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This INRA inner crowd is applying a clever squeeze on the $850 million U.S. investment in Cuba. In the face of prohibitive decrees on oil exploration, petroleum companies representing virtually every major U.S. oil firm would gladly ship every drilling rig out of the country —except that they dare not rouse Castro's ire against their $75 million investment in Cuba refineries. The sugar companies, fuming at the pending expropriation of their land for token payment, still hold cane mills representing a big chunk of the total $300 million investment; Conrado Becquer, boss of the Sugar Workers' Federation, warns that any cut in the Cuba quota on the high-priced U.S. market will lead to seizure of the mills.
In this cat-and-mouse game, the decisions are all flowing from INRA's towering headquarters, the most tightly guarded building in Havana, with white-helmeted security guards at every staircase and elevator bank. From there go INRA agents to scour Europe for credit and for weapons and warplanes to arm the peasants and the rebel army. Inside the building, Fidel Castro, his pro-Communist brother Raúl, his old Communist crony Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, and Communist-lining Núñez Jiménez play chess far into the night and plot their course, which has cost heavily in production losses, decline in private investment, falling gold reserves, instability for the Cuban peso—sure to lead, in the end, to police-state controls and hunger.