The Puppet Sovereign

All week long the martial music blared in Havana as Castro attempted to prove to the world that he was master of his own country and not merely a bedraggled and disregarded Kremlin puppet. Units of Castro's bathtub navy put to sea for "maneuvers" while the Maximum Leader himself loped around Havana posing with militiamen. Finally, he went on TV to convince Cubans that he was still the man in charge, the one on whom events centered.

Plot to Humiliate. His central theme was that any plan for inspection of missile sites was a Yankee plot to "humiliate"' Cuba. "What right has the U.S. to ask this? We are the victims. We do not accept it." If Cuba's Soviet ally wants to pack up its missiles and go home, said Castro, that was Russia's business, for "the strategic arms were not Cuban property." Cuba and Russia were still buddies, he went on, though he reserved the right as an equal to bring up later "some discrepancies between the Soviet and Cuban governments."

Just so no one would misunderstand, Castro made it clear that all the other Soviet-bloc weapons already delivered--the MIG jets, heavy artillery and tanks --belonged to Cuba alone. In fact, said Castro, "several months ago the Soviet Union decided to cancel the whole arms debt of our country." Was Cuba weakened by Khrushchev's retreat? Was Castro diminished? "Don't think that the retirement of these strategic arms disarms us. All the other arms stay in this country. Fatherland or death! We will conquer!"

There were dutiful cheers from the faithful, but the London Daily Express' Colin Lawson, filing from Havana, reported that "Fidel Castro has taken his biggest knock in popularity since he came down from the hills four years ago." So had his Russian pals. When Lawson first arrived in Cuba a fortnight earlier, newspaper headlines shouted CUBA is NOT ALONE, and front pages were full of photographs of Russian troops on the march. When Khrushchev backed down, the pictures disappeared. "Discreetly, but nevertheless with emphasis." reported Lawson, "many Cubans now show their feelings about Khrushchev. One or two badge-carrying members would not go so far as to say he had let them down, but shrugs of shoulders were just as eloquent."

Call to Terror. The full measure of Castro's fury at his humiliation came clear in the radio messages crackling across the Caribbean from Havana: "This is a call to terror . . . Attack U.S. citizens and their properties . . ." Here and there throughout Latin America, street riots erupted and were easily put down. Only in Venezuela was there real trouble. Hours after the call to terror from Havana, four explosions shook the eastern shore of Lake Maracaibo, where foreign oil companies have 9,000 wells pumping 2,400,000 bbl. of oil daily. The blasts wrecked four offshore electric transformer stations belonging to Creole Petroleum Corp., knocking out 600 wells and cutting Creole production (1,300,000 bbl. daily) by almost half. On a well platform 300 ft. from one of the damaged transformer stations, Creole workers found two men still alive but horribly burned--victims of their own sabotage. A third man was found dead in the water. Police identified all three as members of the Venezuelan Communist Party. It took Creole three days to restore normal production. Then the Reds hit again--this time blowing up three important U.S.-owned pipelines 160 miles east of Caracas.

Venezuela's tough-minded and hard-pressed President Romulo Betancourt, a liberal who is a dedicated enemy of Castro's, had already started preparing his country for a state of mobilization on the ground that Cuba "stands as a constant threat to our security." He now sent battle dressed marines to stand vigil over the oilfields and put one-half of Venezuela under virtual martial law.

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