The Breaking Point

The crowd of desperate Cubans swarming around the U.S. embassy in Havana refused to believe that the doors were locked and that no more visas could be issued. One man hammered on the glass, waving his U.S. Army discharge papers. A woman with a broken leg was held up piteously to the scurrying U.S. staff workers inside. "But you are the humane people! You are the humane people!" a woman pleaded, grabbing a U.S. consular official as government photographers stood near snapping pictures of those who wanted to flee Castro's Cuba.

The U.S. could not help them--at the moment. After two years of harassment. President Eisenhower ordered the State Department to break all diplomatic ties, at both the embassy and consular level, for the first time in the history of U.S.Latin American relations. To most Americans the wonder was that the U.S. had stood it so long.

Ending the Line-Up. The latest provocation began with Cuba's wild and unsupported charge, placed before the United Nations Security Council, that the U.S. was "about to perpetrate, within a few hours, direct military aggression against the government and people of Cuba." Then, as Castro reviewed 100,000 militiamen in Havana and harangued the crowd celebrating his second anniversary in power, a bomb exploded near by. Raging that those responsible "received the splendid money with which the United States embassy paid for terrorism." Castro said that he would put a stop to the "swarm of Central Intelligence Service and FBI and Pentagon agents who have been operating here with impunity. The revolutionary government has decided that within 48 hours the United States embassy shall not have here one more official than we have in the United States--eleven."

But it was not to be a humiliating eleven for eleven; the U.S. pulled out altogether. The complete break presumably suits Castro to a T. One of the gravest embarrassments to the dictatorship was the daily line-up of desperate Cubans before the embassy seeking U.S. visas to flee his Communist state. As of last week, 52,000 applications were on file. And once again he needed a new crisis to distract Cuba's attention from the growing failures of his Marxist revolution.

Way to Quarantine. For the U.S.president Eisenhower's action amounted to a drastic step against Cuba without compromising the incoming Kennedy Administration's relations with the rest of Latin America. In the long run it may also open the way for a chain reaction of similar breakoffs by other nations disgusted with Castro, and lead to collective action by the Organization of American States. A hemisphere quarantine against the bearded revolutionary is probably months away, but the doors are beginning to slam shut throughout Latin America.

They do so not out of follow-the-leader support of the U.S. but out of increasing distaste for Castro's meddling. Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Paraguay have already broken relations with Cuba. Last week, three days before the U.S. diplomatic break, Peru became No. 6 after a raid by five anti-Castro exiles on Cuba's Lima embassy turned up documents proving that the Cuban ambassador was donating $20,000 a month to enemies of the government. The same kind of subversion in Panama brought the recall of the Panamanian ambassador to Cuba last week.

In Argentina, the government felt called upon to deny that it was breaking with Cuba--a gesture that did not conceal the anger of President Arturo Frondizi (once called a "viscous blob of human excrescences" by Cuban Foreign Minister Roa) over a new Castro-Communist campaign in Argentina to raise "10,000 volunteers to fight to defend Cuba." Across the Rio Plata in Uruguay, beset by labor troubles and riots. President Benito Nardone pointed up the undercover organizing work of Castro's ambassador by calling openly for a break with Castro. Colombia and Bolivia have quietly sent home the ambassadors from Cuba, and though Mexico still pays its official respects to Castro, the government makes sure to keep its own brand of Castroite leftists in jail.

Guarding the Pool. In Cuba Castro continued his tawdry little melodrama of "invasion." He lined the Havana waterfront with Russian tanks, field guns, four-barreled antiaircraft guns and antitank weapons. One band of defenders mounted a newly arrived 12.7-mm. Czech machine gun on the cabanas of the Habana Riviera Hotel, strategically overlooking a bathing beauty near the pool below. Militiamen took up positions inside Havana's San Francisco Roman Catholic Church and two Catholic schools, mined bridges and fanned out around the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.

The danger of a serious incident centers around Guantanamo, the last major U.S. holding in Cuba. The U.S. made it clear that the closedown of its embassy does not affect the treaty under which it holds unlimited lease to the naval base. Castro is sure to provoke incidents there. As a first step, the U.S. expects Castro to cut off the base's water supply, piped in from a river five miles away on the Cuban side of the fence. Stored supplies of water have been increased to 11 million gallons, enough to last 20 days. And in a matter of hours U.S. Navy tankers can be cleaned out to carry enough water from nearby Puerto Rico or Haiti to supply the base indefinitely. The Navy does not expect a direct armed assault. But if Castro attacks, the U.S. is reluctantly prepared for that, too.

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