CUBA: Spring Fever

• Share

In the somewhat banal white marble palace of the Pan-American Union in Washington last week gathered diplomats from 21 republics of the Western Hemisphere, to hear a somewhat banal Pan-American Day message from their Good Neighbor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Beaming "with faith in the high destiny of the Americas," Good Neighbor Roosevelt spoke a smooth public piece in the style to which all Americans are now accustomed. When he had finished he unexpectedly dismissed the press, asked that the microphones before him be deadened, and in a suspenseful silence gave a confidential extempore talk which every delegate present was soon itching to get onto a cable. Particularly itchy was Cuba's brand-new Ambassador Pedro Martínez Fraga, for the substance of Good Neighbor Roosevelt's remarks was that he would under no circumstances be prevailed upon to intervene in the affairs of Cuba.

Day prior, Good Neighbor Roosevelt's most obstreperous neighbor, Cuba's Army Chief and Strong Man, Colonel Fulgencio Batista, had dramatically tightened his hold on the island which he now rules. Returning from a long week end in Camagüey Province to his gleaming, refurbished Camp Columbia ten miles outside Havana, Boss Batista met his Capitol lieutenants to hear details of how the lower house of Cuba's 16th Congress was staging a legislative "standup" strike in the corridors outside their chamber. For a full week they had refused to take their seats in number sufficient for a quorum. Unread on the lectern was the latest message which Dictator Batista had authorized his hand-picked President Federico Laredo Bru to read.

As soon as the Colonel's lieutenants shuttled back from Camp Columbia to the Capitol, the stand-up was over. Back into the chamber filed 111 of the lower house's 162 members, just enough for a quorum but not enough to let Boss Batista forget that they were aggrieved. What they then heard from President Laredo Bru would have burned the ears of any U. S. Congress.

The Government, thundered Camp Columbia through the mouth of Laredo Bru, was tired of keeping 162 Representatives and 36 Senators at a cost of $4,000,000 a year unless they passed some laws to earn their pay. Since the Senate obeyed the Colonel's orders last December and impeached troublesome President Dr. Miguel Mariano Gómez, both houses had been feeling a new sense of power. They had refrained from legislating to argue over such matters as jobs. Now the Government, reported dutiful Señor Laredo Bru, was going to set things moving again by holding elections for its long-deferred Constituent Assembly which, among other acts, is supposed to write a new Cuban constitution.