Helicopters beat low over Havana, and Russian-built MIG-19 sweptwing
jets sent sonic booms thundering down the capital's seafront Malecon
Drive. In every town along the 760-mile length of Cuba, the speechmakers
mounted their platforms to trumpet victory to the assembled populace.
The first anniversary of Fidel Castro's triumph over the haphazard
U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion was at hand, and May Day lay just
ahead. It was time to celebrate in Communist Cuba. But this year, unlike last, Cuba's revolutionaries have very little to
congratulate themselves about. The regime still stands —a well-armed
dictatorship is not easily overthrown, as the Bay of Pigs fiasco
demonstrated. Yet it is a leadership in disarray, increasingly
ostracized by its hemispheric neighbors, beset by economic catastrophe
and torn by a bitter, not yet settled internal struggle for power. The falling out among Marxists was something new for Cuba. Suddenly,
Fidel Castro, until now Cuba's Maximum Leader and self-declared No. 1
Marxist, had lashed out publicly at the island's official Communist
Party and had posed a fascinating question: Who is the real boss in
Cuba—Castro, who takes orders only from himself, or the Communist
Party's old-line professionals, who get their instructions from Moscow?
Revolution in a Raffle. Castro's answer was as clear as he could make
it—he was still in charge. Last month, in a marathon 3hour speech to
his countrymen, he accused the old party regulars of undercutting his
revolution, of shunting aside his followers in favor of its own cadres,
of lowering a yoke on Cuba. Cried Castro: “The only comrade who
could be trusted, the only one who could be appointed to an important
post on a people's farm, a cooperative, in the state administration,
any place, had to be an old Marxist militant. They thought that they
had won the revolution in a raffle.” As quickly as the split was opened to public view, Cuba's Communists hurried to smooth it over.
“There is no breach, but rather more unity for all,” insisted
Hoy, official organ of the Communist Party. Yet only a unity of
necessity joins Castro's wild-eyed impulsive revolutionaries and the
party's longtime regulars.
And it is doubtful that any lasting meeting of minds can come between
the mob-rousing and vain Fidel and the shadowy, heavy-set mulatto who
heads Cuba's Communist Party and commands its maneuvers. He is Bias Roca, 53, secretary-general of the party, for 26 years
Moscow's most trustedly servile man in Havana, and now determined, if
he gets the chance, to shape Cuba to the Kremlin's liking. Bias Roca is
an orthodox Communist, cynical, opportunistic, dedicated. He believes
in party discipline, and in a Cuba run by committees of technicians
under the rigid control of a politburo of himself and his fellow
professionals. By nature and by training he distrusts Castro's
messianic brand of Marxism, his barefoot government-by-impulse, and
his insatiable appetite for personal adulation. Because he could do
nothing else, Roca joined forces with Castro, offering the party's
organization in return for mass support. But so far, the partnership
has brought only ruination to what was once one of the richest
countries in Latin America.
