Monday, February 25, 1957
Rebel Strength Gaining in Cuba, But Batista Has the Upper Hand.
This is the second of three articles by a correspondent of The New York Times who has just returned from Cuba.
By HERBERT L. MATTHEWS
President Fulgencio Batista of Cuba is fighting off a revolutionary offensive. As of today he has the upper hand, and with any luck be can hang on until his Presidential term ends in February, 1959.
The economy is good and most workers are contented. There are profitable sugar, coffee and tobacco crops. Tourism has been satisfactory. Investments from the United States are high and General Batista has been made to feel he has the United States behind him. The upper echelons of the Army and the police are his men and they give him his power.
Yet the President needs luck, for Cubans are a violent, unpredictable people, and the forces lined up against General Batista are strong and getting stronger every day.
These and other developments have been hidden by the strictest censorship ever imposed in Cuba. Even the best-informed Cubans do not know what is happening outside their immediate circles.
This has been the case since Jan. 15, at which time constitutional guarantees were suspended for forty-five days in all of Cuba. It is still true, though censorship on outgoing dispatches of foreign correspondents was eased on Thursday. The only way to get complete information about Cuba today is to go there, as this writer did, to talk with every type of Cuban and to travel around the island. One must then leave the country to write the story.
On such a trip one gets to understand why President Batista is so generally unpopular and why such a formidable opposition is building up against him. The dictator has lost the young generation of Cuba. The group of young rebels, led by a former law student, Fidel Castro, that dominates the Sierra Maestra at the eastern end of the island and that is fighting off successfully the cream of General Batista's army is only one element-the most dramatic one-to prove this.
Señor Castro's men, the student leaders who are on the run from the police, the people who are bombing and sabotaging every day, are fighting blindly, rashly, perhaps foolishly. But they are giving their lives for an ideal and for their hopes of a clean, democratic Cuba.
The extent of the violence and the counter-terrorism of the Army and the police are among the things that have been hidden by the censorship. The bombs have wounded some persons and killed a few, but that is not the purpose of the bombers. The aim is to do a little sabotage (power lines, water mains and communications damaged, sugar cane fields set afire here and there) and above all to register a violent protest against the dictatorship.
Perpetrators Are Unknown
The public does not know who is doing the bombing, for the police have thus far caught only one small group in Havana and none elsewhere. As a desperate measure of counter-terrorism, therefore, the police kill someone virtually every time a bomb is exploded in Havana, riddle his body with bullets, put a bomb in his hand and call the press photographers to come and take photographs. This macabre procedure is sardonically called by Habaneros, "Batista's classified advertisement."
Yet the bombings go on. In the seven nights the writer spent in Havana there were seven or eight bombings. In Santiago, at the other end of the island, there were eighteen on Feb. 15 alone. The whole of Oriente Province, the eastern-most district, is literally or figuratively up in arms against the Batista regime.
However, this does not apply to the sugar cane and other workers, who are making good money now. But permanent unemployment, which is a grave problem, affects the youth especially and contributes to their disaffection.
Communism has little to do with the opposition to the regime. There is a well-trained, hard core of Communists that is doing as much mischief as it can and that naturally bolsters all the opposition elements. But there is no Communism to speak of in Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement, the student movement or the disaffected elements in the Army.
The brutality of Cuban to Cuban is always horrifying to foreigners. While it is taken as part of the game in Cuba, as in Spain, there is no doubt that counter-terrorism is not effective with Cubans.
In Holguin, Oriente Province, the tough Army commander sent by General Batista gave what the citizens now ironically call "Batista's Christmas present." The bodies of youths began showing up in the mornings in the streets, until there were twenty-six by the turn of the year.
800 Women Demonstrated
At the same time in Santiago, down on the coast, four bodies turned up, one of a 15-year-old boy who, according to medical testimony, had been tortured for twenty-four hours before being killed. Eight hundred women of Santiago, including the mother of the boy, marched through the streets of Santiago with placards on Jan. 4 in one of Cuba's most bitterly impressive demonstrations.
Eugenio Cusidó, a Deputy, planned to read in Congress Jan. 15 the names of the men who perpetrated these crimes. A brother of the Deputy had been dragged from his home in Holguin by the dreaded Rural Police and hanged. On Jan. 15 Government supporters were ordered to stay away from Congress. There was no quorum, but the Government announced that its measures of censorship and suspension of constitutional guarantees were automatically in effect. Most lawyers say this was illegal.
Señor Cusidó arose, nevertheless, and tried to speak, but the chairman suspended the meeting because there was no quorum. For obvious reasons, Señor Cusidó fled to Miami.
It is universally agreed that there is more corruption than ever under the Batista regime and this is saying a great deal in Cuba. The enormous peculations, in which President Batista is said by everyone to take a large share, is more concentrated now, being mostly in the hands of Army generals and public works contractors. There is smuggling on a great scale and Havana is becoming a wide open city for gambling.
With all the advantages he has had, President Batista merely had to avoid mistakes to coast through this term of office, to which he was elected Nov. 1, 1954. However, he has made bad mistakes and seems rattled. Otherwise he would not have introduced the tightest of all Cuban censorships, which has been proving such a boomerang that the people have even doubted that the economic situation was good. The rumors going around Havana and the other Cuban cities are all far worse than the reality.
The Cubans are a volatile, tough and brave people. Their anger and disappointment have been rising steadily. It is being said in Cuba that because of this the future looks more hopeful.
Tomorrow: the danger to the dictatorship of General Batista and the current wave of civil resistance in Cuba.
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