Cuba: The Massacre

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very narrow road and a railroad bed from the beach to Jagüey Grande," he said, "a distance of 24 miles, with swamp on both sides and mosquitoes, mosquitoes, mosquitoes. This swamp offers some advantages—you can't be flanked. But it makes no difference; you can be stopped easily enough." Nevertheless, the plan was to cut Cuba in two by stabbing quickly northward along the road and the railroad bed to the main east-west highway, and on to the northern coast.

As the world waited, and was told nothing, the general assumption was that the venture might succeed. The first intercepted Castro-army messages told of heavy attack and confusion so great that the messages were stopped "for fear of alarming the people." Reports poured in that the Isle of Pines, jammed with an estimated 10,000 anti-Castro political prisoners,* was under fire from five vessels.

In Miami and Manhattan, spokesmen for Miró Cardona's council announced fighting at Baracoa, Santa Clara and Pinar del Río. Rumors raced across the island that Brother Raül Castro had been captured in Oriente province. Reports of defections among navy and militia units were reinforced by a fragmentary radio call from a naval base east of Havana that there were only eight men left—all the rest had "walked away."

In the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson labored to explain to the world what was already self-evident: that the U.S. considered Castro a clear threat to hemisphere security and encouraged the Cuban exiles in their attempt to bring him down. Speaking with unusual intensity, Stevenson sought to accent the positive, reassuring Latin America in particular that the U.S. had no intention of reviving Yankee imperialism, but was acting in the interests of freedom after extreme, prolonged, unceasing provocation. He ridiculed the shrill contention of Raül Roa, Castro's liverish little ambassador, that the invaders were scum, hired mercenaries.

"Many of them are Dr. Roa's friends and associates of long standing," said Stevenson. "They make a rather impressive list: the first Provisional President of the Revolutionary Government, Dr. Manuel Urrutia; the first Prime Minister, Dr. José Miró Cardona; the first President of the Supreme Court, Dr. Emilio Menéndez." Stevenson read the full roll call: "Nearly two-thirds of Castro's first Cabinet, rebel leaders, labor leaders, editors and commentators, and even such confidants as Juan Orta, the head of the Prime Minister's own office.

"There was great sympathy in the United States for the proclaimed goals of the Cuban revolution," Stevenson went on. "But in the course of 1959, Castro began the anti-American, anti-United States campaign that in recent months has risen to so strident a crescendo." Stevenson concentrated his appeal on the Latin American diplomats present: "We must not forget that Dr. Roa has described President Frondizi of Argentina in terms so revolting that I will not repeat them.* The official Cuban radio has poured shrill invectives on governments and leaders throughout the hemisphere, and the more democratic and progressive the government, the more the regime recognizes it as a mortal enemy and all the more savage becomes its abuse." Time after time Castro has "avowed his