Red All the Way

Fidel Castro last week placed his country on the Soviet side. He did it in the most public manner possible: in a speech at the U.N. General Assembly in Manhattan, and in subsequent public utterances.

Castro's four-hour and 26-minute speech, the longest ever delivered before the General Assembly, charged that U.S. "monopolists'' turned Cuba into a colony, concluded with a Red-eyed view of world problems. He took the Soviet position on disarmament ("We warmly support the Soviet proposal"), on the Congo ("The only leader is Lumumba"), on Red China ("We support seating the true representatives of the Chinese people"). Castro also started to attack U.S. Presidential Candidates Kennedy and Nixon but General Assembly President Patrick Boland asked him to stop, and he did.

Nkrumah's Hail, Nasser's Hug. Delivered from a single page of handwritten notes, the speech made plain that Castro is an exceptionally talented demagogue in his own right. Passages on the ills of colonialism and the consequences of underdevelopment struck home with many Latin American delegates, but Castro's 100% line-up with the Reds hit home even harder. Said Chile's delegation chief, Daniel Schweitzer: "Castro exposed himself in all ways." Among the Latin Americans, only the delegation from Mexico applauded him, with occasional support from Venezuela and Bolivia. But with Khrushchev cuing the applause, pudgy palms pounding high over his head as the signal, Castro got enough cheers even for his mammoth ego. Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah hailed the speech as "dramatic." Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser hugged Castro and invited him to Egypt.

One hour after he finished orating, the Cuban chief passed through the doors to the headquarters of the Czechs, the leading arms dealers in the Soviet bloc, and stayed three hours. Next day he had a 40-minute talk with Nkrumah. Meeting Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka, Castro agreed to exchange ambassadors. He received visits from India's Nehru and from Bulgarian Red Boss Todor Zhivkov, but paid only one call on fellow Latin Americans, attending a Uruguayan reception. Said Cuban Foreign Minister Raul Roa: "Of all the men Dr. Castro met, next to Khrushchev, he felt a bond for Nasser. Nehru is weak. Not Nasser--he really is a man."

Just like Lincoln. At midweek Castro's spear-bearers shouldered Fidel's special refrigerator, two cages of white mice, a bunch of 3-ft.-tall stuffed toy animals bought in Manhattan, and prepared for a triumphal return to Cuba, where every TV station had carried the U.N. speech live, via the Straits of Florida over-the-horizon transmission link, which costs $2,200 hourly. Just before leaving, Castro received a gift package, later opened by the police bomb squad. The contents: ten lbs. of flea powder.

Even the leave-taking turned into a Red rally. Learning that his Cubana Airlines Britannia had been impounded in New York by a U.S. court order,* Castro requested that Khrushchev lend him a Soviet plane. Promptly a Soviet Il-18 turboprop turned up. Beaming, Castro read newsmen another homily: "The U.S. takes away our plane and the Soviets give us a plane. The Soviets are our friends." A newsman asked if his government was Communist and Castro snorted: "You've got Communism on your mind. Everybody who is not like Chiang Kai-shek or Franco or Adenauer is a Communist for you. We are by the humble people, of the humble people and for the humble people--you know, just like Lincoln. I'm coming back soon," he yelled, and was off.

Bombs at Home. In Havana, Castro went straight to the Presidential Palace for a 2 1/2-hour speech. An hour after he started, an oppositionist showing unprecedented derring-do set off a noisy bomb amidst the meeting. Castro laughed it off: "The moment I started talking of imperialism, the bomb exploded." But he announced a police-state innovation, apparently long planned: a neighborhood spy system set up to "know who lives in each block and what he does." Off went a second bomb and Castro's smile grew wan. "Let us not underestimate the imperialist enemy," he said.

That same night, wandering onto a TV panel show, Castro, 33, called Kennedy, 43, and Nixon, 47, "ignorant, beardless kids." His eleven days in Manhattan had brought the showdown with the U.S. much closer. The U.S. embassy suggested to the 4,000 U.S. citizens still working in Cuba that they would be "prudent" to send home their dependents, and the State Department advised Americans not to visit Cuba.

* In two weeks, writs impounding three planes flown to the U.S. were served on the government-controlled Cubana Airlines. A Miami advertising agency, trying to collect an unpaid $285,000 bill for tourist advertising, obtained two of the writs; the third was obtained by a Cubana stockholder in Florida concerned over the Castro government's progressive nationalization of the line's assets. Actually planes flying to the U.N. on government business are entitled to diplomatic immunity, and the U.S. State Department tried to advise Cubana how to void the writs, but the company ignored the advice.

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