Truth in Cuba

"Cuba has always belonged to the bloc of free and democratic nations. Why remove it from the bloc and incline it toward the Communist nations?"

Twenty-four hours after this editorial question appeared in Havana's Diario de la Marina, armed thugs from the Castro-controlled Cuban newspaper unions last week seized the paper, stilled the only remaining newspaper voice in Cuba that had continually dared to criticize the Castro regime.

For months Diario and Editor Jose Ignacio Rivero, 39, had been living on borrowed time as they blasted Castro's arbitrary rent reductions, his agrarian farm laws ("Hundreds of people have had their property taken away without compensation"), his flirtation with Communism. Boldly the newspaper spoke out for "democratic normalcy and the law. Is this a crime? Is it immoral? Are there not a lot of Cuban people who want the same?" Castro tolerated such impudence only because Diario was considered the unofficial spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba and because it furnished proof to "Yankee imperialists" that freedom of the press did exist under his government.

For its stand, Diario paid dearly. Over the months, Castro mobs had burned bundles of the paper in the streets, and Editor Rivero, fearful for his life, went into hiding, stayed in the homes of friends all over the city. When word reached Castro last week that Diario planned an editorial calling for free elections, the Premier's patience snapped and the seizure order went out. In its first editorial statement, the new management of the paper justified the takeover, said that under Rivero, Diario had "attacked all that signifies truth, justice, patriotism and decency in our Cuba."

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