Class War

Down Cuba's 937-mile Central Highway six months ago, Fidel Castro rolled in triumph; presumably to restore the country's democracy and peace. Retracing the rebels' victorious tank treads last week, TIME Correspondent Bruce Henderson found a country tense and bitterly divided. His report:

Towering over the sidewalk in front of eastern Santiago's city hall is a 40-ft. billboard showing the major landholdings of Oriente province. Under a sun that bears down like a torch, the guajiros, poor farmers from the hills, stand and stare up hungrily at the land they hope to own through Fidel Castro's agrarian reform. They bring contributions to the Agrarian Reform Institute, everything from pennies to axheads to old barbed wire. "I am in accord with Fidel." says Juan Mora, who owns 17 acres, a thatched hut, a cow and a pig. "I am going to register for more land." Chimes in Bootblack Ruiz Marino Arganza, 16: "Everybody for Fidel.''

Not everybody. Fumed a Santiago businessman: "The people here who were Fidel's best friends are working against him now, just like they worked against Batista. A man slaves like a dog to build up a piece of land, and now they take it and give it to somebody else. And if you talk too much, they'll knock your ear off."

In Rebel Colors. Along the road, the mementos of war abound: a concrete monument to a taxi driver who was tortured and shot by Batista soldiers; the burned hulk of a bus, rusting and grown over with weeds; bullet holes in the roadside huts; the twisted girders of dynamited bridges, and the shaky timbers of temporary spans, where the water rushes hubcap-high. The road signs are newly painted black and red--the rebel colors.

The only authority is the cocky rebel army. "There is no trouble here, senor," said Lieut. Ramon Perez, 32, commander of a tiny highway garrison called El Cobre, rousing himself from his afternoon siesta. Perez' men had manned a .30-cal. machine gun on the guardhouse roof, and they stopped and searched all passing trucks. "If anybody we stop does not have identification--prisoner!" grinned Perez. Off duty, the bearded, long-haired soldiers lounge about reading the leftist official army organ. Olive Green. Slogan: "The army is the people in uniform."

Death Penalty. As in any army-run country, there is fear. The big ranches of central, cattle-raising Camagueey province have been seized by the army, pending expropriation by the Agrarian Reform Institute. At a seized ranch, a guajiro showed up one morning last week and told the landowner that he was joining the soldiers as "administrator" of the land. "I'll be moving my family into the main house," he added.

In western, tobacco-growing Pinar del Rio, the secretary of the Association of Rustic Estate Owners said that he had gone to a radio station to make an anti-reform broadcast, but had been stopped by a crowd of 60 men wielding clubs. A decree announced last week established the death penalty for counter-revolutionary activity, including armed plots, invasions, sabotage or dropping leaflets.

The opposition to Castro, though disorganized and leaderless, is strong enough to keep the rebel army on edge. Terrorists, most of them former Batista soldiers, shoot up rebel guard posts in Santiago and disappear. Other small bands of Batista men are holed up in the mountains of Oriente and Pinar del Rio provinces.

Reinforcements. To make his key aides less obvious targets, the Santiago commander has ordered them to shave their beards. All over the island, rebel army outposts have been strengthened: 1,500 men in Santiago, 1,000 in the surrounding hills, 1,800 in Camagueey, 900 in Pinar del Rio. At a secret new training camp near Camagueey, recruits rush through basic training. Scores of suspected oppositionists have been arrested in recent weeks, including 40 in Camagueey alone.

Once carefree Havana is filled with farm implements, collected in the central plaza before going to the Agrarian Reform Institute. The finale at a Capri nightclub features a number written around a rousing nationalistic theme that is one of Castro's favorites: "Consume Cuban products!'' the chorus girls sing.

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