CUBA: Toward Dictatorship

One of the authentic heroes of the Castro rebellion was a beardless, unostentatious young flyer named Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz. He flew weapons from the U.S. to Fidel Castro, took Manuel Urrutia, the man who later became Cuba’s President, into the Sierra Maestra, served after the rebellion as Castro’s personal pilot. Just five days after victory, Castro appointed Diaz Lanz to command the Cuban air force.

Last week Pilot Diaz Lanz, returning to air-force headquarters from sick leave, discovered that he had been superseded. The armed forces high command, headed by Fidel Castro’s left-wing brother Raul, had appointed as operating chief of the air force Major Juan Almeida, a foot soldier who savvies nothing of planes, much about Communism and the party line. Saying that “those who love liberty cannot agree to any dictatorial system, especially Communism,” Diaz Lanz announced that he was resuming command. The dispute went before Fidel Castro, and in the ensuing shouting match, Castro confirmed that Almeida would run the air force.

Diaz Lanz wrote a farewell letter to President Urrutia: “All those actions against me are due exclusively to the fact that I have always opposed an attitude which permits Communists to take prominent positions within the rebel army.” The weakling President replied: “I absolutely reject Communist ideology,” but within moments the palace recalled the letter, issued a substitute omitting Urrutia’s anti-Communist statement. The government launched a nationwide man hunt for anti-Communist Diaz Lanz, but he got away, probably to Miami.

A Political Army. Diaz Lanz’s charge is backed by a growing pile of evidence. Raul Castro, onetime traveler behind the Iron Curtain, now commander of Cuba’s armed forces, boasts: “We are a political army. We fought to transform the economic and social structure of the nation.” Assisting Raul are Reds or pinks in top army spots, including the army inspector general, the commander of Havana’s La Cabana fortress, the commander of La Cabana’s 7th Regiment, the army legal chief in Oriente, the military commander of Las Villas district.

The Red daily Hoy is distributed free at army camps. At Camp Libertad near

Havana, recruits are herded into the post movie theater (named after Charlie Chaplin) to see Redline films. La Cabana men are told in the booklet. Objectives and Problems of the Cuban Revolution, that “the large North American companies continually used [the old Cuban army] to smother the protests of Cuban workers.” At Camp Libertad the Economic Bulletin teaches troops that “the socialist system, the most advanced known, eliminates exploitation of man by man.”

“With Machetes.” Castro more and more needs a strong political army because his half-baked reform ideas, skillfully shaped by Communists, are dividing Cuba along class-struggle lines. Last week bands of oppositionists were reported gathering in the hills of eastern Oriente and western Pinar del Rio provinces, and there were large troop movements up and down the island.

On one of his marathon TV interviews (five hours, from 10:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m.), Castro resumed his attacks on the U.S., saying, “International interests want to crush the Cuban revolution, which is an example for the rest of Latin America.” He waved the specter of class war, warning that he has summoned half a million peasants “with their machetes” to Havana on July 26. The picture that came off the screen was that of a fanatic heading for a leftist dictatorship.