Five Eggs a Month

After five weeks of uncharacteristic silence, Fidel Castro appeared to his people last week bearing bad news and mea culpas.

Facing up to the island's growing hunger, he set harsh new rationing regulations. In Havana, almost everything is to be rationed. Rice is restricted to 6 lbs. per person per month; beans, 1 1/2 lbs.; soap, one cake ("I believe it will suffice if used economically," said Castro); eggs, five. Meat is restricted to 3/4 lb. per week (enough for three small hamburgers ). Castro offered such stock excuses for the food failure as the Yankee boycott (although U.S. food exports to Cuba are still legal), but also acknowledged some of the shortcomings of collectivization. He wound up with a strange mixture of Marxist-Leninist self-criticism and the regal We. "Only a few months ago, we made formal promises of commitments we have not carried out," said Castro. "We are ashamed. Who is to blame? The administrators, the rulers and everyone."

Four days later, in a post-midnight TV address, Castro returned to the theme of the blunders of his own regime. "We have to increase public vigilance against errors and injustices," said Castro. "Some people think they are more revolutionary than anybody and have the right to mistreat and humiliate others." He singled out the notorious Revolutionary Defense Committees--spies stationed in every city block, in all factories and farms--for special censure. And then he made his attack categorical: "The revolution has to re-educate all the revolutionary nuclei, and needs to revise the entire political apparatus of the revolution."

Without much else to feed on, Cubans had to take what comfort they could from that.

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