LATIN AMERICA: Journey for a Homebody

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WELCOME TO YOUR HOME: CHILE Said the cheery banners at Santiago's Pudahuel airport. From the start of his two-week visit, Cuba's Fidel Castro did not seem to be at home at all. A 21-gun salute boomed out as he walked down the ramp of his four-jet llyushin, but the speech that Castro had labored over on the long flight from Havana stayed in the pocket of his olive-green fatigues. Silenced by Chilean protocol, which allows only heads of state to deliver arrival addresses (as Cuba's Premier, Castro is technically only a head of government), Fidel met his host and old friend President Salvador Allende Gossens with a mumbled request: "Tell me what to do."

Evidently, Allende did just that. It was Castro's first appearance anywhere outside Cuba in seven years, and his first in South America in twelve.* But instead of playing to the grandstand, Castro kept pretty much to himself, which was apparently just what his host had prescribed. Castro spent two quick days laying wreaths and touring factories in Santiago, then set off on an extensive trip covering the spiny Andean country's entire 2,600-mile length. Everywhere he went, Castro ducked reporters, protesting that he was "under protocol."

There were occasional flashes of the familiar Fidel. Three hundred Cubans had been brought in to augment the Chilean security setup, so one newsman jestingly asked Castro if he was wearing a bulletproof vest, too. "Oye, it is as hot here as it is in Havana," he shot back. "I don't even wear an undershirt." But Castro plainly failed to arouse much excitement. When he arrived, a crowd of some 750,000 Chileans lined the streets of Santiago, chanting "Fidel, Fidel, give those Yankees hell!" Bigger and more enthusiastic crowds had turned out for Charles de Gaulle in 1964 and Queen Elizabeth in 1968. In Antofagasta, where there are three universities, Castro drew only 400 to a student rally.

Still Wary. In Chile, as elsewhere in Latin America, Castro seems a trifle outmoded. His heavy dependence on the Russians has won him no admirers, and his Sierra Maestra style is considered anachronistic by those who follow the smooth urban guerrillas of Uruguay and the business-suited Marxists of Allende's Chile. Even so, he is gaining ground; Peru may soon become the second Latin American country to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. Chile did so a year ago, Mexico has maintained relations with Havana all along, and Argentina and Venezuela may follow. The result could be a rapid erosion of the isolation that was imposed on Cuba in 1964, when Castro's attempt to export revolution to Venezuela was exposed and the Organization of American States invoked trade and diplomatic sanctions against Havana.

For the moment, however, the main effect of Castro's trip has been to accentuate the political polarization in the region. Cuba is still considered a menace by many Latin American governments, notably Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Guatemala. They take his Chilean junket as the signal for a general broadening of a Communist wedge in Latin America.