The U.S. & Castro

"What do you suppose, sir, is eating Castro?" rose the question in president Eisenhower's press conference last week, bringing a telling hoot of laughter from the newsmen. Eisenhower could only express bewilderment: "We are Cuba's best market, and you would think they would want good relationships. I don't know exactly what the difficulty is."

U.S. policy since Fidel Castro's rise to power has been a high-minded try at tolerance of the inevitable anti-U.S. excesses of a sweeping revolution; the policy was exemplified in the appointment of friendly, low-keyed Career Ambassador Philip Bonsai. But a fortnight ago Castro falsely charged that a pamphlet-dropping plane from Florida had really loosed bombs over Havana (TIME, Nov. 2). With that premise, Castro proceeded furiously to whip up feeling against the U.S. Dropping some of its imperturbability, the U.S. last week made reply in a note stiff with such phrases as "serious concern," "shock and amazement." Chilly Session. The protest, which Eisenhower went over "very carefully" before it was delivered in a chilly session at the palace between Ambassador Bonsai and Castro's puppet President, Osvaldo Dorticos, spoke frankly of "deliberate and concerted efforts to replace traditional friendship with distrust and hostility." The U.S. rejected "with indignation" any hint that the Government winked at clandestine flights to Cuba from 200-odd Florida airfields. And at week's end, the U.S. cracked down hard on the flights, while adding the friendly gesture of sending planes and ships to look for Cuban Army Chief Camilo Cienfuegos, who dis appeared in a light plane over central Cuba. The note also "categorically rejected" a favorite Castro myth -- that the U.S. press is "engaged in a deliberate campaign to misrepresent and discredit the Government of Cuba." While on the subject of controlling Castro-hating exiles in the U.S., the State Department delivered a stinging lecture on democracy: "Persons under the juris diction of the United States cannot be arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned or interfered with." The note made clear that the U.S. shares and supports "the hopes of the Cuban people for the achievement of social justice." It ended with the hope that Cuba would review its "policy and attitude." Bad Timing. Castro's President dismissed the U.S. charges as "unfounded," leaving relations as bad as ever, and at a dangerous time for Cuba. As the State Department is anxiously aware, anti-Castro sentiment is growing in Congress, which early in the next session must write a new Sugar Act allocating the 4,500,000 tons of foreign sugar that the U.S. imports at the premium price of 6-c- a lb. (double the world price). Cuba currently has the lion's share, 3,200,000 tons.

Senator Russell Long from cane-growing Louisiana, who will have a powerful voice when the next quotas are written, says : "I don't think we should be favoring a country that is practically waging war on us." But, North Carolina's Representative Harold Cooley, whose Agriculture Committee will initiate the law, plans to try to put over an extension of present quotas for the "probationary" period of one year.

The State Department views the U.S.

sugar subsidy, which amounted to $190 million last year, as the difference be tween hope and disaster in Cuba. If it goes, the diplomats reason, Castro will be left with the spiraling economic chaos that his helter-skelter reforms have made.

He would also have guns, demagogism, hatred for the U.S., and clever pro-Communist cohorts.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.