Libre-for-All

One evening last week in the Senate Chamber of Havana's lush marble-and-gilt Capitolio, the temperature of senatorial tempers soared with that of the tropic night. Locked in snarling, fang-baring debate were the stalwarts of the Government and the Opposition. Main contention bone is the $25,000,000 loan the Government is trying to get from the U.S. Export-Import Bank. If the Government got it, that would make the Opposition look just that much less good, regardless of the merits of the issue. Senate President Dr. Antonio Beruff Mendieta made a ruling, and the Opposition yowled that he had ruled improperly. Suddenly Majority Leader Dr. Eduardo Suarez Rivas was on his feet spitting insults at Oppositionist Emilio Ochoa, 34, the youngest Senator Cuba ever had.

Shot thrice and left for dead during the revolution which overthrew President Gerardo Machado, Oppositionist Ochoa is not a man to take insults lying down. He dealt Dr. Rivas a punch and a kick. Slightly cooler solons grabbed Opposition ist Ochoa and restrained him. But then among the restrainers strode Majorityite Arturo Illas Hourruitinier.

Majorityite Illas (pronounced "ee-yas") is the Gentleman from Santiago. Once at a circus, when a panther refused to fight a bull as advertised, he rose from his seat and shot the panther in a fit of pique. Another time he beat up a journalist who accused him of monkeyshines as a customs administrator. When his Uncle Jose, 62, buttonholed him about getting his daughter restored to a Government clerical job, Nephew Arturo picked up a heavy cane and used the old gentleman's head for a xylophone. The uproar this caused forced his resignation as President of the Senate. In Cuban statesmanship the Gentleman from Santiago is known as no rose.

Nor did he disappoint on this occasion. Slugged by Slugger Illas, Oppositionist Ochoa went down, his head hitting the bronze corner of a desk. He was carried out unconscious with a black eye and brain concussion. Then some 20 Senators pitched in and slugged toe-to-toe in a ten-minute free-for-all. To give them room, Senate police cleared the packed galleries of visitors and chased the reporters out of the press box. Meantime President Beruff Mendieta rather pathetically kept ringing the hand bell he uses for a gavel.

Next day four Opposition groups banded together and voted to abstain from all senatorial activities until "the necessary guarantees for the minority have been restored." They also protested the presence of a 100-odd men who were roving the Capitolio's halls with suspicious bulges on their hips and under their armpits. These were said to belong to the police corps of an unnamed Government ministry.

Same day hospitalized Oppositionist Ochoa sent two friends to call on Slugger Illas. Duels are illegal in Cuba, but congressional immunity prevents the prosecution of a Senator unless he is arrested while committing an offense.

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