Province in Revolt

When Rebel Leader Fidel Castro came down from his 150-mile-long Sierra Maestra hideout last month to smash an army garrison. President Fulgencio Batista launched a "campaign of extermination." Since then, the rebel band has not been sighted, let alone exterminated. Last week Batista sent a new field commander, Colonel Pedro A. Barrera Perez, to put an end to the six-month revolt.

Barrera, who led an unsuccessful anti-Castro campaign 4 1/2 months ago, went back with the certain knowledge that the odds had grown even worse. Against him now are most of the 1,798,000 people who live in Netherlands-size Oriente province and its capital, Santiago de Cuba. Santiago professional men shelter Castro's couriers in their homes, support the rebels by buying $5, $10 and $100 "bonds." Among workingmen, there is a brisk trade in $1 bonds. Businessmen arrange shipments of supplies to Castro. When the government reportedly purchased five rebel-tracking bloodhounds, Oriente resistance members scornfully loosed a pack of mongrels on the streets, each wearing a Castro arm band on a front leg.

Oriente citizens complain that the rich income earned by Oriente exports (sugar, coffee) goes largely for projects in Havana. Such inequity traditionally spurs Oriente men to rebellion; both of Cuba's wars for independence against Spain began in Oriente, and the first stanza of the Cuban national anthem honors revolutionaries of the Oriente town of Bayamo.

Militarily, Barrera is hampered by too few men for too large an area. As a helicopter fruitlessly scanned the mist-shrouded mountains last week, Barrera was asked how long it might take to finish Castro. "Sooner or later," he answered wearily, "we will capture them."

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