Trial & Trouble

After a wait of nearly a year, Cuba's Communist regime put on trial the 1,179 hapless exiles captured in last April's abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. In sharp contrast to the televised circus of the men's initial interrogation, the trial was held in secret behind the walls of Havana's Principe prison. The regime posted no formal charges, announced merely that a five-man military tribunal would act as both judge and jury. No friends or relatives of the men were allowed in to see what went on. Only Cuban and a few Iron Curtain reporters viewed the proceedings--and sent out tightly controlled stories that all defendants "admitted their guilt." The word from Havana was that the prosecutor would demand the death penalty for some, 20-year jail sentences for many others.

Yet if the world was barred from the prison trial, it got a good look at another, in some ways more fascinating, spectacle.

On radio and TV, Fidel Castro himself gave evidence that the island's Communist regime may be coming apart at the seams. In a three-hour diatribe, Castro denounced Cuba's official Communist Party and admitted to a bitter fight for supremacy between himself and the old-line professionals.

Speakers of Garbage. Singling out Anibal Escalante, 53, third-ranking Cuban Red after Party Boss Blas Roca and Strategist Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, Castro launched a violent attack. Escalante and other party men like him were working to undermine the revolution by setting up underground cells to seize control of all revolutionary institutions. Already the old guerrilla fighters were being shunted aside by party functionaries. "Did they think they won the revolution in a raffle?" cried Castro. The "boastfulness" of the old Communist militants and the belief that those who do not belong to them are not able to occupy important posts is an "absurd, negative, stupid policy. Let there be an end to all speakers of garbage." Cuba's Prime Minister made it clear that he still considers himself a Communist: "The revolution is absolutely defined as Marxist-Leninist." But he was the man in charge, and his brother Raul from now on was Vice Premier.

Messiah & Marx. Washington, which has a team of Castrologists to interpret Castro just as it has a group of Kremlinologists to study Khrushchev, regarded the show as Castro's violent reaction to the increasingly bold Communist Party takeover. But Castro, who considers himself as much messiah as Marxist, refused to go quietly--and so did his wispy-mustached little brother Raul. On Feb. 19, according to reports reaching Miami exiles, Raul shot and seriously wounded a party leader in Oriente province in an argument over who was boss.

The falling out between Reds added a new and explosive element to a situation that is rapidly passing into ultimate chaos.

Canadian Correspondent Gerald Clark of the Montreal Star recently returned to Cuba for his first visit in a year. He was stunned: "An entire nation is on the edge of starvation." And as the Bay of Pigs prisoners went on trial, he recalled a whispered conversation with a Cuban.

"I want some boots," said the man. "How many pairs?" asked Clark. "One or two?" "Seventy thousand," said the Cuban, "filled with Marines."

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