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Bad Notices. Most of the 350 foreign newsmen, brought to Cuba by Castro for the show, filed shocked reports. They were unaccustomed to the normal standards of Cuban jurisprudence, which permits trials by a panel of judges instead of a jury, admission of hearsay evidence. But they indignantly faulted the trials for the open prejudice of the judges, the popcorn-munching atmosphere, the haste, the catering to the mob's thirst for blood. Cracked one reporter: "Where do the lions come in?" Castro's bad press notices mounted, from Buenos Aires, Rio, Lima, Bogota, Mexico City. "The laurels have been soiled by blood," said Bogota's respected El Tiempo. U.S. opinion was sharply critical, with the notable exceptions of Democratic Congressmen Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (N.Y.) and Charles Porter (Ore.) who journeyed to Cuba at Castro's urging and proclaimed that they "saw no evidence of injustice."
Stream of Consciousness. The man behind the show executions reacted with petulance, incomprehension, irrelevancies, inept concessions. Red-eyed from a cold and plain fatigue, Fidel Castro still tried to run the country from Floor 23 of the Havana Hilton Hotel; he roamed through crushing mobs of sycophants in his $100-a-day suite. The hero's soft, high-pitched voice ran on for 20 hours a day, scolding, demanding, refusing, laughing.
The stream of consciousness was mainly concerned with the unfriendly face of the world. "Criticism hurts," Castro admitted, "when coming from Mexico, which once gave me asylum" (TIME Cover, Jan. 26). But "if 20 people make a good jury, why don't thousands of people make a good jury?"
The bedroom oratory, and a speech to a mass rally of 600,000 Cubans, reached wide to justify the summary trials and executions: "They are much fairer than Niirnberg." For the present, Castro said, only Batista henchmen with more than six murders to their credit would be dealt with -"The criminals that we shoot will not number more than 400. That is more or less one criminal for each 1,000 men, women and children assassinated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
The executions did not stop, and in the canebrakes many another score was settled. In Santiago, five more losers were shot, in Matanzas five, in Cardenas six. So far at least 258 have died.
Snarled Government. While Castro was concentrating his energies on vengeance, government business got badly snarled. At the presidential palace, crowds of job-seekers and well-wishers milled about; their weapons had been methodically checked at the door with numbered metal tags. Devoid of political experience, President Manuel Urrutia, onetime judge, kept the Cabinet in all-night sessions, quibbling over petty details. "He might make a President in normal times," said one of his own assistants, "but these are not normal times." The treasury was still running on a hand-to-mouth basis, collecting $2,500,000 a day in taxes, much of it in advance. One unexpected windfall: $3,270,170 in bonds and cash, left behind in a strongbox by Batista.