Open Season

Cuba's croupiers made notes on their calendars last week. Harbinger of the tourist season was a Government announcement that gambling at the Gran Casino Nacional will start December 29. horse-racing at Oriental Park January 21. The open season for Cuban assassinations was meanwhile in full swing.

Early one afternoon Speaker Clemente Vazquez Bello of the Cuban Senate, who looked like a retired matador and was a good friend of President Gerardo Machado, stepped jauntily from his house next to the Havana Country Club and into his car to drive to the Senate. Down the block roared an open touring car containing seven hot-eyed young men with a riot gun. They passed with a rattle of shots. A dozen bullets struck Dr. Vazquez Bello, more than 60 punctured the car, the chauffeur was wounded in the head. Bleeding profusely, he was still able to drive to the hospital, where Speaker Vazquez Bello died within a few hours.

The Machado government did not take this lying down. Within an hour three motors full of gunmen cornered the car of Dr. Ricardo Dolz, an anti-Machado leader and rector of the National University, and attempted to shoot him down. Their aim was poor. Blue with fright. Dr. Dolz escaped and hid in the Uruguayan Legation where he was promptly joined by another opposition leader, Carlos Manuel de la Cruz.

Other anti-Machadoans were not so lucky. Fifteen minutes after Dr. Dolz had been shot at, somebody rang the doorbell at the home of the three de Andrade brothers. It was answered by their Hungarian butler. Three pro-Machado bravos pushed him aside, dashed upstairs, murdered Brother Gonzalo Freyre de Andrade, Representative; Brother Guillermo, attorney; and Brother Leopoldo, engineer. Their bodies were found in a Country Club Park ditch.

Half an hour later assassins broke into the home of Dr. Miguel Angel Aguiar, who was one of the leaders of the unsuccessful anti-Machado revolution (TIME, Aug. 31. 1931) and shot him four times. The next day he died. The Government then proceeded with the burial of Speaker of the Senate Dr. Vazquez Bello. But before the funeral, detectives thoughtfully inspected Colon Cemetery where the interment was to have taken place. They found not one but 23 separate bombs planted near the spot marked for Dr. Vazquez Bello's grave, with enough dynamite to blow up the entire Vazquez Bello family, most of the heads of the Cuban Government who were expected to attend, and a good section of the cemetery. An electric wire ran to a Chinese burying ground eight blocks away.

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