Fidel's New People

On July 26, 1953, a ragtag band of 160 Cubans tried to trigger an uprising against Dictator Fulgencio Batista by attacking Santiago de Cuba's Moncada Army barracks. The chancy venture was squashed, and half of the partisans were killed. Among those imprisoned was 25-year-old Fidel Castro, a lawyer turned revolutionist, who drew a 15-year sentence. In an act more merciful than wise, Batista granted Castro amnesty after only two years. In 1956, after a brief Mexican exile, Fidel was back in Cuba with another guerrilla band; but this time he was not to be caught. Two years later, he ruled Cuba.

Cuba took a holiday last week to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Moncada barracks raid. Among the observers at the festivities was TIME Correspondent Richard Duncan, who toured Castro's island fiefdom to see how Cuba has changed in the decade since Fidel took control. His report:

To the dismay of Cuba's city dwellers, the Castro revolution has been strictly a rural phenomenon. More than 30% of Cuba's gross national product is reinvested in the earth to the planned detriment of the city dweller. As a result, more than half of the 50,000 Cubans fleeing annually are Habaneros. They have taken with them most of the liveliness that once made Havana the "Paris of the Caribbean."

After ten years of decay, its shoreline is a sweep of greying yellow buildings. A few once posh hotels and restaurants remain open, but the epitaphs to their elegance and cuisine are written on the walls. "Under the revolutionary offensive, this establishment belongs to the people," reads a sign in a once privately owned shop. Loudspeakers shatter the soft night air, calling the faithful to a "solidarity with North Viet Nam" rally, while just a block away at Monseigneur Restaurant (steak: $15), harassed waiters try to evoke the old days by wrapping label-less bottles of beer in napkins. Transportation is largely by bus. Gasoline rationing has virtually emptied the streets of cars, except those rusting at curbside, idle and unusable.

Ten Million Cocktail. At the Havana Libre, formerly the Hilton Hotel, the clientele still is cosmopolitan, but the tone has changed. Chunky Russian technicians jostle wispy North Koreans in the elevator. In the lobby, Havana women, necklines plunging down their backs in the style of a decade ago, click across the marble floors to the tune of Heroic Guerrilla played on the p.a. system.

Castro's indifference to the city dwellers is understandable. Cuba's greatest need is for more food. Rationing permits only eight ounces of beef per person each month, only three pounds of rice. In Havana people wait in line for hours at restaurants and markets to supplement their meager rations. "Lines are a social institution now," explains a Vedado woman. "They are also the only way to get anything."

The urgency of Cuba's farm production is everywhere apparent in the countryside. Castro has promised that the sugar-cane crop "will be 10 million tons rain or no rain" by 1970. Echoing his call are red and yellow pop-art billboards along the roads proclaiming "ten million in '70," while Santa Clara bars push the "ten million cocktail"--a concoction of rum, triple sec and cane sugar. But publicity and propaganda do not grow sugar cane, and most experts doubt that Castro can deliver on his promise. After a prolonged drought, this year's crop is at least 3.5 million tons below his target.

Isle of Youth. Concern for agriculture has benefited the historically deprived campesino, who now enjoys free education and health care. He may soon lose his freedom, however. The government is building a huge banana plantation on the south coast, which will be a step toward its massive effort at colonizing and communizing farms. Helping the effort are Young Communist Work Camps, where boys go for two years to combine party indoctrination with agriculture and schooling.

It appears, moreover, that the Castro grand communization plan extends beyond the farm and city to the whole Cuban society. It calls for creation of the "New People" of Cuba, who will be tireless, combative and intellectual by design. Toward this end of changing man's nature, the Castro government has set up a test laboratory on the Isle of Pines--now renamed the Isle of Youth--where young volunteers go and live under a strictly supervised communal society, study and work in an economy nearly free of money. "We don't feel that Communism can be developed by encouraging man's ambition," explains Fidel.

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