Castro's Cuba
By MONICA SHERIDAN
HAVANA has at least six luxury hotels built with both eyes on the millionaire American and Latin-American trade, no more than an hour's hop by plane, but millionaires are understandably nervous of soldiers carrying machine guns in the streets; and since Castro's revolution the million- aires don't come any more.
The hotels are empty. They stand like huge mausoleums, their carpets untrodden except by the capacity staff and perhaps 250 bell-hops, cham- bermaids and flunkies who formerly served the rich. Nobody, under the new law, can be sacked. The staff stand around gossiping to each other, secure in their wages and their food. When I sat in the enormous Sugar Bar oh the twenty-second floor of the Habana Hilton Hotel, I counted two paying customers sitting in a dark corner, while nine gold-braided attendants clustered at the door.
Castro rose to power as the Man of Action, and even in peacetime he still feels compelled to go on acting this role. He is constantly on the move. hopping from one end of the island to the other in his helicopter, and wherever he goes he is sur- rounded by thousands of enthusiastic supporters. His speeches are dramatic and inflammatory, for he knows that there is no surer way of capturing a Latin-American audience than by haranguing them on hatred and revenge. Judging by the mass demonstrations I savf.in Havana one might assume that about half the population of Cuba is solidly behind Fidel—representing the Have-Nots to whom he has pledged a brave new world. But the rabble is not easy to control; their loyalty can be counted upon only from one rousing speech to
the next. So Castro must keep on devising new hate themes. At first it was the Batista gang; then it was the traitors of the revolution. Now it is the bemused and benevolent US.
During the third week of October Cuba acted as host to the American Society of Travel Agents, who held their annual conference in Havana. For months before the conference Castro had promised his people that, in the wake of the travel agents, would come all the tourists who had con- tributed so much to the prosperity of Cuba in the Past. The travel agents would come, see for them- selves how peaceful and beautiful Cuba was, and they would send all their customers to the Pearl of the Antilles. Everybody was alerted for this great event, right down to the schoolchildren. The government spent over a million dollars on bunt- ing and fairy lighting and souvenirs for its dis- tinguished guests.
The travel agents came. A tremendous show was put on for them. There was a Cadillac and a police escort of outriders for the president of the American travel agents' society. There were endless banquets and sight-seeing trips. Cuba fell over itself in extending hospitality to its visitors.
The opening session was attended by both Presi- dent Dorticos and Prime Minister Castro. Castro, and the unfortunate audience, sat through two hours of tedious platitudes and heavy-handed compliments, which the Travel Agents read from carefully rehearsed scripts. Then Dorticos got to his feet and talked for twenty-five minutes in Spanish. This was followed by a twenty-five minute translation of his dull speech into literal and dull English. Throughout this marathon Castro sat at a long table on the stage, flanked by travel dignitaries. He wore a soldier's green, open-necked shirt, without tie or jacket. He looked nervous and fidgety, but the moment he rose to address the audience through the microphone all this vanished, and he became relaxed, self-confident and fluent. He spoke in English, a pleasant change after three hours of paper talk. After welcoming the delegates to 'this happy little iceland of plenty sun and beautiful blue sea everywhere,' he went on to assure them that 'the Cubans is a very warm- hearted and hospitable people who loves the tourist and want the tourist to keep.' The Ameri- can Society of Travel Agents and their wives were conquered. The following evening at a reception given by the Lord Mayor a thousand adult Americans queued for Castro's autograph.
But the mood changes swiftly in Cuba. The next afternoon I was standing on the balcony on the twentieth floor of the hotel when what looked like an invasion of white doves began to descend on Havana. But it wasn't doves. On looking towards the sky I saw a plane overhead disgorging the now famous shower of anti-Castro leaflets.
I tried to catch one from the balcony, but failed. Moving down the corridor to a suite where the Hawaiian delegation to the Convention were holding open house for all corners, I found the President of Cuba and Fidel's brother, Raul, the head of the Armed Forces, enjoying the spectacle of a grass-skirted and very beautiful young Hawaiian girl doing a traditional belly dance. Outside, the leaflets were still falling, urging Castro to oust the Communists from his government. Within half an hour they had all disappeared like snow in the sun. Boy scouts, waiters, soldiers, everybody picked them up and destroyed them. Twice I bent down to lift one off the street, to find a Cuban foot planted on the flimsy bit of paper.
But the damage had been done. In a violent tirade Castro accused the US of attempting to invade Cuba and of dropping bombs on the innocent population. 'This,' he ranted, 'is our Pearl Harbour.' The plane was, in fact, piloted by one of Cuba's revolutionary heroes; and it dropped nothing but leaflets. But the following day the labour leaders called for a complete stoppage of all work between three and four o'clock in support of the Revolutionary Govern- ment; and a surging mass streamed out of offices, hotels, factories and shops and packed the streets of Havana, carrying banners protesting against the 'violence.' The crowd chanted. clapped and screamed.
While the mob were yelling their slogans, and when it was already clear that this was only the beginning of really serious trouble, Max Allen (the President of ASTA) spoke to them over the loudspeaker, assuring the workers that the travel agents were not one bit disturbed by the minor incidents of the past few days—they would urge all their clients to spend their vacations and their money in Cuba. But that same night Castro spent four hours on television denouncing the perfidy of the US. By the weekend it was obvious, even to the taxi-drivers who wanted to believe other- wise, that Cuba must write off her tourist trade and that the million dollars spent on bunting and fairy lights and banquets had been wasted.
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