CUBA: Enemies Underground

Despite a 38,000-man army and wide popular support, Prime Minister Fidel Castro has not been able to stamp out a diehard local underground, backed by Castro-hating Cubans in Florida and the Dominican Republic. Giving it another try last week, Castro elevated his leftist, anti-U.S. brother Raúl, 28, to the newly created Cabinet post of Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. Castro arms agents shopped the European markets for rifles, PT boats and Hawker Hunter jets.

Center of activity is Pinar del Rio, Cuba’s westernmost province, where prosperous tobacco growers stand to lose their land to Castro’s agrarian reform. The fighting arm is headed by a former Batista army corporal named Luis Lara. Last month Castro’s troops captured 20 of Lara’s men, including two U.S. aircraft pilots. But Lara remains at large.

Supplies come in by night aboard small planes flying out of southern Florida. The Castro government last week decreed a 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew on light plane flights, following up an official protest in Washington over the use of Florida fields by the anti-Castro rebels. (“So Castro thinks the flights can be stopped,” retorted a U.S. border patrolman in Miami. “When he was fighting Batista, he bragged that 75% of his own arms shipments got through.”)

Of all the weapons he wants, Castro gives top priority to the Hawker Hunter, a British-built jet. Castro wants to trade in 17 propeller-driven Sea Furies on 17 Hawker Hunters from the British. The U.S. is opposed to any Caribbean arms race, but the British say they are still “actively considering” the Castro offer.

A jet air arm would also be a threat to Dominican Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, who has 45 Vampires and the men to fly them. Castro has jailed so many Cuban air force pilots as “war criminals” that he cannot get his present fighter force (two P-51s, twelve P-47s and 17 Sea Furies) off the ground. The accepted method of combatting the clandestine flights from Florida is to send out cops in squad cars to race along the highways to try to find the planes when they land.

Aside from military matters, Castro last week:

¶Replied to persistent reports that the U.S. Congress, angry over Castro’s treatment of U.S. capital, will cut Cuba’s sugar quota while raising Mexico’s. Said he: “If measures are taken against us, we will take the countermeasures required. What measures? Many!”

¶Welcomed the state visit of Juan Jose Arevalo, the “spiritual socialist” who let the Communists make nearly fatal inroads during his six years (1945-51) as President of Guatemala.