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The Alarmed Reaction. Castro's very success at exporting revolution is breeding a reaction. After an initial flirtation with the Cubans, liberal and leftist parties in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica and Honduras have begun to rid themselves of radical Castro supporters. Puerto Rico's Governor Luis Munoz Marin, a stubborn early friend of the Cuban revolution, last week got fed up and demanded recall of the acting Cuban consul, charging that she was encouraging Puerto Rican separatist plotters to visit Havana. Venezuela's President Romulo Betancourt and Costa Rica's ex-President Jose Figueres, both left of center, are no longer on speaking terms with Castro.
El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guatemala have forced out Cuban envoys or broken off diplomatic relations. Colombia's President Alberto Lleras Camargo warned that he would break relations "with any state which tries to utilize diplomatic privileges to inflict damages on us." Peru summoned the OAS to consider Red infiltration into the Hemisphere (see The Americas).
Many Cuban career diplomats, dismayed by Castro's use of embassies for revolution, have either quit or invited purging. Out so far: at least a dozen officers, including the ambassadors to Bonn, London, Ottawa, Bern, Rome, San Salvador. Last week Havana's vice consul in Los Angeles, a diplomat for 18 years, proudly resigned from "Castro Brothers & Co., exclusive representatives of Moscow and Peking in America."