Plan Prorogued

Pet project of Cuba's Army Strongman, Colonel Fulgencio Batista, is his Three-Year Plan, a 20-point New Deal inaugurated last year. Under it he has thus far distributed to indigent farmers well over 300,000 acres of State lands and lands formerly leased to private individuals and companies, constructed some 700 schools where army noncoms act as teachers, restricted the employment of foreigners and imposed price and minimum wage restrictions on the sugar industry. However, the surface of his mass of social, economic-reforms has not been scratched. So extensive are the proposed reforms that cynical oppositionists have dubbed the program "Batista's 300-Year Plan."

Last week, dramatically affirming that the Plan still "represents my highest ideals," Strongman Batista suddenly announced that further legislation on it would be "suspended" until after the Presidential elections early next year. Reason for this unexpected move: squat, peasant-born Batista.has engineered the seating of five men in the Presidential chair and now hankers to fill the position himself. The Plan, criticized by a good many Cubans as an attempt to regiment all phases of their national life, is regarded by Boss Batista as too much of a controversial issue to push at the time of an election.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.