On with the Show

There he was, looking like a refugee from the House of David in his bushy black beard. "I have bad control," Fidel Castro apologized to the catcher as he lobbed a few warmup pitches across the plate for dear old Oriente province. And covering second base was brother Raul, head of Cuba's armed forces. Then it was batter-up, and whiff-whiff-whiff, the boys were breaking their backs trying to hit that roundhouse curve. By the end of the first inning, it was Fidel's team 14, the opposition 0. Moments later, the game dissolved.

Castro was in Santiago de Cuba to celebrate the July 26, 1953 attack on Moncada Barracks that signaled the start of his revolution against Dictator Fulgencio Batista. He was determined to put on a show for the 30 U.S. newsmen invited over to view the proceedings, and so he did. Carpenters had nailed together triple-deck bunks and thrown up small tent cities to handle the 100,000 campesinos trucked in for the occasion. Streets were hung with posters and gaily colored banners. All day and night, reported TIME Correspondent Edwin Reingold, streets were clogged with peasants in gay carnival hats, sipping a glass of beer or munching hungrily on roast-pig sandwiches.

Ballet of Baseball. At Santiago's "Sports City" stadium, two days after Fidel's appearance at the plate, some 1,000 boys and girls in dazzling white snaked their way through tortuous drills, finally spelling out "July 26." Then, in a hilarious pantomime, 640 youngsters filed onto the field to symbolize beisbol as it is under the dread imperialist yoke --going through the motions of batting, pitching and running in agonizing slow motion. But wait! Now came the revolution--and the youths were happily scampering around like Little Leaguers. "The sport of yesterday was commercial and a means of making money," explained the program notes. "The exploitation of man by man on all fronts. In sports today, it is wholesome and pure." Then came 400 soldiers in olive green and East German helmets to snap through the U.S. manual of arms before goosestepping, in the best Soviet tradition, past Castro.

Next day, the mood changed. A grim, unsmiling Castro stood on a platform, joined by Raul, President Osvaldo Dorticos and Minister of Industries Che Guevara. Castro gave the enthusiastic crowd of 100,000 a brief wave, unstrapped his ever-present .45 automatic, and stood through the introductions with nervous, twitching fingers. The Organization of American States had just voted diplomatic and economic sanctions against Cuba, and Castro was eager to strike back. "The OAS is garbage, a Yankee ministry of colonies," he railed. "The people of Cuba repudiate the insolent threats of armed aggression. It is one thing to fire without risk on unarmed people, as happened in Panama, and another to invade an armed nation where the people are prepared to shed their last drop of blood in defense of their country."

Wake Up, Raul! For 3 1/2 hours it went on, while Brother Raul kept dozing off on the platform, only to be nudged awake by an amused Che Guevara. In sputtering defiance of the OAS, Castro issued his own "Declaration of Santiago de Cuba," accusing the U.S. of subverting Cuba and threatening to continue his attempts to foment revolution around Latin America. "Unless there is an end to the pirate attacks from the U.S. and other countries," he cried, "the people of Cuba will feel they have an equal right to help, with all resources available to them, the revolutionary movements in all countries that practice such interference in our country's domestic affairs." The U.S. embargo? Why, the Europeans have made it a mockery. "It is foolish to believe," said Castro, "that the countries of Europe, whose markets the U.S. wants to take away, will go along with this ridiculous proposal."

At a press conference for visiting newsmen, Castro kept it up--this time about the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo. For two weeks, the Cubans have claimed U.S. marines shot and killed a Cuban sentry on the other side of the fence. The U.S. has flatly denied it. A group of Cubans suddenly fired a volley in the direction of a Marine guard post. Following orders, the mar-rines squeezed off two warning shots over the heads of the Cubans. No one was hit, says Washington, but an ambulance and a photographer immediately appeared on the Cuban side--and Castro was soon shouting murder. To judge from the way he sounded last week, Castro may intend to stage further incidents in hopes of provoking the U.S. into something drastic, which would give him a further propaganda chance to present the U.S. as an "aggressor."

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