Cuba: Time of Deterioration

Manned by three U.S. Navy reservists getting in some summer flight time, an unarmed snub-nosed 52F submarine tracker droned along over international waters one day last week some 15 miles off the Cuban coast. Suddenly, machine-gun fire rose from two small gunboats, apparently Cuban, cruising the blue Straits of Florida below. No hits were scored, but the incident produced a sharp protest from the White House and an equally sharp denial from Fidel Castro. The exchange climaxed a week of rapidly deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Communist Cuba.

Earlier in the week, as if in fear of the large-scale invasion he constantly foresees, Castro staged a partial mobilization of his 400,000-man militia. Rumors spread of threatened insurrection in Las Villas province, of landings of anti-Castro guerrillas in the province's sheltered inlets. Castro's precautions may only have been set off by the recent daring attack on Havana's waterfront by two boatloads of youths from the underground Revolutionary Student Directorate. More likely, Castro reasoned that the U.S. would not stand by while Russia builds Cuba's military strength.

Mistake to Invade. After the plane incident, President Kennedy made clear that "U.S. armed forces will employ all means necessary for their own protection," but at his press conference he insisted, "I think it would be a mistake to invade Cuba." Are there Russian troops in Cuba? asked a newsman. From the hem and haw of his response, Kennedy seemed to be working from abysmally poor intelligence reports. "We don't have cornplete information about what's going on in Cuba,"he said.* Itwas an explanation that satisfied no one. On Capitol Hill, New York's Republican Senator Kenneth Keating said that he had reports that at least 1,200 men "wearing Soviet fatigue uniforms" had arrived in Cuba in August. At the press conference, Kennedy reiterated that the 139-year-old Monroe Doctrine is still alive. "That's why we have cut off our trade," he said, "and that's why we work in the OAS and in other ways to isolate the Communist menace in Cuba." Gaining Their Chains. Cuba was obviously feeling the economic squeeze of inept Communist management. Castro last week froze wages, invoked stringent penalties for absenteeism. The $293 million in the treasury when Castro took over has now shrunk to $5,000,000 in foreign exchange. Looking for help, Economic Czar Ernesto (Che) Guevara was dispatched in a hurry to huddle with Soviet Premier Khrushchev.

Help was coming. Proudly the Soviet news agency Tass announced that their maritime cargoes to Cuba this year would double those in 1961. Some ten Soviet ships are now converging on Cuban ports, said Tass, carrying consumer goods from canned food to cars, heavy machinery from harvesters to floating cranes, raw materials from timber to grain. Five more ships for the Cuba run were chartered from owners in four NATO countries —West Germany, Norway, Greece and Italy. Khrushchev's evident decision to support Castro to the limit has already raised Cuba to the position of Russia's third largest trade partner in 1962, after East Germany and Czechoslovakia.