Humanist Abroad

Wearing rumpled blue cotton pajamas, Prime Minister Fidel Castro thumbed through his press clippings one morning last week and danced a little jig in his suite at Manhattan's Statler Hilton Hotel. "You see," he cried, "they are beginning to understand us better." On his two-week U.S. tour, Cuba's gregarious boss drew bales of friendly notices and crushing crowds wherever he showed his beard. "I come to speak to the public opinion," said Castro somewhere in every speech. "I speak the truth."

Flutters at Dinner. When Castro stepped out of an elevator at Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station, a crowd of 1,200 surged against police barricades, waving placards and chanting rebel songs. "I want to see the people," said Castro, trying to break through his 200-man guard. His escort hauled Castro off to his car. That night, he drew fluttery glances at a Women Lawyers Association meeting. "Doesn't he remind you of a younger Jimmy Stewart?" one matron asked.

Castro dropped in unannounced on the Bronx Zoo ("the best thing New York City has"). "I heard there was a riot at the gate," said Zoo Director James Oliver. "I rushed right out and there he was." Castro fed elephants, gorillas and orangutans, ate a hot dog and an ice-cream cone, vaulted a rail, and to the horror of the guards, reached into a cage and patted a Bengal tiger. "They don't do anything," he said.

He was equally blithe about rumors of assassination plots, some spread by his own aides. Police picked up one crackpot who had planned to toss a pipe bomb ("just for kicks") into a Castro rally in Central Park. "I sleep well and don't worry," said Castro. "I will not live one day more than the day I am going to die." He told the rally of 20,000 Spanish-speaking New Yorkers that "I came for a suffering, backward and hungry Latin America." His aim: "Humanism--liberty with bread." The crowd took up the chant, "Fidel Castro! Fidel Cas-tro!"

The Cuban Prime Minister canceled an Ottawa luncheon with Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, worked in quick visits to Boston and Montreal, got set to fly this week to Buenos Aires. His mission: to head the Cuban delegation at a meeting of the Committee of 21, appointed by the Organization of American States to study hemisphere development.

In the U.S., Castro went on record with views on three critical questions:

P: On the cold war, Castro emphasized that his heart lay with democracy--but he ducked when asked if he would fire Communists in his government.*

P: Castro offered conflicting reasons why elections must wait up to four years: "An election now would just be a plebiscite for us," but also "old electoral vices could bring tyranny and oligarchy back."

P: The "war crimes" trials are "almost over." Castro defended his ordering the retrial and conviction of 45 Batista airmen by saying that "if the accused has the right to appeal, so do the people," i.e., Castro. This brought a few boos and hisses from Harvard law students.

Moderate Cubans hoped that Castro had learned as well as talked on his U.S. trip. One ranking member of the Castro party declared that "Fidel was astonished at his warm reception. It profoundly changed his thinking about the U.S." Red-liners in the Castro movement were worried. Major Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, pro-Communist commander of Castro's bloody Cabana Fortress in Havana, warned that "foreign influences are trying to prevent the success of the revolution."

* In the midst of the Castro visit, the New York Times, one of his warmest U.S. press friends all through the revolution, abruptly shifted its news line with a 1,400-word story on growing Communist influence in the Castro regime. In pursuit of "revolutionary justice," noted the Times, "it has become customary to arrest members of the Batista armed forces, publish their pictures in the newspapers, including Hoy, the Communist organ--asking if anyone has an accusation against these men."

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