Grau's Week

Pop went the cork, and Cuba's President Ramon Grau San Martin gratefully drained a glass of champagne last week with Spain's Ambassador Luciano Lopez Ferrer. The occasion was Spain's formal recognition of Cuba's latest government. Spain was the first European nation so to act, though Mexico, Uruguay, Peru and Panama had already done so. P:Cuba's long-threatened general strike again failed to materialize. President Grau settled himself a little more solidly in the saddle by signing a smart decree. To persuade Cuba's wild-eyed, well-meaning students to quit politics, President Grau granted complete autonomy (including freedom of expression) to the University of Havana, plus an annual grant of at least 2% of Cuba's revenues. P: A cloud on Cuba's horizon remained the Negro problem. Negro crowds have used political excitement to loot shops, steal liquor. Lately white women have been insulted. Splashed on fences, a slogan has appeared: NEGRO, GET YOUR WHITE WOMAN! WE ARE EQUAL NOW. Immediate result was the organization last week of a new secret society, headed by white Cubans and U. S. residents of Cuba, who took the name Ku Klux Klan Kubano.* P: No optimist last week was Cuba's Secretary of the Treasury Colonel Manuel Despaigne. With expenses mounting and no taxes collected, he cried: "Financial assistance from the United States is some-thing utterly impossible! Furthermore I do not know where we are going to get any money unless we discover some hidden treasure or gold mine that the Spanish conquerors failed to locate. . . ." Still happy was Colonel Despaigne's Cuban colleague, Don Carlos J. Finlay Jr., Secretary of Sanitation, who returned to Havana from Washington last week with the news: "There are strong indications of early recognition of the Grau Government by the United States." ^

*Efforts to organixe a Brazilian K.K.K. in San Paolo were opposed last week by the Fuente Negra ("Black Front") which claims a membership of 50,000, urges "reestablishment of friendly relations between the races.

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