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An increasingly influential advocate of economic revision is Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, 50, goateed, urbane boss of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform. He is a longtime Communist in a land where, as an experienced Western diplomat puts it, "instinctively the old Communists follow the Moscow line, the new Communists the Peking line." Says Rodríguez: "First we must satisfy our population. If we must reduce the tempo of our industrial development in order to produce consumer goods, then we must do it."
Al Trabajo. Fidel Castro still rails at the U.S. in his speeches. But Cuba's Communists do not seriously fear a U.S. invasion. President Kennedy, in fact, has promised them that the U.S. will not invade. Nor do they worry much about an internal uprising; after four years of power, they feel secure behind their 50,000-man army and 250,000-man militia. The slogan "Patria o Muerte [fatherland or death]" was on every wall 17 months ago; today the dinning words are Al Trabajo, meaning "to work."
Confident that they are in for keeps, Cuba's Communists at every level sing Moscow's song of peaceful co-existence with the U.S. Anti-Yankee propaganda is less shrill in tone, and those vicious caricatures of Uncle Sam poking life less Latinos in the belly are disappearing from the papers. "Why is it," asks a University of Havana student, "that Kennedy wants to be friends with Khrushchev, but not with Fidel? After all, both are leaders of socialist nations."