Cuba: Stop, & Stop Now!

The Organization of American States had rarely heard Secretary of State Dean Rusk speak in such urgent tones. "Today," he told the assembled foreign ministers in Washington, "it is Venezuela which is under attack. Is there any one of us who can say with assurance, 'It cannot be my country tomorrow'? So let us say to the Castro regime: 'Your interference in the affairs of other countries in this hemisphere must stop, and stop now!' "

Last week, the OAS issued precisely that warning. By a vote of 15 to 4 (Mexico, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia voting against), the foreign ministers approved mandatory diplomatic and economic sanctions against Communist Cuba and passed a crucial resolution defining any future Castro subversion as outright "aggression." Henceforth, under the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, no OAS member nation may maintain diplomatic relations with Cuba. All trade between Cuba and OAS members is banned, with the exception of basic foodstuffs and medicine. And any hemisphere nation that is threatened by Castro subversion is free to take up arms in self-defense against Cuba while summoning the other OAS states to come to its assistance.

Behind the Scenes. It was tough talk, and it wrote an end to a long, often exasperating campaign that has stretched over five years and five separate conferences. Latin Americans have been well aware of Castroite subversion and gun running. Yet if given a choice, they looked the other way, talked interminably about nonintervention, and administered only the mildest of wrist-slaps. This time, Cuba's Communists had been caught redhanded: a three-ton terrorist arms cache uncovered on a Venezuelan beach and traced directly to Cuban arsenals. The angry Venezuelans demanded strong action. The U.S. worked quietly behind the scenes to see that they got it.

Even so, it took weeks of patient negotiations to line up the required two-thirds majority to impose sanctions. Central American and Caribbean nations, those directly in Cuba's line of fire, were firmly for spiking Castro's guns once and for all. As expected, the unswitchable holdouts were the four countries still maintaining at least minimal economic and diplomatic relations with Cuba—Bolivia, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay.

Of them all, Mexico was the most adamant in its stand against sanctions and the most determined to vote against —even when 5,000 Cuban exiles staged a march down Washington's Constitution Avenue, shouting, chanting and waving placards ("OAS! Alert! Alert!"

"Stop Playing with Cuban Blood").

Though the Mexicans have no love for Castro, Mexico is fiercely independent of anything that hints of U.S. pressure.