Career Rebel

On direct orders from President Fulgencio Batista, his political supporters this week swarmed into Santiago de Cuba, capital of Oriente province, for a pro-government rally. The purpose of the forced show of loyalty: to puncture Oriente's swelling hero worship for Fidel Castro, the leader of more than 300 hardened insurrectionaries who have been harrying the government for seven months from the wilderness of the nearby Sierra Maestra. Santiago's reaction was a boycott; of a promised 70,000 demonstrators, the government could muster less than 5,000.

Today in Cuba no name moves men more quickly to praise--or to anger--than that of Fidel Castro. To the people of Oriente he is a romantic near legend. To Batista he is a nagging threat to the strongman's position as boss of Cuba. Yet for all of Castro's new-won fame, he remains something of a man of mystery.

Castro was born in Oriente. in 1926. The son of a hard-living, self-made sugar planter, he spent his boyhood in Oriente, went to a Catholic high school in Havana. At Havana University he plunged into student politics. In 1947 he took part in a seaborne filibuster aimed at toppling the dictatorship of the Dominican Republic. In 1948 he went to Bogota during the Conference of American States to demonstrate against "non-Latin influence in Latin America."

Foredoomed Attack.Castro left Havana University in 1950 with degrees in law, international law and the social sciences, set up a law practice, married the daughter of a man who later became one of Batista's top officials, fathered a son. In 1952 he ran for Congress in the elections that were canceled by Batista's coup. Outraged, Castro plotted for a year, then led a band of some 40 men in a foredoomed frontal attack against Santiago's Moncada barracks. He was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment (and divorced by his wife), but 19 months later Batista freed all political prisoners, including Castro.

Castro went to Mexico, where he sold his overcoat for $20 and used the money to print a political pamphlet that contained the speech Lawyer Castro made in his own defense at the Moncada trial. The long and impassioned speech is the clearest record of his political beliefs. His Socialist-flavored main proposals: P: Nationalization of the U.S.-owned power and telephone companies. P: Confiscation of all wealth gained by governmental corruption. P: A drastic land reform that would break up the big, U.S.-owned sugar estates and give rented and sharecropped land to tenants.

P: Profit-sharing for labor. P:Expansion of industrialization, public housing, rural electrification.

Seasick Invasion. In the mountains near Mexico City, Castro set up a military training camp, held meetings with sympathetic Cuban business and professional men, who apparently dismissed his land-reforming, anti-business attitudes as youthful radicalism. It was agreed that once Batista was ousted, the businessmen would take over, rule Cuba for two years, hold free elections. Last December Castro landed a force of 82 seasick men in Oriente, set up headquarters in the Sierra Maestra. Castro knows that he cannot win merely by avoiding capture. But he does want to become a symbol of opposition that will attract a majority of Cubans and encourage at least part of Batista's army to defect to the rebel side.

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