Castro's Triumph

The broadcasts from Cuba came booming in over Florida radios, nearly blotting out local U.S. stations. By flipping a dial on their TV sets, residents of Key West could see as well as hear the spectacle. In an Orwellian marathon lasting five nights running last week. Fidel Castro paraded 200, then 400, finally almost 1,000 captured rebels into Havana's Sports Palace and subjected them to a favorite pastime of the new Cuba, the televised inquisition.

To the Wall! As the studio audience chanted "to the wall," the announcer asked viewers to telephone immediately if they recognized any criminals among the men. One woman rushed forward to identify Prisoner RamOn Calvino as a Batista torturer (he was, with 15 murders on his record, acknowledged the exiles), asked to be on the firing squad that executes him. A few brave men defied their inquisitors. Carlos Varona, 21, the son of Exile Leader Antonio Varona, and a paratrooper in the rebel army, coolly asked his jeering captors: "If you have so many people on your side, why don't you hold elections?"

But others, either through fear, bitterness or possibly because they were rehearsed, were full of information about their training, equipment, plans and the extent of U.S. involvement in the mis adventure.

One Roman Catholic priest, well known both for his courage (he was captured with the paratroopers) and for his bitter opposition to Castro, appeared as a blubbering stool pigeon. "I am completely sorry for what has happened, and I ask the Cuban people to accept my sorrow," he said. "The Americans forced me to do it." Said an invasion survivor, watching the performance on TV in Miami: "I know that man like a brother. He might have been drugged."

On the final night's telecast, Castro himself, decked out in beret, cigar and low-slung .45, strode onstage for the finale. As the chorus of "to the wall" reached a crescendo, he harangued the prisoners for 3 1/2 hours, crying "If the people of Cuba want a Communist regime, who has the right to deny it to them?" Then he grandly announced that he would "try to persuade" the government to spare their lives--all except those identified with Batista. The prisoners, by now dizzy from denunciation, clapped and cheered.

Scenes from the Beach. Perhaps unintentionally, the Cuban press gave eloquent testimony that the rebels, so docile in captivity, had fought a ferocious battle. Splashed across the pages of the government's mouthpiece RevoluciOn were dozens of photographs from the Bay of Pigs. A youthful invader, too small for his oversized camouflage fatigues, lay dead in some weeds; another lay on his stomach among rocks; a third was on his back, knees sticking up, cut down where he sat behind his machine gun. And then there were the militia losses: a body burned black by a flamethrower; two more militiamen draped across each other beside a fallen tree.

Neither Castro nor the exiles put out casualty figures. The best estimate was that of 1,300 rebels landed, possibly 90 were killed in combat. A handful--perhaps 50 men, no more--may haye made it to the rugged Escambray Mountains; another 100 to 200 were evacuated from the beachhead. The rest were captured when their ammunition gave out. Castro's casualties were much higher. Before it was destroyed by Castro's jet fighters, the rebel air force of 14 World War II B-26s wiped out two columns of advancing militia, totaling three tanks, two armored cars, 31 militia-crammed trucks and buses. Castro's militia dead may have run to 2,000 or more.

Compared to the ruin that the invasion brought to the Cuban civilian population, the combat losses were minuscule. Scared passengers arriving in the U.S. on the first planes from Havana told a story of terror unmatched in recent Latin American history. Said one man, landing in Miami: "I have just come from hell." A source inside Cuba smuggled out his estimate that by week's end, 250,000 Cubans had been rounded up and packed into makeshift concentration camps. In Havana alone, some 40,000 people were crammed into the Sports Palace, the cav ernous Blanquita movie theater, the ruins of Morro Castle and in sequestered private homes. One released American reported that he and 157 other prisoners were held in a room that had only five chairs. Said one of the fortunate few who managed to leave Cuba last week: "Families go from one place to another seeking a father, a son, a sister. They gather outside these camps, calling out names in the hope that someone within will hear them."

The trucks loaded with suspected counter-revolutionaries still rumbled through Havana streets, and the papers were full of announcements: "Citizens: Do you know well every occupant of your house? And if that one you doubt is a criminal counterrevolutionary, why do you not denounce him?"

The City of Grief. Watching it all in stunned horror, 65,000 anti-Castro exiles turned Miami into a city of grief. The brick house on Biscayne Boulevard that served as headquarters of the Frente was besieged by hysterical women asking news of sons, brothers, sweethearts in the ill-fated invasion force. In the confusion, no one could be sure which men were dead, wounded, captured, or evacuated.

The exiles leveled bitter accusations at the U.S. and at the shattered Revolutionary Council, whose leader, Jose MirO Cardona, was to have been liberated Cuba's provisional president. Most of the council leaders found it advisable to get out of Miami, spent the week shuttling between New York, Washington and the Caribbean. MirO Cardona and the Frente's Tony Varona flew to Vieques Island off Puerto Rico to visit the invasion wounded evacuated to the U.S. naval base there.

The Phantom Army. Rumors circulated that a fresh, uncommitted exile army was somewhere in the Caribbean, and that a new landing was on the way. Evidence indicated that it was a phantom army; the only force of any size left intact was a 167-man commando outfit led by an ex-Castro aide, Captain Nino Diaz. On invasion day, Diaz opened his sealed orders en route to Cuba, saw that the CIA plan called for a diversionary landing at an unfamiliar spot in Camaguey province instead of Oriente province, a region that Diaz knew well. Disgusted, Diaz turned back to Florida with his men.

There was also hopeful talk that the underground in Cuba, realizing that the invasion was foredoomed, had buttoned up and managed to weather the storm. Manolo Ray, leader of the M.R.P. underground and a council member, admitted heavy losses among his people. But he believed that many survived the Castro roundup. "In four months," said Ray, "we will be stronger than before." Yet other leaders say that the underground, like the exile army, is wrecked.

With his guns and his Communist advisers, Fidel Castro had never looked stronger. It would be a long time before Cubans, either inside or outside the island, could mount a serious threat to his dictatorship. What would be done about him now became the problem of Cuba's neighbors in the hemisphere.

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