All-American Grab

Fidel Castro last week announced the "forcible expropriation" of $700 million worth of the total $1 billion U.S. investment in Cuba. The effect was to complete the seizure of U.S. property that, until now, the Castroites had only "intervened" in (meaning taken over to operate). The only U.S. property presumably left untouched were banks, some small firms, and two nickel plants.

As a dramatic stage for his announcement, an ailing Fidel Castro used the final meeting of the First Latin American Youth Congress at the Havana baseball stadium. From the moment he slowly climbed the steps to the speakers' platform in the glare of the night-game lights, it was obvious he was still not well. His usual cigar was missing. He slumped into a chair with his arms folded, staring at his feet, hunching forward and sideways, tugging the lapels of his coat together, running his hand over his face. When he got up to speak, he seemed to hoist himself gingerly from his seat.

Castro struck the theme of his talk immediately, lashing out at the U.S. as the "evil of America." But after 30 minutes of hatred, his voice failed, and his brother, Armed Forces Chief Raul Castro, grabbed the microphone as the crowd chanted, "Fidel, rest!" Raul made the first announcement that U.S. property would be seized, carried on for 20 minutes, until Fidel was able to stand up again and read the expropriation decree himself. He singled out the $300 million Cuban Electric Co., the Cuban Telephone Co., three more U.S. oil company subsidiaries, three dozen sugar mills. Compensation for U.S. property, Castro said, would be in 50-year Cuban bonds, paying 2% interest. (He earlier promised to pay for seized property with 20-year bonds, but there has been no sign of them.) Playing to the crowd, Castro said he would pay off the bonds to U.S. owners with 25% of the value of all Cuban sugar sold for 5.4-c- a lb. in the U.S. in excess of 3,000,000 lbs. a year--in other words, with the income he is not going to get from the preferred sugar quota the U.S. has withdrawn from Cuba.

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