THE AMERICAS: Balance Sheet

Fidel Castro's one-man brain trust, Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, last week lectured 5,000 Red Chinese in Peking on how the Marxist blessings of Castro Cuba can be carried to country after country throughout the rest of Latin America. "It is," he said coldly, "through arming the people and smashing the puppet dictatorial regimes." In Washington a high U.S. official dealing with Latin America took a look at the endless crises besetting the hemisphere's governments and likened the situation to a "mountain of sugar melting under a fire hose."

The man at the nozzle...