Fidel the Silent

It was the kind of opportunity that Old Athlete Fidel Castro cannot resist.

As his motorcade wound through the dusty town of Maria Elena in Chile's mountainous north, the Cuban Premier spied a gymnasium housing a basketball court. He ordered the caravan to a screeching halt, recruited a government official, three carabineros and five Chil ean newsmen, then sprang onto the court -- combat boots, green fatigues and all -- for a pickup game.

After 15 minutes of furious play at Maria Elena's lung-stretching 5,600-ft.

altitude, the Maximum Leader signaled a time-out -- but not a long one. Mo ments later, he was back on the court, this time gaily leading a startled team mate around in an impromptu waltz.

Santiago's middle-roading daily La Prensa ahemmed: "Chile, one is accustomed to men dancing with women."

Excessive Speechifying. On his first trip to South America in twelve years, Castro followed a two-week itinerary that took him north through Chile's bleak mining country, then south for tours of factories and talks with stu dents, and finally for a cruise on a destroyer with his host, Chile's Marxist President Salvador Allende Gossens.

At times, Fidel was more like a touring inspector general than a visiting head of government. Obviously well-coached about the problems that Allende's government is having with falling production, rising absenteeism and soaring wage demands at Chile's newly nationalized mines, Castro vigorously railed against troublemaking "demagogues" and "reactionaries" during a speech at a mine in Pedro de Valdivia. At Chuquicamata, the world's largest open-pit copper operation, he launched into a lecture on productivity. He thundered that "a hundred tons less per day means a loss of $36 mil lion a year."

After eating a boiled chicken dinner one evening high in the mine-area mountains, Castro summoned the cook from the kitchen. What, he wanted to know, was the boiling point of water? One hun dred twenty degrees centigrade, answered the cook. "No," snapped Fidel.

"At this altitude water boils at 98 degrees centigrade. Find out, study, and you will see that you are mistaken."

By the time he reached the southern fishing port of Puerto Montt, Castro's voice was reduced to a squeak -- the result of a cold and his excessive speechifying. Allende, who met him there for a cruise to the southern tip of Chile, apologized for Castro's inability to address the crowd that awaited them. "I asked him as a friend, I pleaded, I recommended it as a doctor and even ordered as President that he not talk so much or so long," said Allende. "But he paid me no attention."

What was Castro up to? On one level, Allende hoped that the Cuban revolutionary's presence would sanctify his own efforts to tame Chile's obstreperous unions and mollify the extremists who want to turn the country into a pure socialist state overnight. With those elements, Castro certainly scored some points; one Chuquicamata copper miner enthusiastically told newsmen last week that "Fidel made us see the importance of our producing more. Now, we are all Fidelistas." But the visit also cost Allende some of his remaining good will among the Chilean political middle, which does not hold the Cuban dictator in particular esteem.

Without Obeisance. On another level, Castro had his own purposes to serve. His trip opened a campaign to break down the diplomatic and economic isolation imposed on Cuba, at U.S. insistence, by the Organization of American States in the early 1960s. Nationalism and anti-Yankee sentiment is so high in Latin America that U.S. officials concede privately that Castro may be able to re-establish Cuba's ties to the region on his own terms--meaning without obeisance to the OAS or to Washington. Peru may soon follow Chile in recognizing Havana, and other countries will certainly follow. Eventually, a massive shift toward Cuba could force the U.S. to reconsider its decade-old policy of isolating Castro.

That would be a triumph not only for Havana but also for Moscow. In going to Chile, Castro was in effect admitting that the kind of violent revolution he has espoused is passe. He was also endorsing the Soviet via padfica policy of promoting Communism in Latin America through established parties and more or less conventional politics. Fidel made the point poignantly. While in Santiago, he laid wreaths on statues of two Latin American heroes--but he did not go near the one that had been erected for his old revolutionary comrade Che Guevara.

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