Castro Takes Over

Somewhat sooner than expected, Fidel Castro last week took over direct control of the Cuban government. Premier Jose Miro Cardona resigned, along with his Cabinet. Assuming the premiership. Castro quit as commander of the armed forces, giving that job to his ice-eyed brother Raul, 27.

The move, said Fidel Castro, "distressed'' him, but it was "necessary for the good of the revolution." It put him only a step away from the presidency, now held by his hand-picked choice, Manuel Urrutia. There were signs that Castro, who is 32, might move up to Urrutia's job before too long. Under the Cuban constitution, the President cannot be younger than 35. Last week news got out that the constitution had been quietly changed by a mere vote of the Cabinet a fortnight ago--and the new minimum fixed at 30. In the premiership, Castro can take his time about calling elections, about which his government, unlike the revolutionary juntas of Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela, has said very little.

Power Divided. There was an inevitability about last week's changes, but their suddenness was caused by a moral crisis. The government was at loggerheads over Cuba's tourist-trapping casinos, closed since the fall of Batista. At first Fidel Castro opposed gambling on principle. Provisional President Urrutia, Premier Miro Cardona and the Cabinet backed him up. But Castro's stand on principle dissolved in the face of the rapidly falling foreign exchange (it is now possible to fire a .45 down any hall of the Havana Hilton without hitting even a mouse) and of the jobless and strike-minded workers.

Castro went to speak to a meeting of some 2,000 restaurant, hotel, nightclub and casino workers, and promised that gambling would be resumed this week. Afterward, he exploded to a friend: "This nonsense cannot go on. This is the limit. Instead of solving problems, the government is creating them daily."

Nonsense was precisely the word for much that has been going on in the inner circles of the Cuban government. But the reason for much of it was Castro himself. Never one to stay hitched, he failed to back his Cabinet while making pie-in-the-sky promises to all supplicants.

Amid the confusion, the Cabinet did its best to get a few things done. It drew up a plan to replace Batista's corrupt lottery with a lottery-bond program designed to help finance a $100 million housing project.* Last week, an accounting of the Cuban treasury's cash reserves was finally completed. Discovery: in five years. Dictator Batista squandered $423 million, leaving the country with only $110,710,947, or some $60 million less than the legal minimum. To rebuild the reserves, a system of import licenses was clamped on a long list of goods--with the promise of stiff controls if dollar-draining imports are not held down.

"Fire!" The one thing the shift of government would not change was the grisly rhythm of revenge. The trials and executions went on. At Havana's 195-year-old La Cabana fortress, death has long since fallen into repetitious routine. The condemned man leaves his cell some time between i a.m. and 3 a.m. An army Jeep takes him through the darkness to the weed-grown bottom of the 20-ft.-deep moat. Against a stone wall, he invariably refuses a blindfold, asks permission to command the firing squad standing six paces away. He asks the squad to aim for the heart, avoid the face. "Fire!" he orders. His final sound is an involuntary shout as the bullets' impact knocks breath through his vocal cords. After fingerprinting, the body is turned over to relatives for burial.

Last week six men went through the Cabana routine, convicted of multiple murder and robbery of their victims. In Bayamo, Oriente province, three army privates were shot for torturing and killing four prisoners. At Pinar del Rio three ex-soldiers were executed; at Manzanillo a policeman and a soldier were cut down.* At week's end the total of the executed stood at 302, with more to come. On trial for their lives in Santiago were 20 army pilots and 20 bombardiers, charged with "genocide" for bombing and strafing "open towns" in rebel-held Oriente province. Many of the flyers claimed that they were transport pilots. But Castro himself has already condemned them as "the worst criminals of the Batista regime."

* A lucky $25 bond holder can win as much as $100,000 if his number comes up. If not he can cash it in on a graduated scale: from 50% of its face value after one year to 110% after six.

* * Captain Jesus Sosa Blanco, convicted of "war crimes" in the famed Roman-circus setting in Havana's Sports Palace, was scheduled for retrial this week. Invited guests: the Knights of Columbus, Rotary and Lions Clubs. Judges: the same three-man tribunal that convicted him before.

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