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Ciudad Libertad (Liberty City) is a huge educational complex that covers more than 1,000 acres of former military barracks in Havana. It is the pride of the Castro government; more than 10,000 Cubans study there, taking primary, high-school and technical-school courses. An art instructor laid it on the line: "Children don't have prejudices. They are like fruit on the tree, ready to be plucked when ripe." On the walls were student sketches of Castro with peace doves, Castro standing atop the globe with a radiant smile, Castro at the Bay of Pigs invasion, a defiant David facing a hideous U.S. Goliath. A reporter asked if art was giving way to politics. "No," said the instructor. "We give the children complete freedom in what they do. I just give them a theme. Last week we talked about Algeria and the Congo. Today, I'll tell them about South Viet Nam."
Strings Attached. So secure is Communism in Cuba—Moscow's brand of Communism—that only about 3,000 to 4,000 Russian troops remain in the country, most of them genuine technical advisers. The Chinese, once very much in evidence, are scarcely seen any more. They have almost nothing to sell and very little to say. The one place where their influence was still strong until recently was in Castro's overseas operations, where, at Che Guevara's inspiration, the whole tone was a blatant call for immediate bloody revolt. Castro is still permitted to support his "wars of national liberation," but Moscow insists on knowing all about such operations and wants to be sure that they are carried on without leaving such obvious traces as the three-ton Cuban arms cache uncovered in Venezuela in 1963. That error lost Castro his diplomatic relations with every Hemisphere nation except Mexico and Canada.
For the past several months Castro has felt the results of a Havana meeting of Latin American Communist leaders last November, at which Moscow demanded, and Castro agreed, that Cuba channel its subversion through existing orthodox Communist parties—with a few notable exceptions, such as in Venezuela, Colombia and Guatemala. This now gives the Russians better control of purse strings and operating methods. The Havana meeting also laid out a list of likely present and future targets. Among them: Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Paraguay and British Guiana.