"Not Afraid to Die"

Havana's Radio Reloj--Radio Clock--chattered away one afternoon last week with news and commercials, then gave the time of day: 3:30. A pause followed--for the excellent reason that three young men had burst into the studio waving guns. One of them pointed a pistol at the announcer's head, and the trembling announcer broadcast what he was ordered to say: "Batista is dead!" At the Presidential Palace, fellow rebels stormed in to make the words come true, were soon within one flight of stairs of succeeding.

But when the attack was over, it was the attackers who were dead; Fulgencio Batista, 56, was alive, elated and still President. Normality came back fast. In jammed planes U.S. tourists, held out of

Cuba for a few hours when the airport was closed, flooded in; roulette wheels spun in the casinos, saucy chippies flirted in the nightspots. But at heart Cubans were sickened, and longed for what .they call--with no clear concept of what it might be--"the solution."

Simple & Suicidal. The solution tried last week was brutally simple--and almost sure suicide. About 3:25 p.m., a red truck sputtered to a stop in front of the Presidential Palace. The driver inspected the engine, walked to the tail gate. "Now," he shouted, and 21 university students and political opponents of Batista burst out, firing rifles and machine guns. They were soon in the palace door and up the staircases on either side to the second floor and Batista's office. One of them flung a hand grenade at the door.

But Batista, with his pregnant wife and one small child, was lunching in his third-floor .residential quarters. Grabbing a pistol and crouching below window level, he phoned army and navy forts for help. Below, the shooting went on as the guard rallied and began to fight the attackers back down the bloody stairs. Not one of the 21 reached the door alive.

Armored cars rolled up outside, and their machine gunners opened fire at student snipers on nearby rooftops. One gunner, spotting a suspicious figure in the Regis Hotel, poured 200 rounds toward the room, and thereby killed Tourist Pete Korenda, of Clifton, N.J. Three hours later the firing stopped. At Radio Reloj, cops cut off and killed the fleeing students who had attacked the station. One of them was Student Leader Jose Antonio Echevarria, 25, who last month told a visiting U.S. newsman that "Cuban students are not afraid to die."

Next day weeping womenfolk buried the 30 dead attackers in the rain, and Batista sent wreaths to the graves of the five soldiers who died defending him. He spoke lightly of the danger he had faced. But some of his henchmen quickly took up the politics of murder. Two lowly oppositionists were found shot to death. another hanged. Far more ominously, former Senator Pelayo Cuervo Navarro, 57, a politico who fought Batista with outspoken criticism, was found in a Havana suburb, his body riddled with bullets.

Coup or Election? Every Cuban now expects that next week or next month, the strongman who can keep power but cannot keep order will face another assassination attempt or bloody attack. Also wearing away at his regime is the tiny guerrilla uprising under Rebel Fidel Castro in eastern Cuba's rugged mountains.

Realistic Cubans--especially leaders in business and the professions--look to the army, rather than the students or Castro, to bring Batista down. Many hopes form around Colonel Ramon Barquin, longtime Cuban military attache in Washington, who last year tried and failed to bring off a coup. He is still in prison, but as many as 150 of his secret followers among the officer class are free, and resentful of the army's role as Batista's bloodletter.

There is, of course, another alternative. Said a top Havana businessman last week: "Violence breeds violence, and events are in a vicious circle. The government should gather its courage and announce an honest election now."

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