CASTRO'S CUBA TODAY

...Cuba, geographically, is a part of the Western Hemisphere...

...One enemy of the regime maintained that Castro has only a small minority of the people...

...I am not suggesting that a resumption of the dialogue with Cuba would enable the United States to destroy the Cuban revolution...

...They couple such advocacy with a search for scapegoats on whom they would place the blame for the disaster at the Bahia de Cochinos...

...They are unwilling to accept the uncomfortable fact that Fidel Castro had the people of Cuba on his side, and the refugees trained by the CIA did not...

...Most Cubans want dignity, respect, economic progress, and social justice...

...Again, the China experience is instructive: Communism has not been destroyed in Asia by "isolating China...

...So has the health program...

...Something like a dialogue with Russia is in progress...

...It is possible only to say that the Castro regime commands sufficient support to maintain itself in power...

...This is the real source of Castro's appeal to the Cuban people, of his great and continuing influence on his island homeland: He has given the Cubans dignity, pride, and a sense of self-respect they had never known under the Batista regime...

...The result was a sound somewhat like a hammer smashing through a splintering plank...

...The United States does not in the least approve of Russian Communism, even with those modifications introduced since the death of Stalin...

...They were in no mood for a lecture on the evils of Communism...

...But neither does the United States seek actively to destroy Russian Communism...

...If an attempt were made to restore relations to normal with this as our dominant purpose, it would exclude the possibility of a dialogue...

...A steel mill will not be in operation until 1966, at the earliest...

...But it takes more than the accumulation of Communist trappings, more than economic aid and the supervisory talents of Soviet bloc technicians, to create a Communist state as a going concern in the Western Hemisphere...

...Our early optimism led us to expect too much, too fast," he admitted...

...We might come to see some merit in Cuba's improved housing, greater equality of educational opportunity, the development of diversified agriculture, racial equality, reduction of unemployment, efforts to make medical services available to the total population, and other achievements of the revolutionary government under Castro...

...Rodriguez told me Cuba would divert sugar shipments from Russia to pay for spare American machine parts, if the trade embargo were to be modified...

...I do not believe, however, that the Alliance for Progress idea can be implemented adequately unless we also face up to the reality of revolutionary Cuba...

...I used to be ashamed of being a Cuban," a Havana newspaperman who had worked for some years in New York told me...

...The presence of a new United States diplomatic mission in the American Embassy in Havana would provide still further opportunities for communication...

...Perhaps the most solid support of all comes from the youth of Cuba, the 70,000 scholarship students, now living in dormitories that formerly were the homes of the rich, and especially the 80,000 members of the Union "of Young Communists...

...The best estimates—there are few solid statistics in Cuba—are that considerably more than eighty per cent of Cuban industry is nationalized, as is more than half of Cuban agriculture —and more on the way—and one hundred per cent of the distribution services...

...The social welfare program, in fact, came first in the Cuban revolution...

...I lost that bet," Rodriguez said to me, "but the invasion has been a great help to us in Cuba...

...The first part of Castro's speech consisted of a number of platitudes, couched in a form which enabled him to repeat phrases over and over again, like a tom-tom beat...

...The indispensable ingredient of dialogue is not prior agreement, but rather a hard core of mutual respect...

...In pragmatic terms, our China policy is a thirteen-year-old failure...

...Giant strides have also been made in the field of education...

...The Castro personality, so appealing to Cubans, poses problems of its own for the Soviet-sponsored project of constructing Cuban Communism...

...policy toward Cuba...

...Shortly after, the Soviet Union announced that it would build an iron and steel plant in Cuba and expand three others, raising their total capacity from the present 110,000 tons to 350,000 tons annually...

...So it was with the Cubans...

...By redistributing the land and by putting under-employed sugar cane workers on collective farms, the rural population has been cemented to the regime, though perhaps not permanently...

...Perhaps it can be made to go their way if we abandon our present policy, which has served only to strengthen Castro and the Communists, and if we pursue a more positive policy based on respect for the Cuban people as equal, sovereign, and free to determine their own destiny...

...witch-hunt...

...During a two-hour interview with Rodriguez, the veteran Communist leader insisted that eighty per cent of the Cubans still support the Castro government...

...Without help of this kind, Cuba's plight would be even worse...

...Those of us who used to contribute to "China missions" were fond of the Chinese, but only in a sentimental fashion...

...Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, I believe, relies more on people like Rodriguez than he does on Castro...

...It is impossible to verify either claim...

...In Castro's complex personality, vanity looms so large that some who have known him intimately think it verges on pathological narcissism...

...Some retail trade has been left, for the moment, in the private sector, but it is wholly dependent on the DONALD GRANT is foreign affairs analyst and United Nations correspondent for the St...

...In the end, Castro refused to discuss the questions at all...

...Russia is not going to support Cuba forever...

...Communism happened to be the only vehicle that came along when the Batista terror was smashed...

...I sought the reason from Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, a leading Communist spokesman and head of the all-pervasive National Agrarian Reform Institute...

...it seems to be more than the usual corruption that so frequently results from the attainment of power...

...Thus: ¶ In the field of agriculture, the Castro regime has now largely abandoned the program of land reform initiated in 1959—the program which was to be the heart of the Cuban revolution...

...He has shown extremely little ability to buckle down to the hard work of organizing a revolution, however brilliantly he began it...

...But it also would destroy the chief excuse offered by Cuban leaders for their failures in organizing the collectivized economy...

...He is too undiscipined, too hazy in his ideology...

...Cubans are allowed that privilege despite the widespread presence of the police...

...In this sense, we must think of Cubans not as an undifferentiated mass, but as a good many individual persons: the head of a department on a collective farm called The Pines, who had been an itinerant cane-cutter and had just learned to read and write...

...I heard a good deal of grumbling over consumer shortages...

...There is much that is irrational about Cuban Communism...

...American policy toward revolutionary Cuba seems to many Cubans to oppose their new insistence on the status of integral human beings...

...The list of all the factories that are going to be purchased is very long," he said then...

...If the United States and Cuba were to engage in a dialogue, we might come to abandon the erroneous notion that everything about Castro's Cuba is totally evil...

...aid today...

...Coupled with efforts to convince the Cuban people that no new invasion is planned, this step would rob the Castro government of much of its elaborately-constructed atmosphere of siege, behind which it seeks to rally the Cuban people and justify its excesses...

...The Alliance for Progress idea is sound enough for Latin America—its aim is to identify the United States in a positive way with basic, evolutionary social change, a kind of hemispheric New Deal...

...Cuba is discovering that many of the hard facts of economic development remain unmoved by slogans and exhortations...

...In Havana, food is strictly rationed—three-quarters of a pound of meat per person per week, five eggs a month, a quart of milk for every five people...

...But the Cuba I saw was not a going concern—far from it...

...The Communists need Castro as a nationalistic symbol to provide the necessary social cohesion until the revolution is organized...

...In particular, I indicated that it would be interesting to explore the subject of Cuban-American relations...

...I do not believe it is possible, at this moment, to reconstruct good relations between the United States and Cuba," Rodriguez said...

...We have been hung up on the worn-out fallacy that only two attitudes are possible, that one must implacably oppose Cuban—or Chinese—Communism, or one must welcome it...

...Until adequate political control machinery is constructed to match the massive organism created by the rapid socialization of the Cuban economy, the tough, experienced, and able Communists of Cuba are depending on Castro's charm to keep the structure from disintegrating...

...But Dulles did not insist on agreement as a condition for conversation...

...Like the Chinese, they are tired of being a helpless, if picturesque, people...

...There are more than a hundred...

...Eventually he worked himself and his audience up to a climax built around the repetition of the word "Yankee" in various contexts, usually coupled with the word "imperialism...

...I would hope that Cuba, as well as the United States, would be receptive to such a dialogue...

...They were allowed to serve Americans, and they emulated Americans—but Cubans were not permitted to attain equality with Americans...

...Shortly after I arrived in Havana, the Cuban Foreign Office indicated that an interview with Castro was a distinct possibility, if this were desired...

...Out in the country, however, farmers are selling turkeys, chickens, and eggs to roadside customers...

...Fortunately, in the case of Russian Communism, we have demonstrated in at least a rudimentary way the ability to approach Communism with a third attitude...

...The questions were submitted four days before my intended departure from Cuba...

...He is an excessively vain man...

...Why do we insist on repeating this pattern of failure in Cuba...

...New industries will come later...

...This all adds up to more Communism than there is in Poland or Yugoslavia, both of which are officially Communist countries...

...To ease, or lift, the embargo, would indeed be "helping Cuban Communism" in one sense...

...To acknowledge these positive accomplishments does not in any way require approval of the political or economic system of Cuban Communism, or acquiescence in the development of a Cuban police state...

...As recently as March, 1961, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, one of Castro's chief lieutenants on the economic front, spoke glowingly of the many new industries, including a steel mill, to be built for Cuba by the Communist countries of eastern Europe...

...The United States, he added, must first accept the fact of Cuban Communism, and since he did not believe the United States was ready to accept this, no improvement in relations between the two countries was possible...

...Despite significant strides toward achieve-ing social welfare goals, the economy was weak and growing weaker...

...There, as in Cuba, we had armed the anti-Communists without regard for what they stood for, and when the people of China rejected them, the American Right-wing engaged in a long and fruitless "who lost China...

...During my stay in Cuba I found all Cubans—Communists, non-Communists, and anti-Communists—friendly...

...Clinics have been established throughout the countryside and medicine has reached some remote areas for the first time...

...Rodriguez,/the old Communist who stands at Castro's right hand, told me he had made a bet with Castro that the United States, mindful of the harm it would do American relations with the rest of Latin America, would not sponsor an invasion...

...In addition, he understands the Cuban people with a sure intuition and speaks to them in an idiom they understand...

...I was disappointed, and yet, I see no reason why the United States should allow either Rodriguez or Castro to write American Foreign policy...

...Workers are now prohibited from transferring from one job to another, and they may be moved from one establishment to another without their consent...

...every encounter was, for me, a useful dialogue...

...Castro needs the Communists to organize his revolution...

...American Right-wing extremists keep advocating an even harsher U.S...

...Fidel Castro is no steely-eyed, dedicated, and coldly efficient "exemplary worker" out of a Marxist-Leninst textbook...

...Every child under seven qualifies for a quart of milk a day, and usually seems to get it...

...They certainly demand along with the rising billions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America—that they be approached as people of dignity and human worth...

...Shortages of capital equipment and replacement parts are paralleled by lack of adequate supplies of consumer goods...

...Low-cost modern housing, replacing wretched slums, has benefited thousands of Cuban families...

...I went one night to a spectacular mass meeting at which he was the principal speaker...

...Meanwhile, it is important to examine the personality of Fidel Castro, a strange and complicated figure, full of contradictions which not infrequently have been a source of embarrassment to his friends...

...Behind the armed truce we talk, negotiate, and hope for live-and-let-live agreements...

...Rodriguez admitted Cuban Communism Would be in trouble if the Alliance for Progress ever got off the ground...

...The violence and bit-terness with which Castro shouted the word "Yankee" cannot be described adequately...

...But there is a fair amount of evidence that the Cuban leaders fear that a resumption of talks would rob them of their principal excuse for failure...

...Elements are at hand for shaping a better U.S...

...There is even more that is irrational about Castro...

...Eastern European Communist theoreticians are inclined to be critical of this development...

...At the suggestion of the Foreign Office, my departure was postponed for an additional three days...

...Developments in Cuba while I was there and shortly thereafter accelerated the trend toward Communist totalitarianism...

...Castro has genuine intellectual capacity...

...Some of the Eastern European technicians in Cuba with whom I talked agreed that Castro, were he a Russian, would never be admitted to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...

...The Cuban Communists, aware of that fact, have been careful to make a distinction in their anti-American propaganda between the United States government and "ruling circles" on the one hand, and the American people on the other...

...Yet, if we could talk things out, these Cubans might be considerably influenced—especially if some reasonable alternative to dogmatic Communism were offered them...

...He put the emphasis on the last syllable and expelled the word with the air fairly bursting from his lungs...

...Grocery shelves are virtually empty...

...Louis Post-Dispatch...

...He was flanked by a suitable array of dignitaries and buttressed by a bank of microphones which served not only television and radio broadcasts but a deafening public-address loudspeaker system...

...Those close to Castro, including Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, explained why...

...We were shocked and disappointed when they turned out to be not picturesque natives, but aggressively self-assertive Communists...

...There is a great deal of latent—even active—friendliness toward Americans among the Cuban people...

...They believe basic industries should have been established before workers were given low-cost luxury vacations at the seashore, before so many art and ballet schools were set up, or before—in obvious imitation of the Russians—a campaign to teach Cubans to play chess got under way...

...But a firmer American effort is required...

...Standing on the balcony of my pleasant room on the twentieth floor of the former Havana Hilton Hotel—now the Havana Libre, nationalized—overlooking the harbor and the old city...

...I replied that such an interview might indeed be useful, but only if—after some study of the Cuban scene—I was allowed to ask questions that might elicit serious and significant answers...

...It was something else to be a Cuban in Cuba...

...I happened to enjoy a relationship with the late John Foster Dulles that a number of my liberal friends found suspicious, to say the least...

...Now I am proud of it...

...policy, including a new invasion of Cuba...

...A purely personal experience may help illuminate the nature of the dialogue concept...

...The virtue of a dialogue is that through it each participant may come to appreciate elements in the other's thinking which may be compatible with his own, though areas of disagreement remain...

...In the short run, the personality of Fidel Castro is the key to the success of Cuban Communism...

...A member of the Communist Party of the United States, now in Cuba, laughed out loud when a member of the Union of Young Communists of Cuba remarked that Castro was Cuba's leading Marxist-Leninist theoretician...

...The abortive invasion sponsored by the Central lntelligence Agency last year, the economic embargo, the ridiculous raid recently on the coast of Cuba by a small group of Cuban student refugees operating out of Florida, and the incendiary statements of American politicians and publishers demanding invasion of Cuba—all these provide Castro and the Communists with a rich harvest of alibis that enable them to blame every failure and every shortage on the United States...

...To be an American in Cuba, before the revolution, was a heady experience...

...a Negro girl in Havana, daughter of a street sweeper, now helping run a school for stenographers...

...This attitude toward Castro, however, is not shared by the people of Cuba...

...No report on Cuba pretending to a reasonable degree of objectivity can avoid the judgment that Castro's regime has achieved significant gains for its people in the realm of social services...

...But the Castro regime plunged immediately into a program of social improvement...

...Even scaling-down government contentions that this program eradicated illiteracy at one blow, the accomplishments of the campaign cannot be shrugged off, and the usefulness of literacy for economic development is evident...

...I was told that the questions were translated into Spanish and brought to the attention of Castro and his advisers...

...Wage increases are now forbidden without official authorization...

...It had all the trappings to display—large-scale nationalization, massive social reforms, a one-party political apparatus, and the instruments of suppression and regimentation so essential to the totalitarian state...

...He was a man of wide knowledge and experience...

...There is a depressing similarity between Formosa and Miami...

...Perhaps because of the psychological parallel...

...When I arrived, Castro was already there, on the platform above us, complete with beard, uniform, pistol on his hip, and cigar in his mouth...

...The country simply lacks resources for much industrialization: Imported Russian petroleum, for example, is almost its sole source of power...

...It would be extremely difficult for the Cuban government to refuse to resume normal relations with the United Stales if the right sort of effort were to be made, on our side...

...He hardly could have said anything else: Lack of American products, despite shipments from the Communist countries, is causing severe economic difficulties which affect a great many Cubans...

...This recently announced change, resulting from the decline in agricultural production, especially sugar, which is running thirty per cent below 1961, virtually scraps the basic Agrarian Reform Law under which thousands of land-ownership titles were distributed to land-hungry peasant families...

...Greeting me, an American, they all looked me straight in the eye, one human being to another...

...government monopoly of distribution and on a host of government regulations...

...By giving Negroes equal opportunities with white-skinned Cubans, the government has won the loyalty of most of that one-third of the nation...

...Officials conceded to me that many Cubans are eating less today, but they are quick to point out, with considerable justification, that more Cubans are eating more regularly than was true in pre-Castro days...

...Collectivized farmers in other countries have shown a preference for owning their own land and farming it individually...

...A shortage of doctors, resulting from the emigration of hundreds to Miami, has hampered the health program, but new doctors are being trained rapidly, though at a lower level of competence...

...a small farmer on his own acres in Pinar del Rio province, tilling land formerly belonging to one of the less admirable of the old sugar barons...

...The suppression of the civil liberties we cherish was at least as brutal under the Batista regime we tolerated and aided for so long as it is today under Castro, and is as great in Franco's Spain, which is our military ally and the beneficiary of generous U.S...

...It was pleasant, for an American, to be offered a frosty Daiquiri—and a pretty Cuban girl— in Sloppy Joe's, and to be regaled with soft-talk: "We Cubans also love baseball...

...Both the deposed Chinese and the disaffected Cubans who fled their countries have received aid and comfort from the United States, not only in a personal sense (to which no one could object), but as leaders and members of political organizations in exile whose avowed purpose is to invade their homelands and recapture power...

...Probably the most important single factor in Castro's continuing command of substantial public support is the policy of the United States...

...Subsequently, on the basis of discussions with a number of qualified Cubans, Westerners, and neutralists in Havana, I prepared a list of questions to be submitted to Castro through the Foreign Office...

...In the field of education, where the government is already supreme, new decrees have just been adopted, aimed at orienting the thinking of children outside the classroom...

...In the field of labor, the Castro government has just decreed sweeping new controls similar to those in force in the Soviet Union...

...It is this fact—plus the Castro regime's not unfounded fear of U. S. invasion —that accounts in great measure for the recent Soviet shipment of huge quantities of supplies and equipment and large numbers of advisers and technicians...

...But a year and a half later, as I roamed the Cuban countryside, I failed to see any of the new factories...

...Some of the same public figures in the United States are identified with aid to both the Chinese and Cuban exiles...

...The evidence of Cuba's commitment to Communism is overwhelming...

...But because of poor production planning and inefficient administration, adults are forced to queue up for hours to buy a modest supply of basic staples...

...The upper class and much of the middle class, which were the sources of greatest opposition to Castro's sharp turn Leftward, have fled to Florida...

...Revolutionary Cubans are trying to find themselves as Cubans, as human beings...

...I was struck by the thought that we had been through all this once before— in China...

...So long as I accepted this relationship, we were friends...

...Many Cubans, I believe, would prefer a vehicle modeled on a more democratic design—if it were going their way...

...Farming will now be based in large part on collectives while the peasant-operated cooperatives are being converted into state farms, much as in the Soviet Union...

...Eastern European technicians in Cuba told me that even when they were mistaken for Americans, they were treated extremely well...

...How much support does Castro have among the people of Cuba...

...It is interesting to speculate whether this mutual need will continue...

...This personality trait, I was told, was in evidence long before he came down from the mountains to preside over the government in Havana...

...The Cuban people, presumably, demand the right to be in error, among other things...

...Last year about 100,000 students, ranging in age from twelve to twenty years, spent six to nine months in the countryside teaching illiterates to read and write...