CUBA: The New Revolutionaries

Cuba’s new revolutionaries may not be very well organized, but they are learning, and they mean what they say. The Havana resistance promised Fidel Castro no rest—no rest is what he is getting. In the early morning one day last week, eight bombs exploded in the city, knocking out the electricity in a fifth of Havana, including the business district. Burning phosphorous sticks went into the mail drops at the central post office to burn the day’s mail collection; another bomb burst a water pipe at an intersection.

Dynamite Downtown. Havana has seen noisier days, including one with 20 bombs earlier in the week, but none worse. In place of the usual black-powder noisemakers planted in the suburbs, these bombs were exploded downtown and were packed with dynamite. The provinces were not far behind. Saboteurs on horseback burned out an Agrarian Reform Institute garage in Pinar del Rio, derailed the Havana-Santiago express train at Santa Clara, fired a Havana-Santiago bus.

The opposition’s strongest blow to date found Castro showing signs of strain. El Mundo Editor Luis Gomez Wanguermert, a Castro spokesman, said flatly: “Cuba would welcome any relaxation of tension with the U.S.” A few nights later at Havana University, Castro himself announced: “The Cuban revolution does not have to be exported.”

Hard to Turn Back. Events that Castro himself set in motion were moving too fast for any sudden slowdown. At Cape Canaveral, Fla. a U.S. range safety officer made a lightning decision, pressed the destruction button on a malfunctioning satellite rocket, and fragments weighing up to 40 Ibs. showered down within ten miles of Holguin (pop. 70,000). In normal times the incident would be covered by an embarrassed apology; in the anti-U.S. atmosphere of Cuba the effect was hopelessly inflammatory. Revolution, Castro’s mouthpiece, exploded at a “new Yankee provocation.” Nor was the U.S. very conciliatory: to Cuba went a note curtly asking for the fragments back.

A couple of hundred miles away in the Sierra Escambray, Dr. Manuel Fajardo, 29, Castro’s close friend and personal physician, who was also commander of the local militia, intercepted two boys heading into hills that still hide some 300 oppositionists. Dr. Fajardo opened fire and was shot dead in the fight. Fidel Castro gave Fajardo the revolutionary version of a Chicago-style funeral, and bitterly blamed “the bandits of the Pentagon.” Meanwhile, in Peking, “Che” Guevara got for Cuba’s bare-larder economy the biggest foreign loan Red China ever made—$60 million for five years at no interest. It was growing difficult for Cuba to turn back, or even pause.