Cuba, Springtime

Cuba's persistent restlessness brought murder and sudden death last week. In Santa Clara City somebody who disliked President Gerardo Machado planted a bomb in the Hotel Santa Clara. When it exploded it killed one Manuel Gonzales. 32, a Spanish salesman for lottery tickets. A small bomb exploded in front of a Havana tax office. A policeman reached the scene just in time to have his left hand blown off by a second, bigger bomb. At Guanabacoa a earful of men poured slugs from sawed-off shotguns into Military Supervisor Captain Oscar Pau, who had been accused of atrocities against Oppositionists.

The Havana police arrested one Carlos Manuel y Blandino Fuentes, 23, member of a student Opposition group. In the morning his body was found in a cemetery with three bullet wounds in the back of the head. Police said he had "tried to escape." President Machado sensed a springtime nervousness in his Cubans. Playing safe, he banned the customary Holy Week processions.

Now & then-Machado has a nightmare that some day Revolution may overthrow him. To placate his nightmare he is stern with unimportant revolutionaries, kind to important ones who may some day rule in his stead. Last week he pardoned Antonio Mendieta Lizaur, 18, nephew of an important Revolutionist, Col. Carlos Mendieta. In 1932 young Mendieta Lizaur was sentenced to eight years in jail on a charge of planting a bomb in the La Salle College laboratory. Last week he planned to join his uncle and Cuba's famed exile colony in Miami, Fla. (TIME, April 10), to help fan Revolution in Cuba.

President Machado was less disturbed by Spring in Cuba than by Spring in his slow-witted brother Carlos. Carlos, 58, is a bachelor who loves cockfighting and cannot remember names. He has no wit, little education. He can read and write a little, does odd jobs for his brother, but gets into bullheaded trouble. A Cuban Senator, he thinks he wants to control the party machine of the Liberal Party of Santa Clara Province. Santa Clara's boss is now Juan Antonio Vasquez Bello, Machado henchman and brother of Machado's late good friend Clemente, who was assassinated last year. Last week a Vasquez Bello man, Representative Arturo B. Aleman, wrote a letter to the newspaper Information answering small gossip he had heard that Carlos had spread about him. Promptly Carlos sent his seconds to Aleman to demand a duel (illegal in Cuba). Aleman chose seconds and primed his pistols. Groaning, President Gerardo Machado sent for Brother Carlos, told him to disappear until the bicker had been settled.

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