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Machado & Menocal, U. S. liberals were perfectly willing to believe the worst about President Machado. The stories of political assassination, university closings, press gagging, lack of personal liberty have been repeated too often and with too much circumstance to be denied. Then there is the shark chute of Cabana fortress. A cement garbage slide exists in the old fort leading to the waters of the harbor. Ever since Spanish times political prisoners are supposed to have been thrown down this slide, fed to the sharks of the harbor. Only one case ever approximated verification. Two years ago Labor Leader Claude Bruzon was a political prisoner in the fortress and disappeared. When a fisherman in the harbor found an arm identified later as Bruzon's. inside a shark, the Machado Government forbade all shark fishing in the harbor (TIME, March 11, 1929).
These things may be true, but on the other hand President Machado has run the finances of his troubled country with apparent honesty and he has performed one great national service: he has built a motor road 715 miles long from one end of the island to the other, a road that was one of his strongest weapons in fighting revolution last week.
There is nothing to show that bearded General Menocal would be any better. Affable, cultivated, an aristocrat and great sugar planter, he was Cuba's President during the War, during her years of greatest prosperity. In his time he was accused of all the things he charges against Gerardo Machado. A revolution against him was put down only when the U. S. threatened intervention.
Rebel Miguel Mariano Gomez is even more of a broken reed. He was a loyal Machadan and Mayor of Havana until Machado abolished the Mayoralty six months ago by making Havana a Federal district. Shortly thereafter someone attempted to drop a bomb into President Machado's bathroom. There was plenty of evidence pointing to ex-Mayor Gomez as the instigator.
Capture. At the week's end came a story to blight the exuberance of the revolutionists. Menocal & Mendieta had indeed been captured. They had landed from the yacht Coral near the tip of Pinar del Rio. Federals were in the district. Airplanes zoomed overhead. For days they hid in the swamps along the riverbeds while loyal troops came closer and closer. Lieutenant Urrutia of the gunboat Fernandez Quevedo was searching the dense shores of Guadiana Bay in a launch. Suddenly round a bend he came on an old charcoal barge. On it were General Menocal, Colonel Mendieta, Julio Cadena, owner of the Coral and a few followers. Senor Cadena leaped in front of his chief with drawn revolver, but the bearded General brushed him aside. "Put up your revolver, amigo, it's no use."