All Wet

Fidel Castro got around to the cold war last week--and declared himself a neutral. "Why choose sides?" he asked a rally of 100,000 Havana workers. "Why say that all America must join one of the bands? Why not proclaim our right to live?" Castro's neutralism was a forthright rebuff to the U.S., but in expressing it he also slapped down one of his oldest supporters, ex-President Jose ("Pepe") Figueres of Costa Rica, who sat near by as a guest of honor.

On a six-day visit to Cuba, Figueres had tried hard to fit into the revolutionary mood. He turned out in a baggy khaki uniform left over from his successful Costa Rican revolution of 1948. He arrived early for the big workers' parade in downtown Havana, sat dutifully on the speakers' stand while the unions marched, did not flinch when a drizzle began and Castro ordered the stand's striped tarpaulin ripped away, saying: "If the people get wet, we get wet."

When his turn came at the microphone, Figueres recalled that "our group gave what modest aid it could to end tyranny in Cuba" (notably a planeload of arms to Castro in his darkest days). Figueres went on to say that "in Latin America we ignore a little the possibility of a great conflagration, of a third World War." He anxiously noted that in dealing with the U.S. "at times we speak in the language almost of warlike enemies." He confessed "worry" about Communist influence in Latin America and warned against siding with the Soviets in the cold war. At this point, David Salvador, young chief of the Cuban Federation of Labor, grabbed the mike from Figueres' hand and yelled: "Neither do we have to be on the side of America, which is trampling on us!" Visibly shaken, Figueres got the microphone back and finished his speech in a tone more likely to please: "In the social battle, I believe in a constructive anti-imperialism."

Castro, speaking next, said: "I feel my ideas at odds with those of our illustrious visitor." In support of neutralism, he offered a flattering version of U.S. civil defense: "They have shelters against atomic attack; we do not have even a miserable small hole in which to hide. Why not say these truths? Why not say that Cuba has participated in all the wars and when the wars were over its sugar quota was taken away?"* But Castro thought he knew how Figueres had gone wrong: he had been influenced by "a press campaign emanating from the monopoly of international news agencies."

* Cuba entered World War II, sent no troops overseas, supplied sugar to the U.S. and Allied forces. Its guaranteed quota of the U.S. sugar market remained in effect then and now.

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