Half the Fun

Most dictators find a certain cruel pleasure in the judicious balance of bread and circuses necessary to keep their people in hand. In Cuba, where nearly everything is rationed, Castro has only half the fun. But when circus time arrives, Fidel makes the most of it, as he did last week on a double occasion for revelry--the seventh anniversary of his rise to power and the convening of the first "anti-imperialist" conference of Latin American, African and Asian nations.

For days in advance, workers were painting Havana's threadbare buildings, draping banners, and hanging enormous murals depicting Brobdingnagian revolutionaries. The festivities began with a New Year's blast in the Plaza de la Revolucion, where 50,000 Cubans and guests paid $3 a head for a spread of roast pig and chicken, and toasted the year with hundreds of gallons of Spanish wine.

Something Unseen. The exultant climax came two days later when 500,000 cheering Cubans crowded into the Plaza to watch Latin America's biggest military machine pass in review before Castro, President Osvaldo Dorticos, and Cuba's other commissars. While MIGs screamed overhead, Fidel's Communist-trained troops, cadets and members of the civilian Popular Defense Force clicked smartly past, followed by armored troop carriers, tanks, rocket launchers and a flock of missiles. "There is something else that is not seen," Castro told the crowd jubilantly, "and that is many weapons more. The quantity has grown."

Castro could not say as much for rice, the staple of every Cuban meal. Mournfully, he disclosed that Red China had broken a $250 million barter agreement--mostly Chinese rice for Cuban sugar. China blamed economic pressures at home, but there was little doubt that Castro's drift toward Moscow was the real reason. "I thought this was a long-term proposition," Castro said, "but the other party did not understand it that way." As a result, the Cuban rice ration was lopped in half--from 6 lbs. a month per person to 3 lbs. Oh, well, shrugged Fidel, a rice-free diet "can be much richer in proteins, vitamins, minerals and energy," which was not much consolation to a populace that has always based its meals on Moros y Cristianos (Moors and Christians), as many Cubans fondly call their staple beans and rice.

Third World Force. The subject of rice probably never came up before the well-fed delegates at the nine-day Tri-Continental Conference, which drew 505 delegates from 85 countries to Havana's Hotel Libre. They had enough ideology to chew on, what with Peking's delegates bickering with the Russians and Moscow's men biting right back. Castro himself was all unity.

As many a tinhorn ruler had done before him, Fidel apparently hopes to form a third world force of small, revolutionary countries, and Havana Radio hinted that it should be represented by a new tri-continental organization with headquarters in Havana. To Cubans, that sounded like circus time forever.

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