Propaganda Backfire

The gains and losses of the Cuban tractor deal were hotly debated in the U.S. (see THE NATION), but in Latin American eyes, the proposal represents a monumental propaganda setback for Castro. Throughout the hemisphere, which Castro hopes to lure into sympathy with his Marxist revolution, the response to his ransom demand was one of disgust. Wrote Rio's moderately liberal O Globo, whose circulation is the biggest in Brazil: "Hitler wanted to trade Jews for trucks; Fidel Castro wants to trade Cubans for tractors. It may be that this shows progress or superiority of Communism over Naziism, but we cannot see any."

The more Castro gloated over the cleverness of his game, the more he lost. His cat-and-mouse demand for "indemnification" rather than the "exchange" he originally proposed revolted Latin Americans, who believe strongly in human dignity. His loud threats of "revolutionary tribunals" for the prisoners if his demands were not met only increased the horror. Cooler minds, one of them most likely Moscow's supervisor Che Guevara, apparently got through to Castro, for Castro piped down after a few days. By then great damage had been done.

Around Latin America, where opinion is sometimes concerted but action rarely is, a great desire to do something arose. In Caracas wellborn ladies, of the kind who usually do not venture out by themselves, were hailing passing cars with collection cans and bold demands to "stop to help a dying man." Argentine President Arturo Frondizi told a press conference: "I don't believe people can be traded for things. I want all the prisoners freed." In Montevideo, the publishers of Uruguay's biggest papers called Castro a "slave runner" and put a tractor on a downtown platform to dramatize a fund-raising drive. Brazil's staid, respected O Estado de Sao Paulo promised to buy one tractor itself, and was immediately flooded with offers of help from readers; some 2,000 students paraded through the city to raise funds. A man who said he was too poor to send money sent a set of tractor gears. In nearly every country of the Americas, fund-raising committees began collecting pesos, lempiras, quetzals, balboas, cruzeiros, cordobas, bolivars, colons and sols to pay for bulldozers.

Radio Peking and Radio Moscow, usually so ready to side with Castro in any quarrel with the U.S., were oddly silent about his proposal. U.S. diplomats throughout Latin America reported a sharp shift in the attitude toward Adlai Stevenson's impending hemisphere tour. There had been warnings that he might provoke riots if he ventured south of the border in the wake of the Cuban fiasco; the climate for his visit has improved noticeably, and his trip has been confirmed by the U.S. Stevenson's mission: to sound out prospects for joint inter-American action to cope with Castro.

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