CUBA: Next President?

In Havana's cavernous Sports Palace, 600 shouting, sweat-soaked partisans last week acclaimed Carlos Hevia, 52, as the official Auténtico Party's presidential candidate in the June elections. Next week five lesser parties in the pro-government coalition are scheduled to add their endorsement of President Carlos Prío's hand-picked choice for his successor.

The Hevia nomination was President Prío's response to the 1950 by-election setback, when voters fed up with entrenched political gangsterism and corruption upset his control in the city of Havana. Carlos Hevia is that almost unique Cuban man of affairs—a man of such universally acknowledged character as to be virtually above personal attack.

Naval Expert. Though he has been in & out of office for years, Hevia is not a typical professional politician. His father, who served with Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood against Spain in 1898 and later became Cuba's Secretary of War and Interior, sent him to Annapolis. The Academy's first Cuban student, he graduated 126th among 467 in the class of 1920, and was more noted for his "silken line" with debutantes than for marlinespike seamanship.

His Annapolis degree established him as an engineer in Cuba; in that profession, together with sugar-planting, he has since made a comfortable livelihood. His naval training also qualified him to lead a filibustering expedition ashore at Gibara in eastern Cuba in 1931 in a vain effort to overthrow the Machado tyranny. Amnestied, he went into exile until Machado was finally toppled two years later.

Made Minister of Agriculture in Ramón Grau San Martin's shaky revolutionary government, he had one experience that he is never likely to forget. When Grau was ousted one afternoon, Hevia was sworn in as provisional President. He lasted one day. When an ambitious young ex-sergeant named Fulgencio Batista, from his stronghold at Fort Columbia, ordered the 21-gun presidential salute cut off at the count of nine, Hevia knew that his term was over. His explanation: "Without authority to enforce my responsibility, I resigned. I firmly believe responsibility and authority must go together."

For Law & Order. After fighting Batista from exile, Hevia agreed to be his wartime price-control chief, only to resign after a year because of "interference." When President Prío took over in 1948, Hevia became Minister of State and Minister of Agriculture, then president of the National Development Commission, charged with carrying out a $50 million public-works program. He is an able administrator and organizer and a hard worker. He is a good friend of the U.S. Criticized as a conservative ("If law & order is conservative, then I am for conservatism"), Hevia's main worry before June is that some of his allies may betray him by causing fresh scandals and shootings.