(See front cover)
More than any other time of year it was Cuba-time last week—time to sail into Havana Harbor and remember the Maine, time to watch Corona Corona cigars being made in a factory across the street from Cuba's presidential palace, time to tennis, golf and swim at La Playa de Marianoa ("Cuba's Monte Carlo"), finally time to go down and see "Cuba's Mussolini," President Gerardo Machado y Morales, who has just locked 1,000 smart, socialite, yacht-owning Cubans out of their own Havana Yacht Club because a potent member of the Dictator's cabinet was "snubbed" by a minor member of El Club.
To the Cuba-conscious last week passed thus in brief review:
National Affairs. Cuba's polite, distinctively uniformed English-Spanish speaking "tourist police" had the tourists well and safely in hand; but President Machado was jumpier than ever about what Cuba's excitable citizens would do next.
He was not much worried, for a wonder, about the students of the National University, revolutionists to a man. The students had just blown off steam, staged a "surprise protest against Machado" in the heart of Havana's commercial section. Surprised businessmen were quietly fitting new plate glass into their shop and office windows.
What made the President jump was a despatch from British Nassau to the Cuban State Department, later "confirmed by the War and Navy Departments" to the effect that two schooners loaded with munitions were racing for the Cuban shores. Promptly the entire Cuban Navy (19 vessels) put to sea, and every Spanish-language newspaper in Havana was suppressed. Finally by executive decree, Dictator Machado conferred "upon all members of the Cuban Army and Navy, including officers, soldiers and sailors regardless of rank and whether on active duty or not, full powers to pursue police investigations and to make arrests."
Foreign Affairs. Cubans take little or no interest in British, French, German or Italian affairs, were passionately concerned last week about whether King Alfonso XIII is soon to be dethroned and a Spanish republic proclaimed. Edward of Wales will shortly arrive in Havana, but Cuban newspapers (until suppressed last week) were apathetic toward H. R. H., unstirred even by red-hot British despatches that Edward of Wales' Argentine tango is now almost perfect.
Cuba's danzon tune of the minute is Suavecito. Suave excerpt:
Carola, how you love
When there's no light
To dance close,
Slow and easy
Slow and easy. . . .
Business. Chevrolets, Buicks, Packards are favorite Cuban cars, but with business 60% below normal Cubans are pinching their gasoline pennies, watching anxiously to see whether the national sugar industry on which everything depends will be "saved" by the Chadbourne plan now being negotiated in Berlin (TIME, Dec. 15 & 29). Plan: Cuba and all other leading sugar countries would restrict output, hope thus to raise the price of sugar (now scraping bottom at 1.4 cents per lb.).