CUBA: Filibuster’s End

An eight-coach train clanked to a stop at a crossing on Havana’s outskirts. In the darkness thousands were waiting; they had been waiting since early afternoon. Spotlights from Army jeeps and armored cars stabbed at the dark coach windows. In the glare 800 defiant revolutionaries waved at the crowd and shouted: “Death to Trujillo.” Turned back by a Cuban gunboat, the men who had sailed from Cuba to overthrow Dominican Dictator Trujillo were returning under guard, and to Havana they were heroes.

The Blame. Their leaders were not so buoyant. Dominican General Juan Rodriguez García, who had put $400,000 of his own money in the venture, walked bent and glum between his guards. Hard-boiled Rolando Masferrer, one of his Cuban lieutenants, who had not wanted to turn back even under Cuban Navy guns, was asked to say a few words for the radio. He grabbed the mike, cursed Cuban Army Chief Genovevo Pérez Dámera as a traitor. When told to mind his words, he slugged the announcer with the mike. Angel Morales, chief of the Dominican exiles, blamed the failure on “destiny,” vowed that the fight would go on.

Some Cubans talked even more frankly. Senator “Eddie” Chibás charged that President Grau San Martin and his Army chief had double-crossed the expeditionaries. Certainly Cuba’s Government—and Venezuela’s and Guatemala’s—had originally backed the filibuster. Last summer the invaders learned military drill on Cuban Government school grounds at Holguín, in eastern Cuba. Down to last week, Grau’s close friend, Education Minister José Aleman, had kept many of them on his departmental payroll. His department put up most of the $1,500,000 expedition costs.

The Fly Boys. The expedition was delayed because of the insistence of Cuban backers that the force have more planes. Though Author Ernest Hemingway, holidaying in Cuba, warned the Dominicans that the delay would be fatal, 16 planes were finally collected and three ex-Flying Tigers were hired (at $200 a week) to fly the expedition’s P-38s.

For success, the expedition also got too much advance publicity. Then Trujillo threatened to protest to the U.N., and the U.S. State Department passed the word that it was against the whole scheme. Finally, Cuban Army Boss Genovevo, who had opposed the filibuster from the start, seized much of the expedition’s arsenal on Education Minister Alemán’s estate near Havana. Grau’s hand was forced (TIME, Oct. 6). The Army and Navy went to work, and the invasion was off.

Last week President Grau, still the man of Cuba’s 1933 revolution, still conscious that revolutionists’ votes elected him in 1944, freed the expeditionaries (including three Americans) and stood by Minister Alemán. Compelled by a Senate vote of no-confidence and Army pressure to shift Alemán from the Education Ministry, he immediately made him minister without portfolio. After all, as last week’s welcome showed, Dominican freedom is still a popular cause in Cuba.