Batistism

In Havana last week there was such tension, such scurrying of Government leaders to U. S. Ambassador Jefferson Caffery, the arbiter of every Cuban crisis, as there has not been since the collapse of Provisional President Dr. Ramon Grau San Martin's Government (TIME, Jan. 22, 19-34). This pother seemed to be preparation for a showdown between Cuba's military and Cuba's politicians. Real Strong Man of the Army is ruthless Lieut. Colonel Inspector Jose Pedraza Calvera, but the military's mouthpiece is Colonel Fulgencio Batista who likes to play at being a dictator and like most European dictators has the indispensable qualification of being a peasant. Last week Batista showed the peasantry in his blood as never before.

It was of no interest to him that President Miguel Moriano GOmez y Arias was pushing through the Cuban Senate yet another radical constitution. Batista's concern was to harangue Cuba's peasants, farmers, canefield workers, sugar growers and the like, about his own pet form of "dictatorship" which is neither Fascism nor Stalinism, but Batistism. Like all devotees of isms, "The Savior of Cuba" has at least one cranky plank in his platform. This is a scheme to put a 9-c--tax on every bag of sugar produced in Cuba and use the proceeds, estimated at $2,000,000 a year, to educate peasant children in rural schools run by Army officers. At least 100,000 peasants, to judge from their delirious enthusiasm, last week approved "The Savior's" scheme, agreed with him that it was a "prime necessity."

Much less enthusiastic about Batistism was President GOmez who said bluntly, "The bill is antidemocratic, invades the scope of the civil authority, and tends to militarize childhood. I shall veto it." This made "The Savior" so angry that even when the National Sugar Mill Owners Association offered to pay the tax without any legislation, he waved their offer a.side, spluttered, "The bill must become law."

Before the House of Representatives the bill duly came, was passed in toto, by 106-to-43.* Cock-a-hoop with success, "The Savior" strutted about Havana declaring: "We have a two-thirds majority. We can pass the bill over the President's veto."

He was still more cock-a-hoop when a petition to impeach the President was signed by 118 Congressmen and 75,000 peasants surged into Havana, cheering Batista wildly, jeering the President and warming up toward Revolution.

* By Cuban law the bill had first to be passed as a whole, and then article by article.

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