Interview in the Night

The most hunted man in Cuba today is Aureliano Sanchez Arango, 46, onetime Minister of State and Education in the ousted government of President Carlos Prio and now underground leader of a revolutionary movement to overthrow Strongman Fulgencio Batista. So badly does Batista want to catch Sachez Arango that Cuban police have kidnaped and beaten or tortured at least two Cubans known to be his friends to force them to divulge his hiding place. But Sanchez Arango, who learned all the conspiratorial tricks fighting the Machado dictatorship 20 years ago, has so far led a charmed life, taking great risks to keep on operating almost under the cops' noses. Last week TIME Correspondent Clara Applegate met the redoubtable revolutionary chief at one of his Cuban hideaways for the first press interview he has given since he began his hazardous mission last year. Her report:

FROM a midevening rendezvous at a Havana bar frequented by American tourists, I was brought by a devious route, with several stops and three changes of cars, to a house where a man with a Tommy gun stood guard at the door and a machine-gunner crouched over his weapon at the head of the stairs, covering the hallway. I was shown into a small, book-lined room. In a moment, in strode a trim, greying man wearing dark trousers and a white sport shirt. He walked with erect carriage and springy step. We shook hands, and he laid a sheaf of papers and a Mauser pistol on the table.

Like a professor about to give a student his lessons, he handed me a long paper entitled "Agenda" and said crisply:"Read it." Subheadings spoke of the situation before Batista's coup in March 1952, the situation since then, and "solutions." When I said I had really come to ask about the solutions, the professorial attitude fell away and he laughed. He talked tensely, his brown eyes darting, his hands in constant movement. "Since the electoral solution looks impossible," he said, "we must adopt a revolutionary solution. This will lead to a restoration of constitutional government and the full authority of the voters. For me, Prio is still the President of Cuba. When the revolution is complete, Prio will return and finish out his lawful term. Then, with the constitution restored, we shall have free elections." I asked: "With yourself as candidate?" The answer: "I do not think of politics -- now. My movement is revolutionary."

His organization he calls the "Triple A" (he would not say what the letters stand for). It now includes between 4.000 and 5,000 professional people, students and workers, he says, and it is well organized in cells throughout the republic in all six provinces. Local cells control secret armed combat units, and he himself moves about the country helping to organize and train them. (The day before, I learned later, he had been in western Pinar del Rio.) I asked whether these units could stand off the army. "Do not believe the army is with Batista," he said. "It is run now by a handful of Batista officers, but in the end we can be sure of the loyalty of the greater part of the army."

I asked when the rising would take place, and we both laughed. "When the time is right -- the exact moment for action," he said. I asked him about invasion plans, and got a surprisingly sharp answer: "I do not believe in wars of invasion. This revolution will be made by Cubans from within Cuba!" Cubans who plot from abroad, he said, would be "violating the hospitality of the countries who took them in." As for ex-President Prio, who is now living in exile in Miami, he said: "As a Cuban, of course he participates, but this revolution would take place with or without his support."

Asked about his reported narrow escapes.* Sanchez Arango said: "I am playing with them-- Batista and his police. But they will kill me if they can get me. They torture my friends and the people who know where I am. You had better be very careful." He smiled, strapped on his Mauser and casually tucked a few hand grenades in his pockets. "Better to carry books than these," grinned this man who is professor of labor law -- currently on indefinite leave -- at the University of Havana. Then he was gone. As I followed downstairs, I saw him pacing briskly away with his two guards into the tropical night.

* His first was when Batista's agents arrested him on the morning of the 1952 coup. In the ruckus, Sanchez Arango drew his null and purposely shot himself in the left hand. Bleeding profusely, he demanded to be taken to his own doctor. Two flustered policemen rushed him off in a car, with Sanchez Arango giving directions. When they arrived at a house, one cop stayed at the wheel, the other went inside with Sanchez Arango. After the door had closed, Sanchez Arango turned to his bewildered captor and said: "We are now in the Mexican embassy, and I am hereby taking asylum." Duly granted safe conduct to Mexico, he secretly returned four months later by small plane from the Bahamas. Since then he has ducked in & out of Cuba at least half a dozen times.

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