Up in the hills of eastern Cuba, 50 U.S. and Canadian citizens were caught—some to their own amusement—in the middle of the war between Rebel Fidel Castro and Dictator Fulgencio Batista. Their captor and genial host: Raúl Castro, Fidel's younger brother, who was mistakenly convinced that the U.S. is arming Batista. Wishing to teach Washington a lesson, young Castro decided to kidnap Americans wholesale from the neighboring sugar mills and nickel mines, and from among the personnel of the U.S. Guantanamo naval base. But he was also at pains to let his captives know that he meant no offense.
Impulsively he let five of them go, then three, and early this week five more. He fed and housed the others well, and drafted an apology to their "parents, wives and sweethearts." The kidnaped men were equally gallant. "A swell guy, that Raúl Castro," said Edward Cannon, a builder from Cornwall, Ont., as he stepped off a helicopter at the base upon being freed. "We had good food and plenty of it, and beds with clean sheets," chimed in Henry Salmonson of Portland, Ore.
No Worry. One day TIME Correspondent Jay Mallin slipped through the no man's land from the city of Guantánamo, slogged north by jeep and foot up muddy mountain trails and became the first newsman to bring an on-the-spot story out from the captives. His report:
"At the first hostage camp was Thomas Mosness, 22, a bespectacled Navy airman from Ames, Iowa. He had a .45-cal. pistol and gunbelt given him by his captors. He practices fast draw with the rebels, said he is 'just like one of them.' Further in the hills, I reached a main rebel headquarters, where the 26th of July [rebel] flag flies, a clerk typist pounds out war orders, and eight elderly civilian hostages live with no complaints. 'Hell, a few days won't hurt us,' said one. 'We are all rebel sympathizers anyway.' On the 4th of July the rebels served up roasted pig for dinner. The hostages were shown bomb casings with U.S. markings, were taken to see a dead three-year-old boy 'with a big hole in his head' from a Batista air raid. They were also harangued about the delivery of 300 rocket warheads to the Cuban air force at the Guantánamo base on May 18—the event that touched off the protest kidnapings."
The arms were live replacements for practice warheads that the U.S. shipped to Cuba's President Batista by mistake in 1957 under the mutual-security pact. They represented no change in the current U.S. embargo on arms to Batista. But the rebels, buffeted by combat and terrorism that have taken at least 3,000 Cuban lives, see the world more and more as either friend or enemy, with no middle ground.
Buildup. Castro has still not gained enough popular support to bounce Batista, but Reporter Mallin saw surprising military strength in the mountains. Ammunition, once scarce, is now plentiful enough to be wasted on potshots at coconuts. The armed, uniformed men in the Sierra del Cristal (where Raúl Castro holds out) and the neighboring Sierra Maestra (Fidel Castro's headquarters) total at least 2,000. The rebels have a pool of stolen trucks and jeeps, operate an airstrip into which arms are flown from some mysterious supplier.