Crises: Phony & Real

In full view of Castro spotters on the hills surrounding Guantanamo last week, some 3,000 U.S. sailors and marines with full combat gear moved into position in an "exercise" simulating the defense of the base against overland attack. At the same time. Rear Admiral Allen Smith Jr., commander of the Caribbean Sea Frontier, announced that U.S. minefields, "plainly marked," have been planted just inside the fence around Guantanamo's 24-mile perimeter. So that there could be no lingering doubt as to U.S. intentions, agreeing to modification of these agreements, and will take whatever steps may be appropriate to defend the base."

Either because of the U.S. warning, or possibly because even, the Cubans are tiring of the game, Castro's war cries were not quite so clangorous last week. Castro himself admitted that the invasion only "appears" imminent, and President Osvaldo Dorticos said weakly: "If they do not invade us, we have won a battle."

Down to 50%. The easing of the phony crisis turned Cuban eyes back to a real one at home: their fast disintegrating economy. Last week eggs, potatoes, peas, carrots and apples disappeared from Havana markets, newspapers took a second cut from twelve pages daily to ten, and government TV stations in Havana shrank to two. A year ago Havana had six. Inevitably, the dictatorship is losing some popular support. At the peak, Castro had 90% of Cuba's people with him; the figure today is estimated at around 50%. One top underground leader told friends he no longer worried that servants would betray him. Cubans who used to dismiss the Communism charges as right-wing American propaganda are beginning to wake up. A shudder of fear swept Havana last week when a rumor got around that the government was planning to "nationalize" children along Communist lines.

On the List. So great was the rush to leave Cuba that the party-lining National Confederation of University Professionals scheduled a mass meeting to make members publicly swear to stay. The government has reportedly drawn up a list of engineers, petroleum specialists, executives to be halted at the airport.

The disillusioned still fled. Among them: Rufo Lopez Fresquet, Castro's first Finance Minister; Julio Duarte Ruiz, president of the General Accounts Tribunal; Enrique Menocal, secretary of the Sugar Institute; seven Cuban seamen who jumped ship in the Panama Canal Zone; five Dominican exiles who tried to row their way to freedom in Florida.

In Havana's underground, the anti-Red Popular Revolutionary Movement, headed by Castro's former Works Minister Manolo Ray, issued a manifesto: "Under the pretext of freeing us from Yankee imperialism, we have been encircled with the yoke of Russian imperialism. Cubans! Rescue the Revolution from those who have betrayed it!"

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