Cuba: Caning the Students

On trial last week in Havana’s grim La Cabaña fortress was Rolando Cubela Secades, 33, Fidel Castro’s former chief student organizer and gun-slinging bullyboy for the University of Havana. His crime: plotting to assassinate Castro, by means of a high-range rifle with a telescopic sight imported from Spain.

As is usual in Castroland, the prosecutor explained that the CIA was behind it all. And as usual with show trials everywhere, the defendant agreed with every word.

“To the wall! To be executed! That is what I want. It is deserved!” cried Cubela. At that point, the script suddenly changed. Dramatically, the prosecutor read a letter from Fidel himself, asking for mercy—and the judges let Cubela off with only 25 years. The reason? From exiles trickling through to Miami came word that students at Cubela’s old stomping ground, the University of Havana, had staged an angry demonstration, with a black-draped coffin, signs reading, “If Cubela dies, so do you, Fidel!” and an ancient horse—in jeering reference to Castro’s nickname, el Caballo (the horse).

Evidently el máximo lider was shaken. Abruptly altered were last weekend’s annual Havana University celebrations of the abortive 1957 student attack on Fulgencio Batista’s palace. Instead, the government announced, the entire student body had decided to spend the holiday cutting sugar cane.