Matthews on Cuba

...And the cost is reasonable—an annual investment no greater than our weekly investment in the Vietnam war...

...Educational progress has been astonishing...

...Even Franco, Matthews notes, gave amnesties to political prisoners...

...Matthews sees Cuba's commitment to the Soviet bloc as a historic necessity in the geopolitical balance of the 1960s...

...Matthews agrees that the revolution always has been and still is what Castro says it is and decides to make it...

...His commitment to freeing Cuba forever from this humiliating role is for Matthews a key to Castro's popular support...

...a year later he told another that there must be 20,000...

...Cuba is not a police state: there is no police terror," he writes...

...One can hope the point reaches his close personal friends in Havana...

...The inference is obvious and, for the United States, ominous...

...The documentation by Matthews of U.S...

...Matthews believes Castro is "far to the left of, and far more revolutionary than" the Communist Party, which he uses without ever allowing it to dictate to him...

...His interviews for The New York Times with the rebel leaders in the Sierra Maestra in 1957, after Batista had claimed that the group had been wiped out and Castro killed, caused a worldwide sensation...

...No international body and no foreign journalist— not even Matthews—has been allowed to visit political prisoners for the past ten years...

...Living in retirement in England for the past ten years, he has visited Cuba frequently and has been accorded a freedom available to few others to observe and interrogate...

...Matthews is uniquely qualified for the task he has undertaken in Revolution in Cuba of describing what has happened and what is happening in a country which, historically and strategically, is of paramount importance for the United States...

...The U.S...

...Particularly revolting to Cubans were our many efforts to restore to power the very gangsters and thugs who had robbed Cuba blind for years and salted away their ill-gotten millions in Miami...

...GARY MacEOIN Latin America has 300 million people, and twenty-five years from now it will have twice that many...

...At least a third of the population is economically superfluous...

...For those who remember the bitterly anti-Franco copy filed by Matthews for The New York Times during the Spanish civil war, the comparison stings...

...intervention, first to ensure that Batista would not be succeeded by Castro but by somebody more amenable to its aims, and then to eliminate him, fits in with all the other recent revelations of worldwide violations of international law by the CIA and other agencies...

...Free medical and dental care is guaranteed to all, and the necessary personnel and facilities are now available...

...But the overall direction and thrust of the revolution that began when Fidel Castro replaced Fulgencio Batista as dictator of Cuba's destiny in January 1959 have been maintained...

...Rene Dumont, a French socialist who had supported the Cuban revolution from the outset, broke openly with Castro in 1970, largely on the ground that his personalist and arbitrary control of the process was preventing its fruition...

...it is mass migration of a whole generation from one level of civilization to another...

...What they want is to make Cuba economically viable...

...Insofar as all Latin Americans see their relationship with the United States in similar terms, this is a matter for serious reflection by us...

...these Latin Americans produce nothing and consume only enough to maintain a short, impoverished, diseased, and illiterate life...

...Evidence, nevertheless, is mounting that progress is spectacular...

...Since productivity and its benefits are concentrated in a small privileged sector and are increasingly dominated by outside capital and technology, and fertility is highest among the destitute, the prognosis for the region is desperate...

...influence on its decision making...

...This is more than social mobility...

...Castro, Matthews insists, had no ideology in 1959, and his ideology is still largely a cover for pragmatic decisions which his commitment to transform Cuba demands...

...Polio, malaria, and diphtheria have been eliminated and the incidence of enteric diseases greatly reduced...

...Cuba is undergoing "one of the most complete social revolutions of all time...

...He foresees a slow but significant institutionalization, so that the disappearance of Castro would be unlikely to provoke a crisis...

...There have been many mistakes and reverses...

...Even those who disapprove of policy or grumble about shortages recognize that for the first time Cuba's cabinet minister "is not enriching himself, not sending money abroad, not buying real estate in Florida, not living in arrogant luxury, and is working very hard...

...intervention, all but one have failed...

...Many countries have tried in the past quarter century to break out of this abysmal condition...

...Infant mortality is lower than in any other Latin America country, and no child need suffer from malnutrition...

...He insists, nevertheless, that the Soviet role is far from dominant, not because Russians are innately more altruistic, but because their objectives are different...

...Reporter Herbert L. Matthews is on solid ground when he says that ten or twenty more years may be needed to determine economic success, but that the process has already in many ways proved itself socially "a great and enduring success...

...The effort of Cuba, the one that has not failed, has a unique factor: total elimination of U.S...

...economic blockade, combined with its massive and apparently continuing covert "destabilization" efforts, hurt severely...

...It is true, of course, that while Cuba has not failed, it has not yet carried its ambitious development plans to an irreversibly successful conclusion...

...But he insists that Castro has the total confidence and support of all the other leaders, as well as "an enormous mass following" of people of all ages...

...What he did have in 1959, and long before, was a hatred of the United States for having cheated Cuba out of its victorious war of liberation against Spain, and for having held it as a colony and satellite...

...Thousands of young people, writes Matthews, are light-years away from their parents...

...The worst that can be said, according to Matthews, is that large numbers of political offenders are held indefinitely in jails and rehabilitation labor camps...

...Castro told one reporter in 1964 that the number was less than 15,000...

...Thanks largely to direct and indirect U.S...

...How long can we prevent other Latin Americans from attempting this style...

...Although an "ideological enemy at all times" (in the words of Che Guevara), Matthews developed and maintains close personal friendships with Castro and those closest to him...

...They are not interested in acquiring property or business control...

...Gary MacEoin is the author of "Revolution Next Door" and "No Peaceful Way: Chile's Struggle for Dignity.'' He has reported from every part of Latin America, including Cuba, for thirty years...

...And what will be the cost to us in money, blood, prestige, and ideals if we continue our policy of preventing an extension of the Cuban way...