The Russian Presence

Despite initial Cuban attempts to hide it. and official U.S. denials that it was going on, there was no mistaking the Russian buildup when it began six weeks ago. Refugees fleeing Castro's miserable island brought the first reports; U.S. intelligence agents and members of the Western diplomatic corps filled out the story. Ships--some Russian, some chartered from such NATO nations as Britain, West Germany and Norway--were pouring into Cuba carrying heavy loads of Russian military equipment and Russian soldiers.

Mostly at night, and mostly with their own hands, the Russians unloaded sensitive electronic gear and crates shaped as though they might contain missiles. At

Mariel, a port near Havana, a cinder-block wall went up to screen the docks; local Cubans nicknamed the area "Little Berlin." But there was no way of concealing the Red army trucks and armored cars lined up five-deep for a quarter of a mile along Havana's waterfront San Pedro Street. Exiles with contacts in Cuba reported convoys of military vehicles, radar vans, mobile generators, field kitchens, and flatbed trucks bearing cylindrical objects under tarpaulins rumbling inland from the quays.

Twin Bivouacs. Castro bars most U.S. newsmen from his Communist police state, and it was not until Keith Morfett of the London Daily Mail hired a car and went looking southwest of Havana that the West last week got an eyewitness description of the Russian presence. Just past the village of El Cano, eight miles from the capital, Morfett came to a high hedge and a wire fence stretching for about two miles. Then, at a break in the hedge, "there were the Russians." They numbered in the hundreds, Morfett said, and wore coarse denim trousers and cheap checked shirts. "They looked in their early 203, and were beefy men . . . strong. They were probably a construction unit."

Four miles down the red clay road, Morfett discovered a second bivouac, "swarming with thousands of Russians. Some were dressed in physical-training gear and were doing calisthenics. Others wore greenish fatigues. Two teams were playing volley ball." Between neat rows of dun-colored tents, Morfett caught glimpses of field kitchens and chow lines, and beyond sat "military vehicles--lorries, trucks with mobile radar units, armored cars. Some of the trucks still bore Russian-language lettering." Ringing the camp were Cuban soldiers manning freshly dug anti-aircraft emplacements.

Gratuitous Slap. Thus, for the first time since he reached power, Castro had on hand flesh-and-blood soldiers of the

Red army, totaling about 4,000, along with a growing armory ranging from rifles to missiles (see box opposite).

Back in Moscow, Khrushchev obviously enjoyed what he had wrought. In a gratuitous slap in the face for the U.S. and President Kennedy, he announced that "during the stay in the U.S.S.R. of Ernesto Guevara Serna [better known as Che] . . . the government of the Cuban republic addressed the Soviet government with a request for help by delivering armaments and sending technical specialists for training Cuban servicemen. Agreement was reached. As long as aggressive imperialist quarters continue threatening Cuba, the Cuban republic has every justification for taking measures to ensure its security . . . while all Cuba's true friends have every right to respond."

Fragile Republics. Behind Khrushchev's arrogant new gesture lay more than the desire to add a new cold war pressure point only 90 miles off the U.S. coast. The Kremlin wants to hold Cuba as a base for the eventual subversion of all Latin America. Against a Castro-Khrushchev alliance defying the U.S. with impunity, wielding a war machine unlike any seen before in Latin America and spreading revolution through Spanish-speaking agents, the emotional, economically unbalanced, heavily illiterate republics below the Rio Grande would be hard pressed to preserve their present fragile structures.

Castro's divisive influence is already evident. Communist rebels and rioters have shaken the governments of Venezuela, Guatemala, Panama, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. Early this year at Punta del Este, Uruguay, it took the Americas' foreign ministers ten round-the-clock days to find a devious, legalistic way to declare Communist Cuba "incompatible" with the democratic ideals of the Organization of American States--and to find 14 countries bold enough to vote for it. Meeting in Mexico City fortnight ago, the infant eight-nation Latin American Free Trade Association debated for eight days over whether to admit Red Cuba although nearly all of Cuba's trade is now with the Communist bloc. LAFTA finally rejected Cuba, but with Mexico and Brazil abstaining.

Time for Decision. Even when they could not say it publicly for fear of violent reaction by local pro-Castro minorities, most Latin American governments feared the new Cuban military buildup, and privately prayed that the U.S. would do something about it. In Nicaragua, the ruling Somoza dynasty called openly for "collective military action." Democratic little Costa Rica promised to "support any action to defend the inter-American system from the Communist threat that could come from Cuba." Students paraded through the Costa Rican capital of San Jose with placards calling for intervention--"OAS, the Time Is Now!"

In the fence-sitting, bigger countries of South America, influential voices were calling for action. Wrote Brazil's 0 Estado de Sao Paulo: "The hour of evasion, confusion and hesitation has passed." An Argentine Foreign Ministry official announced support for "any initiative taken by the U.S."

Nothing Yet. If any justification was needed beyond the Monroe Doctrine, there was the 1947 Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, the peace-keeping OAS Charter, and the 1954 OAS anti-Communist resolution. Action under the OAS Charter might range from a blockade (which a U.S. Navy expert estimated could easily be maintained by two aircraft carriers and 16 destroyers) to outright invasion.

However great the degree of support from its southern neighbors, the final decision will be the U.S.'s own. At week's end the U.S. decision was to do nothing --yet. Secretary of State Dean Rusk invited Latin American foreign ministers to an "informal" conference later this month during the U.N. General Assembly. But he lamely assured them that there would be "no intention to reach decisions or take any action whatever."

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