CUBA: Castro Takes Over

Somewhat sooner than expected, Fidel Castro last week took over direct control of the Cuban government. Premier Jose Miro Cardona resigned, along with his Cabinet. Assuming the premiership. Castro quit as commander of the armed forces, giving that job to his ice-eyed brother Raul, 27.

The move, said Fidel Castro, "distressed'' him, but it was "necessary for the good of the revolution." It put him only a step away from the presidency, now held by his hand-picked choice, Manuel Urrutia. There were signs that Castro, who is 32, might move up to Urrutia's job before too long. Under the Cuban constitution, the President cannot be younger than 35. Last week news got out that the constitution had been quietly changed by a mere vote of the Cabinet a fortnight ago—and the new minimum fixed at 30. In the premiership, Castro can take his time about calling elections, about which his government, unlike the revolutionary juntas of Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela, has said very little.

Power Divided. There was an inevitability about last week's changes, but their suddenness was caused by a moral crisis. The government was at loggerheads over Cuba's tourist-trapping casinos, closed since the fall of Batista. At first Fidel Castro opposed gambling on principle. Provisional President Urrutia, Premier Miro Cardona and the Cabinet backed him up. But Castro's stand on principle dissolved in the face of the rapidly falling foreign exchange (it is now possible to fire a .45 down any hall of the Havana Hilton without hitting even a mouse) and of the jobless and strike-minded workers.

Castro went to speak to a meeting of some 2,000 restaurant, hotel, nightclub and casino workers, and promised that gambling would be resumed this week. Afterward, he exploded to a friend: "This nonsense cannot go on. This is the limit. Instead of solving problems, the government is creating them daily."

Nonsense was precisely the word for much that has been going on in the inner circles of the Cuban government. But the reason for much of it was Castro himself. Never one to stay hitched, he failed to back his Cabinet while making pie-in-the-sky promises to all supplicants.

Amid the confusion, the Cabinet did its best to get a few things done. It drew up a plan to replace Batista's corrupt lottery with a lottery-bond program designed to help finance a $100 million housing project.* Last week, an accounting of the Cuban treasury's cash reserves was finally completed. Discovery: in five years. Dictator Batista squandered $423 million, leaving the country with only $110,710,947, or some $60 million less than the legal minimum. To rebuild the reserves, a system of import licenses was clamped on a long list of goods—with the promise of stiff controls if dollar-draining imports are not held down.