Becoming Destructive

The official part of Fidel Castro's marathon visit to Moscow was over, and his beaming host had a few words of farewell before sending the honored guest off to southern Russia to loll in the sun for a while. With Castro standing beside him in Lenin Stadium, Nikita Khrushchev by turns praised Cuba's heroic "revolt against tyranny," pleaded for coexistence with the U.S., and angrily threatened nuclear war if the U.S. dared lay a hand on Cuba. He even rang in the American Declaration of Independence, quoting: "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive . . . it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it." "Not bad words," said Khrushchev approvingly.

But he hardly mentioned new Russian economic aid for Cuba--which will be needed in massive amounts to prevent destruction of an economy that used to provide one of the hemisphere's highest standards of living. Last week a new boatload of 750 refugees landed in Miami with reports of ever higher prices, tighter rations and lower wages. "Cuba is a madhouse," said one bitter arrival. "Our Russian 'experts' live like landlords, we Cubans live like slaves."

Even the Communists no longer try to hide what Labor Minister Augusto Martinez Sanchez last week aptly called "truly a great mess." In a 31-hr. TV interview, Martinez Sanchez outlined eight new labor categories in which Cuba's 2,400,000 workers soon are to be frozen in a drive to get more work for less pay. To qualify for the maximum pay in each category, workers will have to fulfill new work norms based on productivity. Those who fall short face even further reductions in wages that are already as much as 50% lower than the days before Castro took power.

The latest U.S. estimates put Cuba's gross national product down 30% from the pre-Castro level, and still falling. Mismanagement, shortages of equipment and fertilizer, and some sabotage have cut this year's sugar crop to less than 3,000,000 tons--little more than half the pre-Castro average. Cuba's non-military debt to Moscow, already some $300 million, is expected to reach $800 million by year's end. Food is so short that staples are up 40% since 1958. But that is just the legal price hike. On the thriving black market that has developed in Cuba, the jump is often 200%. Beef costs $2 a lb., black beans $1 a lb., 200 U.S. aspirin $3, an egg 25-c-. Legal clothing prices are up 100%; used shoes bring $40 a pair on the black market.

Picking up Khrushchev's borrowed words, any Cuban could well ponder whether this form of government had become destructive.

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