Cuba: Castro's Pawns

At least 800 Americans still remain in Cuba. Some are businessmen who went to Cuba with U.S. companies and decided to stay on despite Fidel Castro; most are Cubans who were born in the U.S. or who acquired American citizenship through naturalization and went back south. But they all have one thing in common: a desperate desire to return to the U.S.

After months of negotiations, the State Department thought that it had succeeded several weeks ago in arranging the exodus. The U.S. was to pay Cubana Airlines some $250,000 to fly the Americans and their 1,700 dependents to Mexico City, where the refugees could be transferred to U.S.-bound planes. The State Department even announced that one planeload was on its way. Not so, replied the Cuban government. The plane, it announced, had turned back because of "engine trouble."

Last week Raúl Roa, Cuba's Foreign Minister, revealed what the real trouble was: by some unexplained shift, the Cubans suddenly pretended that it was false to assume that the fate of the Americans had even been discussed. The Americans would eventually be permitted to leave, allowed Roa, but only after all the Cubans who had a "right" to leave had done so.

Most of those who have that right are the lame, the aged and the nonproductive, whom Castro does not want anyway. Since the U.S.-sponsored Havana-to-Miami shuttle flights take out only 850 a week of the 200,000 to 300,000 Cubans who want to get out, the stranded Americans might have to wait four to six years—unless Fidel dreams up something new that he can barter them for.