The Cuban Dilemma

By R. Hart Phillips

AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT BY THE NEW YORK TIMES CORRESPONDENT—WHAT REALLY OCCURRED IN CUBA AFTER FIDEL CASTRO SEIZED POWER

In three short years Fidel Castro and his revolution have destroyed the once prosperous economy of Cuba and helped the Soviet Union establish its first armed beachhead in the Western Hemisphere.

Ruby Hart Phillips, for twenty-five years the resident New York Times correspondent in Havana, maintains that Castro’s takeover is a classic example of the incredibly inadequate American policy in foreign affairs. A display of courage and foresight even as late as 1958 would, she declares, have neutralized Castro and put Cuba back on the road to democracy.

The claim by Castro supporters, both in Cuba and the United States, that Castro was pushed into the Communist camp by our mistaken foreign policy is clearly shown to be one of the great lies of the Castro revolution. But, she stresses, the United States must take the whole responsibility for Cuba’s communism today. Step by step she analyzes the indecisive and conciliatory moves of the U.S. State.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Feb 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781787209398

R. Hart Phillips

Ruby Hart Phillips (December 12, 1902 - October 28, 1985) was a New York Times correspondent in Cuba who covered the Batista regime and the rise of Fidel Castro. She reported from the island for 24 years, from 1937 to 1961. Born in 1902 in Okene, Oklahoma, to parents who were descendants of pioneer East Tennessee families, as a young girl Phillips moved around Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, and enrolled in half a dozen schools. She attended a Dallas business school, where she learned basic secretarial skills, and held a series of miscellaneous jobs. She decided to leave the Southwest and moved to Cuba, where she took a job at Westinghouse Electric. There, she met and married James Doyle Phillips, an Arkansan who owned a modest printing shop and translating office. Phillips learned journalism from James, who began contributing to the New York Times in 1931. After James was killed in a stateside car accident in 1937, the Times allowed Phillips to take over as foreign correspondent in Cuba. She also went on to write several books about Cuba. Her first book, Cuba: Island of Paradox, published in 1959, was a personal history of Cuba from 1931 and covered the revolt that deposed the dictator Gerardo Machado, the rise and fall of Batista and the Castro revolution. A second book, The Cuban Dilemma, published in 1962, dealt with the days after Castro took power. Phillips left The Times in 1963 and became the Latin American correspondent for Newsday in Miami, Florida until her retirement several years later. She died in Cocoa Beach, Florida in 1985 at the age of 82.

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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE CUBAN DILEMMA

BY

R. HART PHILLIPS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

AUTHOR’S PREFACE 4

CHAPTER 1 6

CHAPTER 2 17

CHAPTER 3 29

CHAPTER 4 41

CHAPTER 5 53

CHAPTER 6 61

CHAPTER 7 72

CHAPTER 8 80

CHAPTER 9 87

CHAPTER 10 94

CHAPTER 11 99

CHAPTER 12 106

CHAPTER 13 120

CHAPTER 14 133

CHAPTER 15 148

CHAPTER 16 160

CHAPTER 17 170

CHAPTER 18 182

CHAPTER 19 201

CHAPTER 20 216

CONCLUSION 222

ADDENDUM 228

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 229

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

THIS IS THE STORY OF FIDEL CASTRO AND HIS REVOLUTION WHICH IN THREE SHORT YEARS DESTROYED THE ECONOMY OF THE ONCE RICH AND PROSPEROUS ISLAND OF CUBA AND MADE IT THE FIRST MILITARY STRONGHOLD OF THE COMMUNISTS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE.

As staff correspondent for the New York Times since 1937, I had watched the violent political events of Cuba which laid the groundwork for the Castro revolution. The start of the Castro revolution was inauspicious enough. Castro and eighty-one men landed on the south coast of Oriente Province on December 2, 1956, to attempt to overthrow the strongly entrenched Batista regime, which had thousands of well-armed soldiers trained by U.S. military missions. Within a brief period the majority of Castro’s force had been killed or captured and he fled into the vastness of the Sierra Maestra Mountain Range with a remnant of eleven hungry men.

Then two months later there began a chain of events which was to change the history of Cuba, The Batista regime had declared that Fidel Castro was dead and all of his men killed or captured. Señor Felipe Pazos (later president of the National Bank of Cuba in the Castro regime) came to my office to tell me that Faustino Perez, one of the Castro group, had arrived in Havana and wanted to see me. It was the idea of Castro and his followers that a foreign correspondent, preferably from the New York Times, should go into the Sierra Maestra Mountains and interview Castro to prove that he was not dead. I could not go since it meant that I would immediately be ordered to leave Cuba. I therefore arranged for Herbert L. Matthews, an editorial writer of the Times, to go. Herbert Matthews became an advocate of the young revolutionary leader, and his stories in the Times resurrected the Castro revolution and got it off to victory. One newsman in Havana called Matthews the Father of the Castro Revolution.

In my book Cuba: Island of Paradox (published in 1959), I gave an eyewitness account of the political turmoil of this Caribbean island from 1931 until Fidel Castro marched into Havana in January, 1959.

This book begins with the fall of the regime of President Fulgencio Batista in the early hours of January 1, 1659, and covers three years. As I terminate it, Fidel Castro and his Communist collaborators are firmly in control of Cuba from which more than one hundred thousand of the wealthy, the property-owning middle class, the members of professions and even the peasants have fled.

The worldwide controversy over whether or not the Castro revolution was a Communist revolution would seem to have been resolved when Castro, on December 2, 1961, declared: I am a Marxist-Leninist and I will be one until the day I die. But the argument still goes on as to whether Fidel Castro was always a Communist or whether the United States forced him into the aims of the Communist bloc.

Here is the almost day-to-day story of the Communist take-over of Cuba, which I think should allay all doubts on that question.

R. HART PHILLIPS

CHAPTER 1

The Cuban people awakened early on the rooming of January 1, 1959, to learn that President Fulgencio Batista and his high government and military officials had fled from the island.

It was a dramatic ending to the revolution of the tall, young bearded leader Fidel Castro. On December 2, 1956, Fidel Castro and eighty-one men had landed from a small boat on the south coast of Oriente Province with the avowed intention of overthrowing the Batista regime. However, within a few days the Batista army had killed or captured seventy of the group and Fidel Castro with eleven men fled to the sanctuary of the jungle-covered, almost impenetrable Sierra Maestra Mountains, which occupy the whole southern area of the eastern province of Oriente. Now two years and twenty-nine days later he was master of Cuba, the largest and richest island in the Caribbean, which is located only ninety miles from the shores of the United States.

The first indication I had that the Government was fleeing was the remark of a guest at a New Year’s dinner party in the Havana Riviera Hotel He said he had seen a group of cars loaded with women and children and suitcases, under escort of SIM (Military Intelligence Service), enter Camp Columbia Military Headquarters, near his home.

For several weeks opposition to President Batista had been growing. Having covered the violent political scene in Cuba since the early thirties, I had been contending that the breaking point was near, but neither the foreign press nor my underground had agreed with me.

There was no celebration of New Year’s that night. Ted Scott, correspondent of the National Broadcasting Company, and I had driven to the Havana Riviera through empty streets. Our host was Colonel Charles Baron, one of the hotel’s owners. The beautiful Copa Room had few guests, and there was no air of gaiety.

The remark about the cars entering Camp Columbia was made just before midnight. As soon as the half-hearted welcome to the New Year had ended, Ted and I left to see if we could check on what was happening. I telephoned the Presidential Palace and Camp Columbia but received no answer. The newspapers had closed early. The radio stations were calmly playing music. Even my assistants, Raul Casañas and Santa Valdez Rodriguez, had disappeared.

Around two o’clock I left my office and drove to my home in the suburb of Miramar. There was no one on the Malecon Sea Drive. Wide Linea Avenue was deserted and most of the houses dark. I saw only two or three cars on usually busy Fifth Avenue. Not even the customary police armed with rifles were on duty at the tunnel under the Almendares River. The ominous quiet gave me an uneasy feeling, although I was accustomed to driving home at any hour of the night.

A few minutes after I walked into my house, a big plane roared off the runway of the Camp Columbia airfield a couple of blocks away. Then another, and a third took off. My sister Irma, who was reading in bed, said she had heard several planes take-off before I arrived.

The telephone rang. It was Sarita. She told me that earlier in the evening she and Raul had driven out to Camp Columbia because they heard something strange was going on, but everything at the camp seemed quiet. I told her about the planes and asked her to help me find out what was happening.

The telephone rang again. It was Ernestina Otero, the only woman reporter assigned to Camp Columbia and a member of the Castro underground. She was wildly excited. They’ve gone, I’m sure of it—but check it. She hung up. The flight of the President and his officials was soon confirmed. I did not go to bed that night.

The news spread like wildfire. A number of the most hated figures of the Batista regime went into hiding. Some went to Latin American Embassies. Some flew to the United States; others escaped on their yachts. It was everyone for himself.

The well-organized youthful underground marched into the Havana police stations and seized control. There was no resistance. The same thing was occurring all over the island as the radio broadcast the news. However, the majority of the people slept on until daybreak.

I drove to my office at 7:00 A.M. through streets on which few people were abroad although automobiles filled with the youthful members of the underground were speeding here and there. It reminded me of another morning, in August, 1933, when Phil, my late husband, and I had driven through the same streets after the Machado regime fell Like Batista, Machado, with his officials, had fled. I wondered if the streets would soon be filled with howling mobs bent on vengeance, looting and destruction, as on that day. It was still quiet near my office, which is only a block from the Presidential Palace, though, as in 1933, small groups were discussing the news.

By ten o’clock on New Year’s morning, 1959, the mobs began gathering in downtown Havana. Shouting groups broke the parking meters to get the coins. The luxurious casinos of the Hotel Sevilla Biltmore and the Hotel Plaza were wrecked. But the Castro followers, who now called themselves the militia, moved in and scattered the mobs with gunfire.

All officers of the demoralized National Police were under arrest, and the hunt was on for every official and collaborator of the Batista government. Automobiles filled with the new militia raced through the streets. Some of the hunted were arrested in their homes, others fled. Some sold their lives dearly. Gunfire was heard all over the city.

Down at the other end of the island, Fidel Castro and his troops, as well as his younger brother Major Raul Castro, who had been fighting north of Santiago de Cuba, moved into that city. The 5,000 soldiers there surrendered without firing a shot. Santiago de Cuba, which had been a stronghold of rebel support, went wild with joy.

That night in Céspedes Park, by the ancient Cathedral, Fidel Castro proclaimed Dr. Manuel Urrutia President of the Island. He then ordered a general strike (with the exception of telephone and electric services), which was to last until the new President reached Havana and took office.

President Urrutia had for years been a judge of the Court of Appeals in Santiago de Cuba. His sole claim to fame was that at the trial of the Castro expeditionaries in 1957 he had voted to free them. In a private opinion, later made famous by the Castro propaganda machine, Dr. Urrutia said: The judicial power has the duty to tell the public the right which it has to take up arms against tyranny. Soon afterward he fled to the United States. Later he joined Castro in the Sierra Maestra Mountains.

Fidel Castro promised the people that he would restore the constitutional guarantees, which had been suspended for many months, as well as freedom of press and radio. He also declared Cuba would make the annual sugar harvest scheduled to start that month.

Meanwhile truckloads of rebels from the Escambray Mountains of Las Villas Province were rolling into Havana to be greeted with wild cheers. These young fighters belonged, to three separate groups—the Directorio Revolucionario, the Second Front of Escambray, and the Castro 26th of July revolutionary movement. The Directorio Revolucionario, composed of Havana University students and others, had opened a front in the Escambray Mountains many months previously. The Second Front of Escambray, which had fought Batista troops in another section of the mountains, was composed of professional men, property-owners, clerks, and other workers. Neither group had any connection with Fidel Castro’s 26th of July revolutionary movement, which was fighting in the Sierra Maestra Mountains 300 miles to the east.

The Directorio Revolucionario, headed by Major Faure Chaumon, a student at Havana University, and the Second Front, headed by Major Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, whose second in command was William A. Morgan, an American from Toledo, Ohio, had been at daggers’ point for months.

In September, 1958, Castro had sent Major Ernesto (Che) Guevara and 200 men from the Sierra Maestra across Camaguey Province to the Escambray Mountains to assimilate these two organizations, and cut the island into two parts.

When Major Guevara arrived, I was told, the two groups refused to place themselves under his command. Finally each group was assigned a portion of the territory. Now the Directorio Revolucionario entered Havana, occupied the University of Havana and took over the Presidential Palace. Major Chaumon issued a statement complaining that Fidel Castro had set up the provisional government in Santiago de Cuba without asking the consent or advice of any of the other revolutionary groups. Chaumon said, We believe that all organizations that fought against Batista should form a united political party.

The Second Front set up headquarters and billeted their men in public buildings and hotels. Major Guevara and his troops occupied La Cabaña Fortress across the Bay.

Major Camilo Cienfuegos (who had been sent by Castro into northern Las Villas Province when Guevara marched into Escambray) marched his men into Camp Columbia Army Headquarters on the outskirts of Havana. He took over command from General Ramon Barquin. General Barquin, former military attaché in Washington, had been in the Isle of Pines prison for two years on conviction for plotting to overthrow Batista. With the other political prisoners at Isle of Pines, he was liberated January 1 and flown to Havana.

There had been no resistance at either La Cabaña Fortress or Camp Columbia, although the rebels were outnumbered more than five to one. Most of the high-ranking officers had fled. Colonel Eulogio Cantillo, who had been left in charge at Camp Columbia by President Batista, was arrested by Castro as a traitor, and the lower-ranking officers and enlisted men who remained, believing Fidel Castro would establish a democratic regime, were ordered to stay in camp.

President Batista had brought about his own downfall. Following the overthrow of President Gerardo Machado in 1933, Dr. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes was chosen Provisional President. Fulgencio Batista, then a sergeant in the Cuban Army, overthrew him a month later and installed Ramón Grau San Martín, a professor at the University of Havana. During the thirties Batista, who made himself a general, ruled the island as a strong man, making and unmaking Presidents.

In 1940 General Batista was chosen President in an election which can be considered reasonably fair since the General was then highly popular. President Batista was succeeded by President Grau San Martín, who was returned to office by election in 1944. Dr. Grau was highly popular with the masses but his administration was one of the great disappointments of the Cuban people. In 1948 Dr. Carlos Prío Socarrás, Minister of Labor of the Grau San Martín regime, was elected President. The elections of both Grau San Martín and Prío Socarrás were considered fair by Cubans.

Since the Constitution of 1940 provided that no President could serve more than one term, elections were scheduled for June, 1952. It was a three-cornered race. The candidates were Carlos Hevia, supported by the President’s Autentico Party; Dr. Roberto Agramonte of the Cuban People’s Party, known as the Ortodoxos; and General Batista, who had returned from exile to attempt a political comeback. However, General Batista realized that he was running third in the race, as everyone expected that the Ortodoxo candidate would win. So, on March 10, 1952, with the help of the Cuban aimed forces, Batista overthrew President Prío Socarrás and established a military dictatorship.

Despite the corruption of his regime, the island prospered for a while. There were spasmodic revolts and disorders. President Batista, in the face of growing discontent and the spread of the Castro revolt, turned to wholesale killing and torture of his enemies. The long years of corruption and the expense of keeping thousands of troops to suppress terrorism and sabotage eventually affected the economic situation of Cuba. In addition investments from the United States slowed down.

The Castro revolution won not by military strength but by propaganda. The middle and upper daises, disgusted with the repressive measures of the Batista regime, supported Castro and other groups fighting Batista with arms, ammunition, and supplies. The workers and peasants remained indifferent to the struggle. The Communists waited to see if the revolution would be successful before they supported it.

Fidel Castro lured the middle and upper classes by declarations that his sole aim was to restore democracy to the island. He promised an honest administration, the restoration of the Constitution of 1940, the respect of individual rights and private property, and elections within a few months. He had named his revolutionary movement the 26th of July to commemorate the day on which he and his followers had attacked Moncada Army Post at Santiago de Cuba in 1953. Castro also declared to American newsmen, who visited him in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, that he would not tolerate Communists in his government.

Castro’s vast propaganda campaign brought him the sympathy of the majority of the people. The Batista troops sitting in their barracks or fighting in the field also listened to his siren song and felt the pressure of the rising sentiment against them. Always political-minded, the soldiers decided not to fight the rebels and thus opened the path to victory for Castro and his few hundred guerrillas. Realizing he had neither the support of his troops nor of the people, President Batista fled to the Dominican Republic.

Like a victorious Roman emperor returning to the Eternal City, Fidel Castro started a triumphal march to Havana. There were no captives tied to Castro’s chariot wheels but the people of the island were emotionally his slaves.

With his troops in jeeps, trucks, and tanks, Castro moved up the Central Highway. Thousands gathered along the highway and in towns and villages to throw flowers in his path and to get near him.

Havana was filled with joyful confusion and anticipation. The general strike had closed all industries and commercial establishments, even grocery stores and cafés. There was little to eat, garbage piled up in the streets, but the people were happy.

I had always had a steady stream of visitors but now my office was filled to overflowing all day and far into the night with rebels from the hills, members of the underground, who had been my contacts for months, friends and newsmen. I stopped work at times to tell the boys to take a rifle away from my typewriter, or to turn the muzzle of a machine gun lying on the telephone table toward the wall.

Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times and I were working day and night. Herbert and Nancy, his wife, had been spending Christmas holidays in Havana.

From the time I arrived early on the morning of the first, I did not have time to go to my home in Miramar for twelve days.

Fortunately the Times office was large. It occupied the second floor of an old Spanish house. Climbing a long stairway, one arrived in a foyer which led into a large salon which opened out onto a terrace. We kept the television set and a radio which chattered endlessly in the salon. Also, the foyer led into my office and onto a narrow balcony looking down into a patio below. Next to my office was a second office. I had converted the third office into a bedroom where I could stay when news broke rapidly as it often did. There was a bathroom, and a small kitchen where we made coffee and where Sarita sometimes cooked a dish of chicken and native vegetables which had been praised by visitors from all over the world. A winding iron stairway led to a big room on the roof where we kept files.

Ted Scott of NBC had a desk and telephone in the office next to mine but he and the other NBC correspondents and photographers sent down from New York made the Hotel Sevilla Biltmore, where Ted lived, their headquarters during the first few weeks of the Castro regime. My brother-in-law Gene Carrier, who was the NBC photographer in Havana, was also over at the Sevilla most of the time during that period and my sister was out in Miramar with the servants. I saw little of Gene and I do not think he went home either for days.

Ted (Edward) Scott, a New Zealander, was the only Kiwi in Cuba. He had come to Cuba in 1951 from Central America where he had been a newspaperman for years, and long-time editor of the Panama American. In Havana he was writing a daily column and editorial for the Havana Post and acting as correspondent for NBC.

At the time, I was trying to cure an ulcer and I was living entirely on milk. When the stores closed, Sarita went out to look for food. Dark-haired, voluble Sarita was never nonplussed by any situation. She raided her own apartment, just around the corner from the office, and what bodeguero she browbeat or persuaded into selling her groceries I do not know but she filled the refrigerator with milk and during the days that followed fed Raul, herself and various hungry newsmen.

Since Cubans, particularly the working class, buy food from day to day, Castro soon permitted the grocers to open for two or three hours per day. Long lines waited patiently while the militia, armed to the teeth, stood guard to see that order was maintained. Eggs, fruits, vegetables, milk, and other perishables disappeared. Soon the shelves were stripped of canned goods.

By that time everyone was helping maintain order—even Boy Scouts were directing traffic. Roadblocks were set up by armed militia and it was dangerous to travel at night, since these youths were trigger-happy. The headquarters of the militia had been established at the big CMQ-TV station at the edge of the suburb of Vedado. There was some looting by mobs, who were dispersed by the militia. Firing went on throughout the city day and night.

The people of Havana showered the bearded young rebels with attention, fed them and housed them. The, rebels were forbidden by Castro to drink alcoholic beverages and one saw groups of them crowding cafés, drinking coffee, Coca-Cola and other soft drinks and playing the juke boxes. They were armed with rifles and machine guns, revolvers and knives.

Fidel Castro’s troops were moving slowly up the Central Highway. It was a hard story to cover with so many things happening. No one seemed to know where Castro was. He was reported to be with the troops, then to be coming to Havana in a plane, then by automobile.

Matthews decided to go to Camagüey and meet Castro. He and Nancy started in a plane furnished by the Army, but it had to come back for repairs. When they arrived at the Camagüey airport, Castro was already there, surrounded by a pushing, cheering mob. Herbert managed to talk with him only a few minutes. Much to Herbert’s disappointment, Colonel Jules Dubois of the Chicago Tribune, who had never paid any attention to the Cuban revolution, had caught Castro before he reached Camagüey and obtained the first interview. Dubois became one of Castro’s greatest supporters.

Herbert was justifiably irritated since it was his stories that had revived the Castro revolution when it was in its death agony back in February, 1957.

Dr. Manuel Urrutia, the new Provisional President, arrived at the Jose Marti International Airport on January 5. A tremendous crowd cheered as his plane landed. He went directly to Camp Columbia to confer with Major Cienfuegos. When he arrived at the Presidential Palace, he received the press. Standing behind the desk from which General Batista had ruled Cuba for many years, the new President expressed the gratitude of his government for those who had fought so long and hard to overthrow the Batista regime.

After the press conference, the diplomatic corps, led by the dean Papal Nuncio Luis Centoz, called at the Palace to pay their respects. American Ambassador Earl E. T. Smith was among the visitors. He was already under fire as a friend of the Batista regime.

The Directorio Revolucionario, whose members were occupying the Palace, withdrew shortly after the President arrived, Fidel Castro had sent a message to their leader, Major Chaumon, saying: We are all united in war and peace. However, the ill feeling continued for many months between the Directorio Revolucionairo and the 26th of July, until Castro disbanded the Directorio and wooed its leader. Faure Chaumon later became one of the most bitter enemies of the United States, against which he hurled slanderous attacks.

The first important act of President Urrutia was to dissolve Congress by proclamation. Censorship of press and radio was lifted. The people were confident that Cubans could again breathe freely. It was a vain hope.

The President had announced at his first press conference that Dr. José Miró Cardona, the former dean of the Havana Bar Association, had been appointed Premier.

The new Cabinet was as follows: Dr. Roberto Agramonte, Minister of Foreign Relations; Raul Cepero Bonilla, Minister of Commerce; Dr. Julio Martinez Paez, Minister of Health; Dr. Faustino Pérez, Minister for the Recovery of Stolen Government Property; Manuel Fernandez, Minister of Labor; Rufo López Fresquet, Minister of the Treasury; Dr. Armando Hart, Minister of Education; Manuel Ray Rivero, Minister of Public Works; Dr. Humberto Sori Marín, Minister of Agriculture; Dr. Luis Orlando Rodriguez, Minister of the Interior; Señora Elena Mederos, Minister of Social Welfare.

About 2,000 American tourists had been in Havana for the holidays. On New Year’s Day most of them tried to get back to the United States. Airline service had been suspended, but with the help of the American Embassy, about 500 left January 2 aboard the City of New Orleans ferry which plied between Havana and West Palm Beach. The rest had to wait until commercial flights were resumed. They had very little to eat with the restaurants closed. The hotels gave them coffee and sandwiches. American personnel at the Embassy donated their automobiles to transport tourists to the airport and the boat since taxis were not running.

With the resumption of air service, exiles from the island began pouring into Havana, from the United States and Latin American countries.

The United States recognized the Castro regime six days after the fall of Batista. The entire island was delighted with this stamp of approval by Cuba’s best customer and greatest supplier and source of investment. I have long contended that no hero who takes over a country by violence in Latin America should be recognized by the United States until it is shown that he intends to rule democratically and not by force. This is the way dictators are created since recognition from the United States has always been of paramount importance to Latin American peoples. Great Britain followed the leader and the next day recognized the Castro regime.

A New York Times editorial, written by Herbert Matthews in Havana, said that the recognition was based on solid foundation of the actions and pronouncements of the new regime. The editorial went on to say that the Castro regime had pledged itself to honor all international obligations, to hold new elections within a maximum of two years, and to protect foreign property and investments. Then it commented, Finally refuting allegations of Communist infiltration, it proposes to shun diplomatic relations with Communist countries.

From the time Castro won, the island radios had been broadcasting only bulletins of the new regime and the stirring 26th of July revolutionary march. It was possible to walk down the street and never miss a note. The rebel leader and his troops practically marched to the tune all the way up the island.

At last, on January 8, Fidel Castro approached Havana. The town was decorated with Cuban flags, the red and black 26th of July flag, banners and placards. I got up that morning after going to bed at 3:00 A.M., sleepily drank my coffee and prepared for another hard day. I went out on the balcony to see the street below filled with Cubans in holiday attire. There was laughter and Joy and a feeling of tremendous relief that the repressive regime of Batista was gone.

It would have been impossible to cover the entrance of Fidel and his troops into Havana personally with the tremendous crowds. However the television stations set up cameras along the route, so that it was possible to watch the entire march. The cameras first picked up the advance column of bearded and long-haired heroes riding on trucks, Jeeps and tanks as they rolled through a small town on the outskirts of Havana. Progress was slow as the people jammed the streets, despite the efforts of thousands of the 26th of July militia. The crowds cheered themselves hoarse, threw confetti, waved small flags and held up placards with words of welcome. The wave of joy which swept into the city as the column moved toward downtown Havana was almost tangible. Never before had any Cuban or probably any hero of the Western Hemisphere been given a welcome such as this.

The first view of Fidel showed him riding in a jeep. He looked exhausted but happy. He was thirty-two years of age, but his beard gave him a much older appearance. (He is over six feet and towers above most Cubans. Only Major Camilo Cienfuegos was Castro’s height. But Camilo was thin as compared to the broad-shouldered Fidel) A detachment of Army planes circled above, and a helicopter hovered over Castro as it had done during the long march from Oriente Province. As Castro reached the Avenida del Puerto, two Cuban warships steamed past Morro Castle and La Cabaña Fortress firing a salute.

At the foot of Misiones Park, in front of the Presidential Palace, Castro ordered his jeep to halt. He and his escort walked the block to the Palace through the cheering crowd. The television picked up Castro in the Salon of Mirrors of the Palace as he sat looking tired and drawn by the side of the President He wore the olive-green rebel uniform and a French-type officer’s cap. He held his rifle in his hand as he talked. Near him sat Celia Sanchez, his aide during the two-year revolution. Her uniform seemed too large for her small figure. She was not strikingly pretty, but was a nice-looking girl.

Raul, my assistant, who was in the Palace, said it was so crowded with followers of Castro, friends of the President, and officials that it was impossible to get into the Salon of Mirrors. He returned to the office with his tie under one ear and his shoes looking as if a parade had passed over them.

After a short time Fidel Castro went to the balcony and spoke to the crowd. Only a few weeks before, short dynamic Batista had addressed the multitude from the Palace balcony. Now it was the tall bearded revolutionary leader from the hills.

Fidel told the crowd he had never been in the Presidential Palace before and he did not like its history of dictators. However, he said he hoped the people would now regard the big building with affection.

As he stood there with his rifle hung over his shoulder, his big voice rolling out over the crowd through a microphone, the magic of his personality was apparent His manner was calm, but the people hung breathlessly on his every word.

After telling his listeners to make a lane for him and his officers, he walked down the red-carpeted steps of the Palace, through the front door out to his Jeep.

It took Castro five hours to reach Camp Columbia, the military headquarters of all Cuban armies since the beginning of the Republic in May, 1902. Along the Malecon, again and again people threw themselves into the street to try to reach him, so that the vehicles could not move. At Twenty-third and L Streets the halt lasted a long time as the militia strove in vain to force the crowd back from the smiling leader who was talking with everyone. At Camp Columbia the President and other government officials had been waiting for hours on the stand erected on the big parade grounds. Surrounded by a flying wedge of his troops, Castro and his armed escort were pushed through the mass of humanity to the stand.

This was the first time the public had ever been permitted to enter Camp Columbia without a pass. Thousands poured through the gates. The only visible precaution was that men were searched and women asked to open their purses, but apparently no one was there who wanted to kill Castro.

Fidel Castro spoke almost humbly in that first speech to the Cuban people. His words were carried by television and radio throughout the island. He expressed his gratitude to those who had contributed their efforts and their lives to the revolution and spoke with deep feeling of liberty, democracy, and freedom of speech-As Fidel spoke in the glare of the spotlights someone released a flock of doves. One perched on his shoulder. He made no effort to remove it. His audience seized upon this bird as a good omen.

The Cuban people went to bed that night confident of the future. Actually they knew almost nothing about the man whom they now hailed as their leader. An image of Castro as an idealistic, quixotic young leader dedicated to the cause of liberty had been created by his propaganda campaign. Two years before he had been an obscure revolutionary heading a small band of rebels in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Today he was the master of the island with the support of almost the entire population of six and one-half million people.

All during the revolution I had tried to get information about Fidel Castro but it had been difficult. No one seemed to know much about him, even those who went to the University of Havana with him.

I learned that he had been born in the northern part of Oriente Province. His father,