevara...

...The heaviest fighting, say Cubans arriving here fresh from their homeland, is taking place in Las Villas Province—a highly significant fact for several reasons...

...The recent pastoral letters, one of which charged that the Red enemy was not at the gates but within them, tell only part of the story...

...The people have behind them a stronger democratic tradition that is already coming into play...

...Though promised daily wages of $4, one dollar more than they earned in Batista's time, the guajiros actually average a dollar less...

...Reports filtering out of Cuba suggest that they are getting tired of the rantings and ravings of the "Maximum Leader," and especially of his growing mountain of unfulfilled promises...

...Even Castro's adored guajiros—peasants—are beginning to chafe at new hardships they never expected...

...It is known in Cuba as "La Novela de las Nueve"—"The 9 O'Clock Story Hour"—after the mystery shows Cubans used to hear at that hour in the old days...

...They undermine it in a thousand little ways: shielding suspected "counter-revolutionaries," passing on messages, disseminating Catholic anti-Communist literature, conducting a whispering campaign against the "Godless regime," causing people to pray for its overthrow...

...He has now resigned his job and joined the FRD...

...They are holed up in the same Escambray mountains where, for many long months, Castro maintained his famous "second front" against Batista—the first front being, of course, the Sierra Maestra...

...The Cuban Army, then, is in every sense of the term a Red Army...

...But, as during the old dictatorship, they are sheltering soldiers and helping in stealthy ways...

...Castro was once saved by the Bishop of Santiago, and his moral guide and mentor for many years was the priest - intellectual, Ignacio Biain...

...Virtually every pilot in the rebel air force has defected, as have many who operated the commercial flights of Cubana de Aviacion...

...Perhaps the only exact measurement which can ever be made of such situations is that made by events themselves...

...The next step in the anti-Castro war of nerves is to jam the Cuban Government's TV and radio programs...

...The theory is that if Castro is unable to put on his own TV shows, he will lose still more popular support...

...The city workers have been seething with discontent for months...

...Angel del Serro is typical of the change in Catholic thinking...

...This saying reflects a new fact about Cuba which Castro must henceforth reckon with: He no longer commands the popular support he once did, and what support he still has is diminishing daily...

...Their location is a secret, naturally, but the best guess is that they are somewhere in Central America...

...Yankees no—Russians still less...

...They are receiving a regular flow of arms and ammunition from outside Cuba...

...TROUBLE INSIDE CUBA 'Castro must reckon with this new fact: He no longer commands the popular support he once did, and what support he has is diminishing daily' By Daniel James MEXICO CITY THE SHOW that Fidel Castro put on in New York earlier this month deceived no one in Cuba or other Latin American countries...

...Formerly the churches of Cuba were full on Sundays only—now they are crowded every day with worshipers saying mass against Fidel Castro...

...in Cuba today is: "Cuba yes...

...One is located on the mysterious Swan Islands, off the coast of Honduras, which recently made the news as a "commercial" station owned and operated by private U.S...

...Las Villas, in central Cuba, is the province where the back of the Batista regime was broken...

...The rebel army of yore is, for the most part, in jail or in exile...

...Its basic weakness, however, is that it has not yet proved itself in guerrilla warfare—and this may give the new rebels time to dig Castro's grave...

...The second station is reportedly somewhere on the east coast, and broadcasts only short wave...

...The Swan station is a powerful one which broadcasts to Cuba daily over both long and short wave...

...The mood of the Cuban people has altered radically in the past two or three months...

...And the $2 they get is in "vale," a script exchangeable only for commodities sold at the state-owned "People's Stores...

...The anti-Castro forces in the area, according to persons who should know, number between 600 and 800 men...

...That unit's desertion to the new rebels is only one example of the profound disaffection inside Castro's Army...

...The exact extent of the dissatisfaction with Castro inside Cuba is impossible to measure, even for the Cubans who arrive here daily to take up exile...

...The camps are operated by the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FRD), an anti-Castro movement composed of five different groups which organized in Mexico City last July for the sole purpose of overthrowing the Castro dictatorship...

...There is the same increasing flood of exiles out of the country, the same mass arrests and tortures of political prisoners, the same depression of workers' and peasants' income, the same loss of foreign exchange and of trade, the same falling away of support from the people, and, most ominously, the same tragic game of guerrilla war between Government and rebel groups replete even to the spasmodic bombings and other acts of terror...

...The change inside Cuba that may turn out to be most important is the attitude of the Catholic church...

...The number of men training runs into the thousands...

...All that has now changed...

...The guajiros may never rise against Castro—they didn't rise against Batista, either...

...Serious fighting is goings on in Cuba, and official propagandists are finding it harder and harder to hide that fact...

...The most important difference between the two is that Castro can impose—and is already imposing—the same type of forced socialization upon the people that we have seen in Soviet Russia and Red China, which may delay his inevitable end a little...

...Conditions in Cuba are beginning to resemble those under Fulgencio Batista...

...They tend more and more to listen to the criticisms of the "counter-revolutionaries," who consist almost entirely of dissillusioned former Castro supporters...

...As before, the humble priests in the small towns and villages are the centers of myriad conspiracies against the new dictatorship...

...This step was taken after one Castro Army unit which Castro sent against the new rebels deserted to their side—a fact hitherto unpublished but known inside Cuba...

...First to be hit by Castro's "revolutionary" decrees were the construction workers, who were thrown out of work when a deep slash in rents made it unprofitable for property owners to build...

...One of its foremost captains, Hubert Matos, for example—who after the Revolution's triumph was regarded second only to the Castro brothers—has been in prison since last October...

...It was there, on the eve of Christmas 1958, where Argentine Communist Ernesto "Che" Guevara cut Cuba's railway system in half and thereby severed Batista's transportation and communication network...

...He is now living in Mexico...

...And Escambray is much more strategically important than the Sierra Maestra area...

...He had told me that his Catholicism would never permit him to stomach Communism, and he has been as good as his word...

...He then occupied the post of director of cultural activities in Havana, and through it spread considerable propaganda for the Castro Government...

...A revolution is, of course, such an exact measurement...

...The FRD is also conducting a war of nerves against Castro from outside Cuba by means of two clandestine radio stations...

...The new rebels are training feverishly for that purpose in two camps operating outside Cuba...

...And they tend, also, to give important material aid to those same "counter-revolutionaries...

...It is in Las Villas where the new rebels hope to seal the new dictator's doom...

...When Castro came to power in January 1959, there was rejoicing in all of the churches throughout Cuba, and special masses were held...

...The most popular expression DANIEL JAMES, a former managing editor of THE NEW LEADER, has written many books on Latin America, including Red Design for the Americas...

...interests...

...Another, Major Eddy Chibas, brother of the martyred political leader Castro used to hold up as his hero, fled to the United States two months ago...

...It is true that Castro is not Batista and, being a recent veteran of revolution, will know how to defend his Government better...

...Castro now rules Cuba with raw youths whose only qualifications are a fanatical devotion to the "Maximum Leader," and a thorough indoctrination in Communism which Guevara and other Communists in the old rebel army have been giving them since the early summer of 1959...

...The armed forces that rule Cuba today are not those who overthrew the Batista dictatorship...

...But recently del Serro felt he had had enough...

...I interviewed del Serro in Havana a year ago, and found him one of Castro's most ardent admirers...

...But Cuba, fortunately, is not Russia and not China...

...The higher-income groups, as one might expect, are financing the anti-Castro forces as they did the anti-Batista forces...

...But this time, they are not just laying out the money but are adding: "Give us rifles, too...

...Since then, with the steady downward trend of the economy as a result of other "revolutionary" measures, and with the Government deducting up to 20 per cent of the workers' wages for all sorts of "patriotic" purposes, the great majority of Cuban wage-earners have suffered a drop in their standard of living...

...The Cuban Catholic church was a key factor in the Castro revolution...

...And Russian and Red Chinese "technicians" flooding into Cuba are reinforcing the indoctrination and providing new and up-to-date weapons...

...Most important, they are receiving less money than they did under Batista...

...And a revolution, according to the new exiles from Cuba—or a civil war, as some of them put it—may not be distant...

...They are learning everything that Castro himself knows about guerrila warfare, because their instructors are all former members of the old rebel army and veterans of the struggle against Batista...