(5 of 5)
Havana had had the quietest week in many years. Its police blotter was almost blank. The ABC murders of Machadist suspects had ceased entirely under the radical Junta. Business went on as usual, in sight of battleships, machine-guns, counter marching soldiers.
The Interior was different. New provincial governments had barely got going under de Cespedes when the sergeants' coup discouraged the countrymen's last hope of having any local governments at all. The same strikes that had brought on Machado's exile were still going on. Looters were raiding Sinclair and Standard Oil Co. stations; rioters in Cienfuegos broke into stores. In Oriente and Santa Clara Provinces the sugar-workers seized the mills, managers fled for their lives. Other workers presented "impossible" agreements to the managers with the choice of handing the mills over to the workers. If Cuba had a real Red menace last week it was in the back hills.
Carlos Manuel de Cespedes stayed at home. There were no automobiles outside his house. Asked whether he intended to confer with the officers in the National Hotel, he said, "I am not disposed to lend myself to participation in a musical comedy whose only music would be clatter of machine-guns."