Flight to Harlem

For 24 hours Cuba's Premier Fidel Castro nursed his fury in the privacy of his pint-sized suite in Manhattan's genteel East Side Shelburne Hotel. From outside the chants of anti-Castro pickets wafted up intermittently ("Fidel, Communist, Fidel"), and when a squad of 15 Castro security guards headed out to obliterate the nuisance, the New York cops turned them back. Hotel Owner Edward Spatz could not have cared less about his distinguished guests. Suddenly, at dinner time, the lobby elevator door popped open and Fidel Castro--arms waving, beard wagging, voice rising and falling with rage--stormed out of the hotel with his pileous crew pounding after him. Behind him he left a string of rooms soaked with cigar smoke, strewed .with molding food, and torn asunder--and Owner Spatz with his ulcer acting up again.

Nothing Simple. With escort sirens screaming, Castro raced to the U.N., burst into Secretary Dag Hammarskjold's office and subjected the patient Swede to three-quarters of an hour of hoarse, ululating Spanish. Only the day before, New York cops had eased him back into his limousine when he wanted to stop along the highway from Idlewild Airport to harangue loyal Cubans who had turned out to greet him in the rain. He railed against Manhattan's lack of hospitality; he denounced the Shelburne's demand for a $10,000 bond to pay for possible damage. "We'll sleep in the U.N. garden or in Central Park!" Fidel threatened. Hammarskjold countered with a polite invitation to dinner. Then, while the whole Cuban crew was drinking its meal on the U.N. terrace, the Secretary-General rounded up an offer of free rooms at the convenient midtown Hotel Commodore.

Nothing that simple was going to satisfy Castro--planting the suspicion that his whole maneuver had been planned earlier. Even before he checked in at the Shelburne, his agents had begun negotiations with the Hotel Theresa, "the Waldorf-Astoria of Harlem." While the bearded Cuban was bending Hammarskjold's ear, one of his men turned up at the Theresa delivering $840 in cash--one day's rent for an assorted selection of the Theresa's rooms. This was more than the ordinary Harlem citizen would have been charged for the same supply of beds--and $440 more than Castro's daily bill at the Shelburne--but for Fidel it was a bargain. As soon as his press men passed the word that he was heading for Harlem, huge crowds turned out to greet him. Curious Negroes who cared little for his politics jostled Puerto Ricans and Cubans, who consider him their champion. Squads of cops were called into action.

All Brothers. The dowdy old Theresa, which has brooded over Harlem's 125th Street and Seventh Avenue since pre-World War I days, seemed to appeal to the rumpled Cubans in their greasy green army fatigues. Regular guests complained bitterly that the newcomers were commandeering the elevators and the public toilets. Cops were everywhere. During their first 24 hours, Castro and his staff ran up a $1,700 bill for room service--steaks, rum, cigars. The bellhops kept busy hustling trays and complaining that the Cubans were penny-pinching tippers. The Daily News avidly reported that other visitors to the 85-man delegation included "blondes, brunettes, redheads and --a detective said--prostitutes . . . A hotel employee said Fidel himself had a visitor from 2 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. yesterday--an attractive bosomy blonde. The employee did not know whether they discussed high international policy."

Somehow, amid all the extracurricular activity, Castro also found time to participate in a Havana Cabinet session by long-distance telephone. At his direction, Cuba officially recognized Red China and North Korea--a first long step toward fulfillment of Castro's promise to recognize "all socialist" countries.

Only Owner-Manager Love Barry Woods, 65, maintained a kind of professional calm in the chaos. Castro might complain of intolerance elsewhere in Manhattan, but not from Love Woods ("My ideal is to do at least one good deed a day for a white or colored person"). Hotelman Woods was willing to take in anyone who could pay. "We are all brothers here," said Fidel, gesturing grandly. "I feel like I am in Cuba.''

Public Nuzzling. Castro had a steady stream of visitors. Negro Moslem Leader Malcolm X, Beatnik Poet Allen (Howl) Ginsburg, Columbia Professor C. Wright Mills (who is writing a book on the Cuban Revolution) and Left-Wing Poet Langston Hughes dropped in to pay their respects.

A couple of hours later, Nikita Khrushchev himself drove up to the Theresa in a skirl of sirens. Khrushchev bounced across the sidewalk and into the jammed lobby, planted a resounding kiss on the cheek of his old friend, Agrarian Reform Boss Antonio Nunez Jimenez. He and Nunez jammed into the rickety old elevator and creaked to the ninth floor and Castro's suite. The two leaders stood up while they cracked jokes for 20 minutes, then came down for a public nuzzling for cameramen. The only sour note came when Russian security chief, Lieut. General Nikolai Zakharov, guarding his man, got too energetic to suit some nearby New York cops. Zakharov tossed some punches; a burly police captain lifted him off his feet till he calmed down. (Khrushchev later filed a protest.)

Last Act. If the Cuban dustup sometimes seemed merely good fun and sometimes farce, it became something more serious across town the next day. Magdalena Urdaneta, 9, a little girl from Venezuela, had been brought to New York by her family as a reward for getting good marks in school. The Urdanetas were dining in El Prado, a West Side Spanish restaurant where some Castro punks spotted half a dozen anti-Castro Cubans. The Castro sympathizers phoned for reinforcements. The restaurant filled with Fidelistas. Several shots were fired, and beer bottles were tossed across the crowded room. One bullet wounded an anti-Castro man in the shoulder; another hit Magdalena in the back. She died 16 hours later.

The U.S. State Department announced that Magdalena was the victim of "an aggressive attack by adherents of the Castro regime." Castro said he was "sad and sorry," but the shot had been fired by his enemies. Said he: "This proves that admitting Cuban war criminals is wrong." The body of the little girl was placed aboard a plane, and the sorrowing parents flew home to Venezuela, their celebrating ended.

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