Triumphant Reds

Riding high, the Popular Socialist (Communist) Party, the sole political organization functioning in Cuba, last week held its first national convention since 1952. For Cuba's 17,000 Reds it was a dream of power come true. On the platform sat the government's top labor leaders and Faure Chaumon, the ambassador designate who will soon go to Moscow and pick up diplomatic relations with Russia. As the convention gathered, the first Soviet Ambassador to Cuba since 1952, Sergei Kudriavtsev, once expelled by Canada as a spy, flew into Havana and got a big welcome.

To the convention came admiring fraternal delegates from 30 lands, among them top-ranking Red Theoretician Jacques Duclos of France. The Communist newspaper Hoy, which Carlos Rafael Rodriguez edits, chortled happily: "The monstrous version of the Communist with knife between his teeth has completely disappeared in Cuba."

Cuba's Reds like to make it appear that they always opposed ex-Dictator Fulgencio Batista. In fact, the P.S.P. used to be an enthusiastic supporter of Batista. In return for its help in the 1940 election, Batista legalized the party, let it take control of Cuba's labor organizations, and brought Red Chiefs Juan Marinello and Carlos Rafael Rodriguez into his Cabinet. Back in power after his 1952 coup, Batista declared the party illegal but never cracked down hard on it. Not until five months before Batista fell did the Communists abandon their scornful attitude toward the "bourgeois romantic," Rebel Castro, and proffer a united front. Rodriguez, youngest of the top P.S.P. triumvirate, went quietly into Castro's Sierra Maestra redoubt and began talking with leading rebels. To Castro, Rodriguez promised Red support with no strings attached. Rodriguez reportedly got the rank of captain in the rebel army and grew the standard beard, which he continues to wear.

Today, in the party's leadership, Old-time Communist Marinello, 61, has stepped aside and become a scholarly front man. Secretary General Bias Roca, 52, a trusted Moscow agent, controls the party apparatus. Rodriguez, 47, is the liaison between the Communists and the government. He is the one who meets secretly with Castro and Guevara. In 1955 the P.S.P. met underground and set out some "Fundamental Points." It demanded: P:"Nationalization of foreign public service companies." P:"Nullification of concessions to Yankee imperialists such as the King Ranch, mining and oil companies." P:"Commercial relations with all nations, such as the Soviet Union, Communist China." P:"Return to Cuban sovereignty of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo." With last week's seizure by Cuba of the U.S.-owned Moa Bay nickel-mining plant, grabbing the naval base was the only one of these objectives still unrealized.

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