THE CARIBBEAN: Upper Classmen v. Freshman

A chasm is widening between Cuba's Fidel Castro and the upper classmen of Caribbean democracy—Costa Rica's ex-President José ("Pepe") Figueres, Venezuela's President Rómulo Betancourt, Puerto Rico's Governor Luis Muñoz Marín—who at first welcomed Castro as the young new champion of freedom.

The split is chiefly between Figueres and Castro, and it began when the Cuban government invited Figueres last month to look in on the revolution that he helped to power by supplying a planeload of arms. For 2½ days, Figueres fruitlessly sought an appointment with Castro; the two finally met on a platform where they were scheduled to speak. Castro greeted him coldly, saying: "Don't embarrass me about Puerto Rico"—a place Figueres admires as progressive and Castro mistrusts as colonial—"and don't create any international problems for me." Figueres buttoned his lip about Puerto Rico, spoke out against the menace of Soviet imperialism. Castro publicly rebuked his guest, announced Cuba's neutrality between East and West (TIME, April 6).

Two weeks later, Costa Rican Communist Boss Manuel Mora flew into Havana. That same night on TV, Castro took 15 minutes to denounce Costa Rica's Figueres as a "bad friend, a bad democrat and a bad revolutionary." Apparently freshly filled in on Costa Rican political gossip, Castro said that Figueres "left the presidency of the republic with more land than when he began his term. I will leave with less land."

Last week fiery Pepe Figueres replied. The Costa Rican, whose democratic bona fides include an action-packed revolution of his own against a Communist-linked coalition in 1948, told 300 veterans of his civil war that honest democrats "want the approval of the people, not of the rabble. I have been where they want to convert the people into a mob and even turn them into cannon fodder for the Soviets. In every American country there exists a Communist nucleus that backs a demagogue's leadership. Demagoguery, No! Communism, No!" Roared the veterans: "Down with Fidel Castro!"

Communist Mora came home from Havana. Denouncing Figueres as "a servant of Yankee imperialism," Mora praised Castro as a "man of profound culture and conspicuous talent, a true revolutionary." In Venezuela, President Betancourt's Acción Democrática party pointedly issued a statement praising Figueres.