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In the absence of an assist from the U.S., the rebels will keep up the bombing campaign, which they hope will tell public opinion that "there is a rebel organization." Most Havana citizens, once angry at bomb terror, now seem to enjoy seeing the strongman's authority flouted, and the rebels have become expert at producing the maximum bang with minimum injury. When 90 bombs exploded in Havana a month ago, only eight people were hurt, no one killed.
Dirty Money. While they harass and hope, the rebels are worrying plenty about the makeup of their movement. To help pay the bills, they take soiled money in Miami from ex-President Prio. Leadership is split between Castro himself, the Havana plotters and a shadow government of sympathetic exiles in Miami. The conservatives at the top fear that the longer they stay behind their desks while Castro is in the hills getting headlines, the smaller their influence on him will be. Recently he summoned five of the Havana brains to the hills for a conference, and they had to turn him down—they were too flabby for the trip.
They have to worry whether Castro has really discarded the socialistic beliefs that he held earlier, including drastic land reforms and nationalization of U.S.-owned power companies. Castro persists in the cane-burning campaign—a pointless waste of the country's wealth that may well anger many Cubans. Up in the hills, notes one conservative rebel with a mixture of admiration and fear, "he acts like a king before the Magna Carta, sitting under a tree and dispensing justice."
One alternative is cooperating with Batista in the election that he has set for June1. To this idea, rebels of every coloring snap one answer: "We will not deal with a gangster for our country." They will stick with Castro, who may become the brilliant liberator that his young followers see, or only, as one older rebel worried last week, "a man on horseback." It was not lost on thoughtful Cubans last week that Colonel Fermin Cowley, murdered by the rebels and mourned by Batista, was an idealistic young rebel himself 25 years ago.