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Wither on the Vine. Looking on, the U.S., exactly a year after the Bay of Pigs, is following a conspicuous game of "look, no hands." The Kennedy Administration, once burned on Cuba, puts little faith in the wishful theories that Castro might be helped in his fight with the Communists, or converted into a Caribbean Tito. Maverick expeditions to Castroland from Florida are headed off; the exile counter-plotters have dispersed—the CIA seeks them out occasionally to see what they are up to, but offers no real help. A few two-and three-man CIA expeditions land in Cuba to bury containers of weapons for possible future use. Small-scale guerrilla bands fight and die in Cuba without U.S. help.
But all the emphasis is on letting Castro wither on the vine, while other Latino nations are helped through the Alliance for Progress. The U.S.-imposed economic embargo and the U.S. diplomatic offensive to isolate Cuba from the rest of the hemisphere have had some effects. But it is Castro's own violent behavior more than U.S. propaganda that turns the hemisphere from him, and it is Cuban mismanagement more than U.S. starving-out that is wrecking the economy.
The desperate turns a disheartened Cuba may take are many. The Bay of Pigs invasion did Castro the invaluable favor—so essential in fastening a dictatorship on a people—of convincing the discontented that resistance is futile. Most of the diplomats and foreign journalists in Havana (who can no longer count on the frankness of those they talk to) see little chance of a popular revolt, and sense that, though greatly diminished, the reservoir of idealism and expectancy that Castro began with still exists among many campesinos.
The better-off who wish to leave still crowd the Pan Am and KLM flights at the rate of 2,000 a week, having been compelled to leave all their money behind.
Like Communists everywhere, those in Cuba may not know how to run an economy or make the public happy, but they know how to hold control. A likelier possibility is a fallout among the factions who govern, and it is a U.S. worry that when it suits the Communists, Castro might be found murdered with a U.S. pistol lying near by. The same thought must trouble Castro, for he no longer moves around freely, unattended. Already assassination attempts have been reported against Brother Raul.
For the present, old-line Communists still need Castro, must do him homage and dare not switch off his loudspeaker.
Perhaps they are not yet prepared to inherit the mess. But another realignment of leadership seems inevitable, and much of the betting favors increased power for Bias Roca, Rodriguez & Co. For Cuba, the melancholy prospect is of continued hardship and little hope of freedom or improvement. In which case, men of cunning and mettle have the best chance of survival. Bias Roca, the Rock, figures on being firmly in place.