And Now the Children?

Hundreds of Cuban families are frantically trying to get their children out of the country. At Havana's Jose Marti Airport last week, adults with airplane tickets were implored to give their seats to children. Some Pan American flights arriving in Miami have as many as 60 children on board, many traveling alone. When Castro's police halted one recent flight carrying 40 children, parents raised such a howl in the airport lobby that the order was rescinded. Behind the new exodus is a new fear: that Castro is planning to take children away from their families in order to train them in Communism.

The uproar started when the anti-Castro underground circulated copies of what it said was a new decree soon to come from the government. Under the decree, all children would remain with their parents "until they are three years old, after which they must be entrusted for physical and mental education to the Organization de Circulos Infantiles"--Castro's network of state nurseries. Children from three to ten would live in government dormitories in their home provinces, would be permitted to visit their families ''no less than two days per month." But those older than ten would "be assigned ... to the most appropriate place," and thus might never come home.

"We Will Bury." Cubans were prepared to believe the underground. Since taking power, Castro has worked tirelessly to mold his nation's youth into loyal--and militant--Communist cadres. Reading primers assure that the first name youngsters learn to spell is Fidel or Raul, that their first animal stories are set on collective farms, that their first bogeymen are Yanqui imperialists. With piping voices, Cuba's fourth-graders sing a jingle taught by their energetic teachers:

I swear to you, Uncle Sam

That one day in Algiers or Siam,

We will bury close together

The dollar and the Ku Klux Klan.

After school, boys and girls are herded into the Association of Rebel Youth and the Rebel Pioneers. Castro put his own twelve-year-old son, Fidelito, into uniform, gave him a submachine gun to play with, finally shipped him off to the U.S.S.R. with 2,000 other youngsters for "technical training."

Kill Them First. Recently, stories about trucks picking up unaccompanied children on the streets have swept Cuba. The government admitted having placed 700 youngsters in state homes "at the children's request." As the parents' fear grew, many vowed to resist. At the town of Bayamo, 50 mothers signed a pact to kill their children rather than hand them over to Castro.

Concerned that his designs on Cuban youth might make the increasingly bold opposition even bolder (last week the regime announced that it had foiled a plot to assassinate Castro by arresting a dozen suspects), the Maximum Leader hurriedly branded the decree a forgery, jailed 14 persons, including a Havana printer, on charges of circulating it. "An absurd invention," said Castro blandly on TV. "Who would dream of such madness?" But many Cubans remained unconvinced--considering the course that Castro sails. As Lenin himself once said: "Revolution is impossible as long as the family exists."

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