CUBA: Ambassador of Fun

For costly, uninhibited frolic. Havana's only rival in Latin America is Rio. Last week the two high-living cities got set for a comparison by an expert: Cuban Industrialist Burke Hedges, 46. In his own Lockheed Lodestar, Hedges circled Rio's Santos Dumont airport one sunny afternoon, set down, stepped out with his secretary, valet, fulltime flight crew. Reason for the move: Hedges is Cuba's new Ambassador to Brazil.

Hedges owed his appointment to an old and close relationship with Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. Born a U.S. citizen in Patchogue. L.I.. and educated at Georgia's Oglethorpe University, he went to Cuba to help run his father's textile mills. He met Batista at the Oriental Park race track near Havana one afternoon in 1939, struck up a friendship by striking a match for the dictator's cigar. The two got to know each other better during fishing expeditions and at parties in a house they shared in a seacoast town 27 miles outside of Havana.

By 1951 the entire Hedges clan—father Dayton, Burke and brother James—had adopted Cuban citizenship, thus saving mightily in taxes on their multimillion-dollar Cuban holdings. When Batista seized power in 1952, he appointed Hedges a member of his advisory council. Last year a Batista government bank bought a money-losing Hedges enterprise—a rayon-chemical complex in Matanzas province—and leased it back with the proviso that Hedges need pay no taxes for 30 years.

Not that he really needed the favor. Worth roughly $20 million, Hedges runs his enterprises with a profitable smoothness that gives him time to dash from one Havana club to another (he belongs to five) in a snappy Porsche, play golf, fish for marlin. He keeps a summer home in East Hampton, L.I., a Manhattan apartment, a house near some of his Cuban plants, a Havana apartment and a 215-year-old hacienda in Pinar del Rio province. His weekend place outside Havana boasts an airstrip, boathouse, skeet and trap layout, swimming pool, bar, guest cottages, servants' houses. The place is called "Yemaya," an Afro-Cuban voodoo word for virgin; Hedges likes the name so well that he also gave it to his 34-ft. yacht.

"I'm all in favor of the best and closest possible Pan-American relations," said the new ambassador last week. As a starter, Hedges, who describes himself as "married, but single'' (his third divorce is in the works), rented the finest suite in the Copacabana Palace Hotel and set out to make friends.