CASTRO'S CUBA

...The Communists, unlike Castro, have a clear sense of purpose and know exactly what they want: control of the government or a policy sufficiently extreme to force direct United States intervention...

...It is equally unarguable that Fidel Castro has proved a bitter disappointment to many of those who hoped he would foster democratic methods as well as bring economic reform...

...The tariff which Cuba levies against incoming goods is subject to bilateral negotiations under the Reciprocal Trade Act—but Cuba's sugar quota can be altered unilaterally by the United States...

...Even the gambling casinos in the Batista period were dominated by the American underworld...

...All this is carefully worked out in legislation so complex that on one memorable occasion Chairman Harold Cooley of the House Agriculture Committee told his colleagues that his sugar bill could not be simply explained and that they would have to take on faith his estimate of its merits...

...Cattle lands, yacht clubs, foreign firms, and newspapers have all been seized by Castro's ubiquitous agents...

...Add to this the thuggery of the Batista regime—and of the Machado regime before that—and it is apparent why the old order wears such an ugly look...

...Merely the suggestion of a change, reports the Wall Street Journal, "fills most American sugar men with horror...

...The problem is not to encourage sugar production, but to restrict it, lest all the producers be ruined by disastrously low prices...

...To do otherwise would be to place the United States in the position of opposing schools, hospitals, land reform, and industrialization, as well as the hotheads who reign in Havana...

...An explosion was building up, and it came on January 1, 1959, when Fidel Castro rode to power on the crest of a mass revolt against a shabby status quo...

...Doubtless many of the INRA projects are of dubious efficiency, the tactics of "intervention" are frequently arbitrary, and the compensation offered for expropriated lands (twenty-year government bonds payable for the amount the property is assessed lor tax purposes) is inadequate...

...Small wonder, too, that many Americans are irritated by the intemperate attacks from Havana and that members of Congress are urging everything from a punitive cut in the KARL E. MEYER, a member of the staff of the Washington Post, has been writing about Latin America for more than three years...

...The task of statesmanship is to look beyond the irritations of the present to a calmer future when tempers have subsided...

...To a casual reader, the headlines about Cuba convey the impression of a country ruled by madmen and crypto-Communists who are perversely ungrateful to their rich uncle next door...

...In the fall of 1958, he spent three weeks in rebel Cuba and interviewed Castro in the Sierra Maestra...

...Sugar-producing beets can be cultivated on a slightly less economic basis in temperate climates...

...In the United States, the sugar market is divided between the domestic cane and beet producers and Cuba, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, each with its carefully apportioned share...

...Invariably, the sad legacy of dictatorship is disorder and confusion...

...The heart of the program has been agrarian reform aimed at freeing Cuba from its unhealthy dependence on sugar...

...Few believe that Castro himself is a Communist...

...At this point a schoolteacher walked in carrying a paper bag lull ol coins contributed by his pupils tor agrarian reform...

...To anyone who has followed Cuban events, it seems incredible that Castro should have yielded so much to the men at the farthest left...

...Here, the system's virtues are more ambiguous...

...If the Cubans have been insufficiently sensitive to property rights, the same charge could be made against the American patriots who took over the lands of outraged Loyalists...

...Affirmative achievements, however, do not make exciting news copy—a people's morale, after all, does not fit into the orthodox who-what-where-when wire service lead...

...Little wonder, then, that there is such widespread perplexity about a revolution whose leaders are themselves confused in purpose and action...

...Certainly there have been damaging, even vicious, distortions of fact in the press and on radio and television...

...Mere accusation of counterrevolutionary heresies can be sufficient to condemn...

...The observation was duly noted and construction began forthwith...

...agrarian reform has been relentlessly pushed...

...On the eve of Castro's takeover, as much as forty per cent of the sugar production was controlled by Americans...

...Doubtless, the sugar laws have been kind to the domestic beet producers...

...According to the usually reliable Wall Street Journal, from which these statistics are taken, INRA has "intervened" (i.e., seized control on a supposedly temporary basis), expropriated, or confiscated about 13.4 million acres of land—an area almost half the size of Cuba...

...This is the appealing side of the revolution—the mixture of youth and enthusiasm and undoubted honesty and a sense of mission...

...This explains why the Cuban share of the American market is actually smaller today than in the 1920s, despite a forty per cent increase in total consumption...

...It also helps to explain the chronic adverse trade balances in Cuba, totaling about $1 billion in the past decade...

...Each purge means that Castro's personal clique becomes more extreme, more removed from the realities of Cuban politics, and more committed to a course that can mean catastrophe for Cuban-American relations...

...But in Cuba's case, it is especially troubling that so many of the institutions which can shelter dissent and cushion the state's impact are now weakened and discredited...

...In the Cuban context, "appeasement" is a highly misleading word since it implies a craven surrender of principle in the face of a bully with a stick...

...Castro's beard and risk the denunciation over television which is likely to follow...

...All work stopped, and with appropriate ceremony, the bagful of coins was emptied on the director's desk and all present began laboriously toting up the students' mites...

...No responsible Cuban to whom I talked really believed that bombs were in fact dropped...

...Between 1920 and 1940, more than two-thirds of Cuba's sugar production was in foreign hands, and sugar is the island's prime source of wealth...

...The prime beneficiaries of the system are about 25,000 sugar beet growers, most of them in our Western states...

...The party's past collaboration with the Batista tyranny was an open scandal...

...a cluttered desk was quarried until the check turned up...

...Cuban sugar quota to direct military intervention...

...And by a wry caprice, the economic foundation of the old order was sugar, the most toothsome article on the dinner tables of the world...

...For good or ill, Castro has released energies on the island which will influence the direction of Cuban politics for years to come...

...Over the years, sugar growers have learned to control the fecundity of their crop by a combination of special subsidies, crop restrictions, and import quotas—devices which have made the sugar industry the model of a private cartel backed by the sanctions of government...

...Moreover, one price that Cuba paid for its quota was the maintenance of a protected market for U.S...

...With a rush of activity, INRA has fostered the production of rice, corn, peanuts, cotton, beans, and potatoes...

...Thanks to the enterprise of the American press, the dark side of the Cuban revolution is well known...

...It is of course true that Cuba has enjoyed an enormous advantage in having an assured annual market for half its major crop at premium prices...

...Confusion and dismay...

...In a real sense, the Cuban revolution has been a revolt against sugar as much as against Fulgencio Batista...

...But paradoxically, the very profitableness of the system has served as a barrier against economic change, and has contributed in a perverse way to keeping the island yoked to a single-crop economy...

...When—and if—this occurs, the United States might be in a position to help out on those programs in Cuba which deserve support...

...But the press has been notably less enterprising about describing with equal vividness the reasons why Castro's revolution has overwhelming popular support...

...Whatever happens to Castro, it is unthinkable that Cuba will revert to its somnolent old order...

...But to many Cubans they signify a clean break with an unlament-ed past, and it is perhaps on this ground that some of the unorthodox means can be justified...

...This was clearly a serious affront, but Castro's oratorical alchemy soon transformed the incident into a "bombing attack" and it was implied that Cuba had suffered an infamy comparable with Pearl Harbor...

...Given time, the wooliness of some of Castro's economic theories should become readily apparent to the Cuban people themselves...

...But too much of Cuba's wealth vanished abroad, or into the pockets of politicians, or wound up in endless projects to beautify Havana while the rest of the island festered in neglect...

...Despite its rich land resources, Cuba remains an importer of even such staple items as rice...

...What the newspapers fail to add is that shin-kicking and brazen behavior were and are part of every important revolution—including our own...

...Against the wall...

...A ship blows up, scores of persons are killed, and the response is almost Pavlovian: the United States is to blame...

...But they have their hands on the levers of power and have been dismayingly successful in pruning out the moderates who once were part of the Castro circle...

...Instead, the prevailing theory was that Castro needed a sensation to divert attention from the purge of a well-known anti-Communist within his own ranks...

...A believer in on-the-spot decisions, the "Maximum Leader" journeys up and down the island on an unpredictable schedule, tossing out commands on the march...

...Last October, Castro first began using what could be called the Medium-Size Lie to inflame his followers...

...Schools have sprung up throughout the island...

...Rumors seem to travel at supersonic speed...

...Nonetheless, in all fairness, Americans ought to make an effort to understand why the present system—outwardly so favorable to Cuba—has had regressive effects on its economy...

...These qualities help explain why after nearly eighteen months in power Castro still commands the support of about eighty per cent of the Cuban people...

...Few principles were more frequently invoked by Castro's rebels in the mountains than that of freedom of the press...

...Children playing baseball on the streets chant "Pare-don...

...And in this country, members of Congress have learned to heed the nudges of the sugar beet lobby...

...Eisenhower's approach seems to be to wait until Castro's own recklessness proves his undoing...

...So reads a sign over the desk of a busy functionary in the Castro regime...

...Some 700 cooperatives and 1400 "People's Stores" have been created, and INRA now administers 109 business establishments worth about $235 million...

...Scarcely a day goes by without a new sensation, a fresh impudence, a bizarre event—all somehow connected with Castro and all grievously discomfiting to an Eisenhower Administration seeking to live out its final months in some semblance of dignity...

...The series of articles he wrote during his hemisphere swing received a citation for excellence from the Overseas Press Club of New York...

...But Castro could well find himself surrounded and outflanked by a group he originally felt he could control...

...To an American, the techniques of government may seem grotesque, even repugnant—the endless TV monologues, the cult of the beard, the beatnik aura, the crack of the firing squads...

...hospitals and roads have lifted some of the darkness from the rural back-country...

...From the swanky homes in Havana, to the impoverished shacks of the guajiros on the plantations, Cuban society has been governed by a single, consuming purpose: the production of about six million tons of sugar every year...

...Second, there has been an historic friendship between the countries which was strengthened during World War II when Cuba increased its production to aid a sugar-starved United States...

...He may be the State Department's nightmare, but he is the newsman's godsend...

...Despite a much-publicized trade agreement with Russia, the Cuban economy is in difficult straits...

...But Governor Luis Munoz Marin of Puerto Rico (who has no reason to love Castro) has stated the approach that may yet bring both countries to safe harbor...

...Paredon...

...It is evident to all the world that this country could squash the Cuban revolution by a few rudimentary military and economic measures...

...in a burst of energy, Havana's drab airport was overhauled in about two weeks and has become a striking gateway to the island...

...The problem confronting the United States is not an easy one...

...The slender cane from which sugar is produced can be grown cheaply and plentifully in vast stretches of the tropical and semi-tropical world...

...A few figures tell the story...

...When the motel was complete—gleaming swimming pool and all—it was found that not a drop of water was available...

...A leading Cuban Communist puts it candidly: "We will give them back Hungary three times over...

...The United States ought to display to Cuba," Marin urges, "the forbearance that greatness shows to immaturity...

...Concentration on sugar lies at the core of Cuba's ailments...

...market), and— unavoidably—attract attention to a cozy arrangement which has more political than economic justification...

...This is an outrageous distortion...

...Perhaps most significant is the change in the popular attitude from fatalistic cynicism to collective enthusiasm for a massive reconstruction of Cuban life...

...Once, when he was busy with the promotion of tourism, he surveyed a hill outside of Havana and noted with satisfaction: "An excellent place for a tourist motel...

...a national lottery has financed the construction of new homes...

...However high-minded the announced goal, the methods smack of the very dictatorship that Castro has deplored...

...Here, in sum, is the tinder of social revolution—rising expectations coupled with debasing poverty, colonial servility at a time of awakening nationalism, corrupt and despotic government in the age of the Four Freedoms...

...First, the three million tons sold by Cuba in this country are vital to the Eastern seaboard of the United States...

...Almost all the island's key industries— telephones, power, railroads, mines— were likewise controlled from abroad...

...This, too, could perhaps be excused on the grounds of excessive revolutionary fervor except for the final and potentially most dangerous item in the brief against Castro: his government's worrisome tolerance for Communists...

...What about Cuba...

...Except during the brief harvest seasons, total unemployment on the island runs as high as twenty per cent of the labor force...

...The armed forces and civil service have been shattered by the revolution...

...yet a substantial beginning is being made in overhauling a sick, one-crop economy...

...A visitor to Cuba must brace himself for tales of horror—of humans roasted alive, of eyes gouged out, of midnight shootings, of scarlet cells—and the most terrible part is to find that so many of the stories are demonstrably true...

...More than that, Castro has produced results, even if his methods can be dismayingly arbitrary, and for once the underdog Cuban is convinced that he has a government that is not only honest, but cares...

...when the shortstop commits an error...

...All this might have been bearable if the policies of the island's overseers had been generous and just...

...Its impatient message suggests both the virtues and failings of what is surely the most unusual government in the world...

...He was interviewing INRA's director when a messenger came from the National Bank to pick up a check for $100,000...

...with a single Draconian decree, Havana's notoriously high rentals have been reduced thirty to fifty per cent...

...Cuba enjoys a preferred position for special reasons...

...Lieutenant Colonel Esteban Ventura, the "Himm-ler" of Batista's police, now in comfortable exile, was an apt pupil in an ancient art...

...Few Americans are aware of the realities of Cuban life...

...But to retaliate against Castro now would be merely to confirm the stereotype of Marxists everywhere (but especially in Latin America) of an imperialistic giant bent on imposing its will on a small and helpless nation...

...If the Cubans are flirting with a totalitarian foreign power, so did some American patriots who looked benignly on the Jacobins and The Terror in France...

...The Catholic Church, which elsewhere in Latin America has been in the vanguard of revolution, played a much more timid role in Cuba...

...The island's universities were shuttered for so long during the revolution that precious continuity has been lost...

...We are Fifty Years Behind...

...They remember the Maine, but little else about an island that owes its independence to the assistance of the United States a half century ago...

...Thus, Cuba has gained a guaranteed share of the American market, certain tariff preferences, and a premium price of about five cents a pound rather than the going world rate of about three cents...

...Yet the feeling is widespread among those who have followed Cuban events that it would be a disastrous mistake for the United States to intervene, by either military or economic means, against the vexatious leader of a turbulent revolution...

...Whatever the differences with Castro, this country would be foolish to appear to oppose a revolution still rich in promise, no matter how erratically it sometimes wanders off its course...

...Sugar, in short, has been as relentless a despot as dictator Batista, an economic master that has benefited a few while most of the people have remained in comparative squalor...

...To his great credit, President Eisenhower has sensed this need and has maintained an admirable calm about Cuba while others are calling for an end to "appeasement...

...The reasons have less to do with Fidel Castro than with the Cuban revolution which, by a trick of fate, he is leading...

...But the Cuban people know all too well that the island's independence has been more apparent than real, and that until Castro's seizure of power, the republic was for the most part an economic vassal of the United States...

...But in practice, it is a brave editor who dares to tweak Dr...

...A correspondent tells of a visit to the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), the chief instrument of revolutionary reconstruction...

...If the fevered state of opinion can be excused as the natural consequence of social revolution, the means by which passions have been aroused can find no such justification...

...The Republic of Cuba," goes an old saying, "is as independent of the United States as Long Island...

...goods, thus inhibiting the development of local industries...

...Both men are zealots with an impassioned hatred of the United States that can perhaps be understood only in clinical terms...

...These are the farmers already in the magic "producers' circle" who are allowed to grow a given quota of sugar beets because of a past history in cultivating the crop—and the sugar beet is a plant that can be grown on idle lands as part of crop rotation cycles...

...Since then, the whoppers have multiplied...

...You can be amused by things like that," the correspondent said, "but you really can't work up a good hate and write them all off as a bunch of reds...

...But the disquieting fact is, that even if press accounts of Cuban events tell only part of the truth, it is nonetheless just that—partly true...

...Shortages are already causing restive complaints as import controls cut the inflow of consumer goods...

...One lone statistic provides a measure of the cartel's success: only ten per cent or less of the world's sugar production is sold on the free markets of the world...

...Yet Castro has badly compromised his revolution by an alliance that could lead to a betrayal of his cause...

...To be sure, a little social vision might have taught Cuba's rulers that change was desirable—but social vision was precisely what was most lacking among the masters of the old order...

...Castro's personal excesses and demagogic attacks lend themselves more readily to headline treatment, with the result that most Americans receive a grossly distorted impression of what is happening in Cuba...

...Fidelismo may seem the quintessence of zaniness to a puzzled Norteamericano, but to a Cuban who sees all about him tangible evidence of change it makes a good deal of sense indeed...

...Such suggestions are not wholly frivolous...

...If the Cubans are cockily nationalistic, it is worth recalling that "Don't Tread On Me" was the provocative slogan of our young republic...

...The kind of anarchistic tumult on which Castro thrives is utterly foreign to the solemnities of state as conducted elsewhere...

...Given an assured income at inviting profits, why should the island's sugar owners want a change...

...Until the closing days of the revolution, the Cuban Communists remained aloof from the rebels...

...On the whole, the members of the "circle" are content with the present system, years in the making...

...Cubans are bitterly and understandably critical of the American press for its negative approach and alleged bias...

...A visitor in Havana does not have to travel around the city for long without feeling the tension and near-hysteria in the air...

...Because of the restraint shown then, relations between Mexico and the United States are today a model of amicability...

...In theory, such freedom is said to exist in Havana...

...And in an era when mass media conveys a new vision of affluence, the chasm has widened between the very rich and very poor...

...Every aspect of Cuban life has been shaped in some degree by the dictates of sugar: the roads and trains routed to the convenience of the mills, the land tenure laws tailored to the needs of the sugar plantations, the politicians governed by the interests of the sugar barons...

...There is no doubt a danger exists that a country only ninety miles from Florida may become a captive of the Communist bloc...

...He recently revisited Cuba as part of an eleven-country tour of Latin America...

...Any editor, furthermore, who has the audacity to publish a dispatch which members of his staff may feel is insufficiently flattering of Castro can be forced to append a footnote labeling his own paper as a purveyor of lies...

...Their fear is that a cut in Cuba's quota would dislocate the system, spur temporary overproduction, start a tug-of-war with foreign producers such as Brazil (now without any share of the U.S...

...Some of Castro's chieftains have gone so far as to charge that the sugar quota is a deliberate device to "enslave" the Cuban people...

...The occasion was a leaflet raid on Havana by a Florida-based plane...

...One reason for the Communist ascendance has been the powerful influence of Castro's brother Raul, head of the armed forces, and of Ernesto (Che) Guevera, the Argentine physician who now directs the National Bank...

...The old political parties come to court with soiled hands...

...By their very nature, revolutionaries are a difficult lot to deal with— whether in Egypt, Iraq, Mexico, or Algeria...

...This is what Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the 1930s when the Mexicans were busy seizing oil properties, parceling out land, and harassing the Catholic Church...

...The reason the domestic price is higher is because of various subsidies awarded to American sugar growers as a means of limiting production...

...Be Brief...

...Rather, Mr...

...As a result, there have been few obstacles to the spread of state authority...

...Only in Cuba, it is safe to say, would a Spanish ambassador— and a nobleman, at that—become so enraged by a speech that he would burst into the television studio, snatch the microphone from a head of government, and shout an angry rebuttal on the spot...

...Tales are legend of the confusion, or, more accurately, exuberant disorder, that animates Castro's reign...

...This progressive disregard for truth has been coupled with an increasing impatience with dissent...

...Cuba's press was never a model of honesty and has scant moral authority to criticize the revolution...