The Water War

Lambda 8: The American ships are the CG40438 and the CG95320, both with .30-cal. machine guns, the CG95312 and a destroyer.

Havana: How is the enemy treating you?

Lambda 8: All right.

Havana: Keep the flag high. Cuba is with you.

Back and forth the messages crackled, after U.S. coastguardmen boarded Lambda 8 and three other Cuban fishing boats lying H miles off the Dry Tortugas Islands, west of Key West. The boats were clearly violating the U.S. three-mile territorial limit. Ordinarily, it would be a trivial affair, worth merely a warning before sending the fishermen on their way. But it ballooned rapidly into a crisis.

Joining the Act. Though the boats carried no military equipment and had 5,500 Ibs. of fish aboard, the Coast Guard could not be sure just what the fishermen were up to. Into Key West under escort went the tiny flotilla and its 38 crewmen. For 48 hours the men were kept aboard their boats at the Key West naval base. The captains claimed that they had been driven inshore by strong winds. But two men requested political asylum, and one of them said that the boats had been deliberately sent into U.S. waters. Washington seemed ready to let the trespassers go, but then the state of Florida leaped into the act, claiming jurisdiction under a new law prohibiting vessels of Communist powers from fishing within three miles of the state's coast. Seven youngsters between 14 and 16 years old were released for deportation home; the other 29 Cubans were taken to Key West's Monroe County jail to await trial. Maximum penalty: six months in jail, plus $500 fine.

Dawning Suspicion. In Havana, Fidel Castro accused the U.S. of "a cold war act of aggression," while Cuba's men at the U.N. stormed about a new confrontation as dire as the 1962 mis sile crisis. In reprisal, Castro shut off the water that Cuba has been supplying to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba. Guantanamo's fresh water comes from a pumping station on the Yateras River four miles from the base, is paid for by the U.S. at the rate of $14,000 a month. The Cubans have kept the pumps going without interruption, even during the Bay of Pigs invasion and the missile crisis; but now, said Castro, there would be water for only one hour a day until the fishermen were released.

At worst, the cutoff will cause the Navy moderate inconvenience. Long ago prepared for such a move, the base has a reserve of over 15 million gallons on hand; there is also a special tanker that can convert 100,000 gallons of salt water a day into fresh water. By cutting down use from 2,000,000 gallons a day to 500,000 gallons, Guantanamo can go a month with what it has, and tankers from the U.S. can bring in whatever is needed from then on to make the base permanently self-sufficient. At week's end, President Johnson also ordered most of Guantanamo's 3,000 Cuban workers dismissed, unless they agree to live on the base or spend their pay, totaling some $6,000,000 a year, at Guantanamo. All this should just about finish the incident --unless Castro wants to escalate the puny battle into a campaign to force the U.S. out of Guantanamo, thereby testing the Johnson Administration's firm ness, just as it is having its full share of troubles in Panama and half a dozen other places.

Castro's campaign to break through the U.S. economic embargo was picking up speed. On top of recent negotiations for British buses and Spanish fishing boats, two French firms--Automobiles M. Berliet and Richard Freres--an nounced that they will sell $10 million worth of trucks and tractors to Cuba, with the French government guaranteeing up to 90% of the unpaid balance.

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