Spooks Among the Spikes

"Sports," according to Cuba's Educa tion Minister Jose Llanusa, "cannot be separated from politics." That's an un sportsmanlike attitude if ever there was one, but what can one expect from a Communist from Havana? Or, for that matter, from the U.S. State Depart ment, the CIA, the FBI and nine Cuban exile organizations, all of which sent operatives to Puerto Rico last week for the Central American and Caribbean Games?

The objects of their attention were the 340 athletes of the Cuban squad, sent by Llanusa to win the battle for Latin American minds by sweeping the games for Castro. Not even counting the dozens of political commissars tag ging along as "masseurs" and "trainers," the Cuban delegation was the largest on hand by far. The athletes turned out to be a handsome, swinging group--the men in white suits and straw hats, the girls in shifts of red, white and blue (Cuba's national colors) and white go-go boots.

How to Get There. They were lucky, in a way, to be there at all. For one thing, Washington had ruled that the whole squad would have to have U.S. visas to get into Puerto Rico. Since the U.S. has no embassy in Havana, that seemed to take care of that--until a Cuban official showed up at the embassy in Mexico City to get their passports stamped.

The next problem was how to get to Puerto Rico. There is no airline service between Havana and San Juan, and the U.S. refused to let Fidel fly his athletes in aboard Cuban Ilyushins. Furthermore, warned Washington, any Cuban ship trying to land them in Puerto Rico would be seized on the spot. The Cubans finally made the scene aboard a Puerto Rican tugboat, which ferried them ashore from a Cuban freighter that dropped anchor just outside the three-mile limit. Their reception was warm indeed. Cops swarmed all over them. Shock squads of exiles followed them everywhere, trying to persuade them to defect. Officials turned up with telephones, at the other end of which were relatives who had already fled Cuba. A Puerto Rican bus driver, hauling Castro's swimming team, stopped outside a house hastily labeled "Refuge," opened the doors and asked hopefully, "Anyone staying here?" There were even two major-league baseball scouts waving contracts at Cuban pitchers.

All in all, the U.S. spooks outnumbered the Cuban spikes two to one. But somehow they all overlooked Juan Pablo Vega Romero, an 18-year-old wrestler, who by week's end was the only Cuban athlete to defect to the West. Juan Pablo had to manage his escape all by himself. Wearing a borrowed Puerto Rican sweater, he sneaked out of the Cuban compound, caught a bus to the nearest Catholic church. There he found a Colombian priest, who took him to a Puerto Rican assemblyman, who passed him on to a U.S. Immigration officer, who after a check with Washington, granted him asylum.

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