Crime Wave

Havana weltered in a heavy crime wave. So far this year there had been some 48 murders, practically all of them black-sedan-and-submachine-gun jobs in South Chicago style. Most seemed to be political, the vengeance of hot-headed young terrorists exploding against officials of the Batista regime now that the dictator was out, the war over and the country economically upset. When assassins shot an ex-police chief as he read the paper one evening on his front porch, they left behind the sign of the Union of Revolutionaries: "Justice comes late, but it comes."

Last month gunmen began spreading their shots. One night as he drove home to suburban Miramar, Sugar Merchant Julio Lobo Olavarria, one of Cuba's richest men, was wounded by gunfire from a passing sedan. Lobo denied having refused a $50,000 shakedown demand.

Four days later gangsters fired into the Miramar home of Antonio Valdes Rodriguez, wealthy director of Foreign Commerce, missed him. Then assassins killed the 16-year-old son of Senator and Cabinet Minister Joaquin Martinez Saenz as he drove his father's car.

Death and Detection. The boy's death did it. President Ramon Grau San Martin fired his chief of police, placed the police under an Army general.

Results followed pronto. One Enrique Sanchez del Monte, 47, a wealthy sugar and cattle man, confessed that he had paid thugs $3,000 for the Valdes attempt, $5,000 for the boy's death. Furthermore, he had offered $6,000 for the murder of his beautiful ex-wife Maria who escaped to the U.S. with their two daughters last fortnight. His motive, if true, looked like Balzacian revenge. Valdes and the boy's lawyer-father had won Maria her divorce and custody of the two children.

What about the political hotheads? In the excitement they were forgotten. But gossip said they had a list of 160 still to liquidate.

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