"Long-Tongued Persons"

Enrique Pizzi Porras, night city editor of Havana's El Pais, waited for the first copies to come up off the press fortnight ago, wished his reporters a Happy New Year, closed his desk, hurried across town to the sanctuary of the Mexican Embassy. The front page of El Pais that morning carried a forbidden photograph of the body of 17-year-old Juan Gonzalez Rubiera, pierced by eleven bullets from the guns of Cuban secret police for "attempting to escape." Police hung around the newspaper office for days.

To find the reason for the death of young Juan Rubiera, reporters had to go back to last September when a carload of hired assassins shot Dr. Clemente Vasquez Bello in front of his home (TIME, Oct. 10). People get shot in Cuba nearly every day but Dr. Bello was something special. Not only was he Speaker of the Cuban Senate, but a very intimate friend of Dictator-President Gerardo Machado. Within an hour of Dr. Bello's murder members of the Porra or Machado strong-arm squad attempted to assassinate Dr. Ricardo Dolz, anti-Machado leader and Rector of Havana University. They did assassinate the three Andrade brothers in their home and Dr. Miguel Angel Aguiar in his.

Still the Porra did not rest, nor did an anti-Machado terrorist organization known as ABC. On Dec. 30 some member of ABC shot and severely wounded Sergeant Rafael Castro of the secret police, a Machado bravo who has been accused of several political murders.

That afternoon the Porra canceled that by killing Rubiera, but made the mistake of letting his body lie in the street long enough for reporters to photograph it.

Next it was ABC's turn. Last week in the Almendares district of Havana two U. S. tourists discovered the body of Policeman Francisco Rafael Cepero with his ear cut off, his throat slashed, a bullet in his temple. Tied to his right wrist was a blue tag inscribed: "The ABC will mete out this death to all long-tongued persons." Long-tongued Cepero's crime had been to shout a warning to Chief of Police Major Arsenic Ortiz (who got his present job after being accused with two others of 44 political murders in Santiago) when three young men were attempting to assassinate him. Chief Ortiz chased them up an alley in his own car, shot all three.

The deal now passed to the Porra who promptly raided the home of Dr. Cuervo Rubio and arrested Angel Alvarez Fernandez, a student, on suspicion in connection with the September murder of Dr. Bello. Student Alvarez also "attempted to escape," was shot through the head.

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