El Mac 7/El Mac 7.iso/Infotenimiento/Makers of the 20th Century/Data/CASTRO.TXT

Text File | 1996-01-29 | 31.7 KB | 709 lines | [TEXT/MSWD]

1.5
The revolutionary
leader of Cuba, Fidel
Castro first became
prominent as a militant
leader against Batista's
dictatorship during his
days as a law student
at Havana University.
On July 26, 1953, he
tried, and failed, to
take the Moncada
barracks, Santiago. He
was captured and
imprisoned. Released
under amnesty in
1955, he trained as a guerrilla in Mexico and with 82 men
(of whom only 12 survived) landed in Cuba in December
1956. Castro eroded Batista's power from his mountain
base, entering Havana in triumph in January 1959. His
relationship with the "imperialist" US degenerated into
open conflict with the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in
1962. Castro, now a self proclaimed Marxist-Leninist,
became dependent on the economic aid of the USSR in
spite of frictions caused by the settlement, over his head,
of the missile crisis of 1962 and his occasional outbursts of
nationalist independence. Social and educational reforms
were matched by mistaken economic policies which
reached crisis levels with the withdrawal of Soviet
support. Although his intervention in Angola strengthened
him as a Third World leader, his Cuban model did not
spread in Latin America, while the changes in the USSR
have left him isolated. His hold over Cuba is secured by a
combination of police repression and direct contact with
the population via mass meetings and television. He
remains, however, a hero to much of even non-communist
opinion in Latin America
@
2.2
Dr. Fidel Castro has pursued with fanatical persistence his
vow to wipe out every vestige of what had become a police
State under General Batista. Last year, when rebel
activities were intensified and the Batista regime reacted
with increasing ruthlessness, support for the rebels
increased. Until recently the regime, by its control of union
leadership and often brutal suppression, had succeeded in
intimidating the mass of Cubans into passivity.

In April, the measures taken to forestall a general strike
called by the rebels (in which suspects, some still in their
teens, were tortured or summarily shot or hanged)
shocked even some of General Batista's apologists. But
thanks to strict censorship, the outside world had but a
vague and often distorted impression of what was
happening.

The Fidel Castro revolt only really gained impetus when
more moderate opposition leaders had failed in their
efforts to persuade General Batista to exercise restraint
and reinstate the constitutional government he had always
promised.

What became known as the Fidelista crusade began in
November, 1956,when 82 Cuban exiles, led by Dr. Fidel
Castro, landed in Cuba from a fishing schooner. They were
expected, and from their first encounter with government
troops on the beaches only 12 survived. These survivors
escaped into the hills and made their headquarters in the
remote Sierra Madre, in the eastern province of Oriente.
The operation was dismissed as a failure by the
government, and nearly forgotten by the opposition, still
trying to press its cause by reasoning.

Meanwhile Dr. Fidel Castro, with his brother, Raul, built up
the guerrilla force. Soon, ragged columns of Fidelistas were
spreading through the province of Oriente, raiding Army
depots and blocking roads. Later rebel organizations and
sympathizers in Central America and the United States, but
chiefly in Venezuela, began to smuggle in arms,
equipment, and funds. By about the middle of 1958 the
Fidelistas controlled nearly the entire eastern part of Cuba.
From there they set off into central Cuba and beyond to
the province of Las Villas, to cut the island in two and
isolate Havana.

General Batista, who is 57, joined the Cuban Army in 1921.
Previously he had had a variety of jobs, from farm-hand to
barber's assistant. In 1933 he led the "sergeants' revolt"
against President Machado and seized power, which he
relinquished years later as required by the constitution he
had introduced. In 1952 he led another successful revolt
against President Carlos Prio, and again seized power.
Nearly two years later, in an election in which he was
virtually the sole candidate, he was "constitutionally"
installed as president.

Much of what he did for Cuba has been outweighed by his
methods and the corruption of his administration. He once
boasted that he was one of the most shot-at heads of state
in the world. In latter years he never appeared in public
without a platoon of bodyguards.

Dr. Fidel Castro, in spite of the success of his crusade, has
opponents even in the anti-Batista camp. He is only 32, an
ascetic, a devout Roman Catholic and an intellectual, and is
something of a puzzle to many Cubans. He proclaims that
he has no political ambitions. Long ago he nominated Dr.
Manuel Urrutia, a judge who had to flee the country
because he refused to pass judgement on captured rebels,
as interim President while the country was prepared for
free elections.

Cuba is about a fifth of the size of France and has a
population of less than six million. Its importance is often
overlooked. It produces more than a tenth of the free
world's nickel, and about an eighth of the world's sugar
exports.
@
2.3
Crowds estimated at more than 500,000 persons, including
a great many women and boys and girls, cheered and
waved frantically as Dr. Fidel Castro made his triumphant
entry into Havana today. Aircraft flew overhead and a 21-
gun-salute was fired by the navy when he reached the
outskirts of the city, preceded and followed by companies
of bearded combat veterans in lorries, buses, and cars. The
huge column, which included tanks, was hailed as the
"caravan of liberty."

As the new leader passed on his way to Camp Columbia
military headquarters, in suburban Marianao, the
television service transmitted the scenes to viewers in
their homes. Mothers and wives of rebels who fell in
combat were at Camp Columbia, where Dr. Castro promised
to greet them and speak to them individually.

The yacht Gramma, in which Dr. Castro and his
expeditionary force of 82 men landed in Cuba in 1956,
came into Havana harbour piloted by naval veterans.

Recognition of the new Cuban Government by the United
States, Britain, and France has been generally well
received here. A senior member of the revolutionary
movement at Camp Columbia told your correspondent
today : "We are beginning the process of building a new
Cuba out of chaos, and we need and want the help and
cooperation of all friendly democratic nations of the
world."
@
2.4
Dr. Fidel Castro, the Cuban Prime Minister, said in Havana
yesterday that he was taking Cuba along the path towards
communism, which is the way, he maintains, that all the
world is heading. He also declared that he was himself a
"Marxist-Leninist", and announced the formation in Cuba
of a single party of the socialist revolution.

Dr. Castro made these announcements during a five-hour
television speech marking the sixth anniversary of his
revolutionary activities. It is the first time he has publicly
acknowledged his allegiance to communism, and told his
people unequivocally of the direction he proposes to lead
them.

During his speech he said he had hidden his belief in
communism from the Cuban people because "otherwise we
might have alienated the bourgeoisie and other forces,
which we knew we would eventually have to fight".

Dr. Castro's admission may produce some reaction in the
Organization of American States (OAS), whose council
meets in Washington tomorrow to consider the Colombian
request for a Foreign Ministers' meeting on Cuba.

Among the Central American republics, feeling against
Cuba has become much harder recently. In Costa Rica last
week the five republics proposing to form a loose
federation - Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala
and Costa Rica - were joined by Panama in signing a
resolution asking the OAS to deal with "the menace to the
peace and political independence of the American states
posed by the intervention of foreign powers".
@
3.1
A call to arms by the leaders of the Cuban anti-Castro
revolutionary movement in the United States has been
accompanied by a rising of tension and uncertainty in
Cuba, but has not inspired any immediate popular uprising
against Dr. Castro. The appeal to the islanders to rise in
revolt and overthrow the Castro regime was made in New
York yesterday by Dr. Jose Miro Cardona, who was Dr.
Castro's first Prime Minister and who now leads the Cuban
National Revolutionary Council, an uneasy alliance of the
anti-Castro forces in exile in the United States.

Dr. Miro Cardona said that it was the object of his
movement to restore the ideals of social revolution
discarded by the Castro Government. It sought to achieve
this by creating a revolutionary movement inside Cuba,
and not by invasion from without. At the same time the
movement has been sending parties of saboteurs and
shipments of arms to the island, and if an uprising occurs
will be ready to provide a government and men to run
essential services.

In spite of the recent increase in sabotage in Cuba, most of
it perfunctory and ill-directed, there is no doubt that the
army has successfully stamped out most of the potential
revolutionary movements, notably by subduing the rebel
gangs in the Escambray mountains. The Government
continues to act ruthlessly against any suspected
opponents. Two youths were executed on Friday night
after being convicted of terrorism by a military court
earlier in the day.

Dr. Miro Cardona is confident that such harsh measures by
the Government will not prevent a popular uprising - will
indeed encourage it. In its declaration yesterday, which
included a long indictment of the present regime for
betraying the liberal ideals of the revolution of January,
1959, the revolutionary council called on Cubans to
establish in Cuba a permanent democratic regime "in
which liberty and social justice will operate effectively and
harmoniously".

In its final appeal the council declared: "Cubans! Our
country is occupied by a foreign army at the service of
those who betrayed the revolution. It is our duty to our
revered liberators to expel the tyrant from our soil. They
said that to live in chains is to live submerged in insults
and degradation. They had the courage and decision to
give up this country which we must reconquer. To arms,
Cubans! We must conquer or we shall die choked by
slavery. In the name of God we assure you all that after
the victory we will have peace, human solidarity, general
wellbeing, and absolute respect for the dignity of all Cuba
without exception. Duty calls us to the war against the
executioners of our Cuban brethren.

"Cubans! To victory! For democracy! For the constitution!
For social justice! For liberty!"

These stirring words have created a fever of excitement
and activity in Miami, where a general mobilization order
among Cuban rebels has been in force for nearly two
weeks.  The supply of arms, which go first to other
revolutionary camps in central America and thence to
Cuba (though they do not there always end up in the
hands of those for whom they were intended), has been
increased, and it is reported that trained guerrilla forces
and sabotage experts have also been leaving Miami for
unrevealed destinations. But the enthusiasm of the exiles
has yet to be echoed in Cuba, and Dr. Miro Cardona's
statement that invasion from outside Cuba is not planned,
in spite of contrary reports from Miami and from other
Cuban exiles, suggests that those who are waiting to form
the next Cuban government would have to continue to be
patient for some time yet.

Meanwhile the fact that a sudden spurt of revolutionary
zeal has broken out among Cubans in the United States so
soon after the publication of the State Department's
pamphlet calling on Cuba to sever its links with the
international communist movement (which the Cuban
Foreign Minister said constituted a formalization of the
undeclared war which the United States is waging against
his country) can be expected to be used by Cuba as new
evidence of the United States hostile intentions.

Dr. Miro Cardona has met a number of State Department
officials, including Mr. A. A. Berle, the coordinator of Latin-
American policies, and Mr. Philip Bonsal, formerly
Ambassador of Cuba.
@
3.2
The small rebel force which invaded Cuba last Sunday has
been dispersed by the Cuban Army, and what is left of it
has taken to the Escambray mountains to carry on a
guerrilla campaign against the Castro regime.
Revolutionary leaders said today that the fight would go
on. Both sides have acknowledged heavy losses in the
fighting, but neither has given figures.

Dr. Castro, the Cuban Prime Minister, has claimed a total
victory but has also said that he is expecting further
landings on the island soon. The majority of rebel troops
have still not been brought into the attack. Cuban exiles in
the United States are bravely saying that the first part of
their mission, the joining up of the invaders with rebel
bands in the hills, has been successfully accomplished, but
there is no doubting that they have sustained a heavy
defeat.

The plan to secure an early beach-head and set up a
revolutionary Government in opposition to Dr. Castro has
had to be abandoned, and the hope of initiating an
immediate popular revolt within the island has been
proved false.

The White House announced this evening that President
Kennedy received Dr. Miro Cardona and four other
members of the Cuban Revolutionary Council at the White
House yesterday. The Cuban leaders had flown from Miami
to report on the Cuban situation and afterwards spoke
with President Kennedy's advisers, among them Mr.
Adolph Berle, special State Department adviser for Latin
American affairs.

It would appear Dr. Cardona informed the President the
landings had failed. Mr. Salinger, White House press
secretary, said the leaders pressed the President to use his
influence with the Organization of American States to
assure prisoners would be treated humanely. The
President said he would help if he could.

A statement issued by the Cuban national revolutionary
council said last night that there had been "tragic losses" in
yesterday's fighting among a small holding force "which
courageously fought Soviet tanks and artillery while being
attacked by Russian Mig aircraft", and which by its action
allowed the major part of the landing force to reach the
mountains. The statement confirmed that the landing was
to be numbered by hundreds and not thousands, as some
reports have said.

A rebel broadcast, monitored by exiles in Miami today, and
claiming to come from "Radio Escambray, somewhere in
Cuba", said that the liberation forces had now joined with
other rebel forces already fighting in the mountain area.
The rebel radio said that the communist equipment used
by Dr. Castro's army had taken a toll of casualties, "but not
of such magnitude as to stop the liberation forces from
accomplishing their mission".

A statement read over Havana Radio today, claiming total
victory over the invaders, said that the Cuban Army and
militia had overrun the invaders' last position at Ciron
Beach, at Cochinos Bay, last night. The broadcast, which
was attributed to Dr. Castro, admitted that the Cuban
forces had suffered many casualties but said that they had,
in less than 72 hours, destroyed the army, "which was
organized over many months by the imperialist
Government of the United States".

The statement said that some of the raiders had tried to
escape by sea but their boats had been sunk by Cuban
aircraft. "The remainder of the mercenary forces", it
continued, "after suffering numerous casualties in dead
and wounded, dispersed completely in a swampy region
from which no escape is possible." A large quantity of arms
of American manufacture was captured, including various
Sherman heavy tanks.

This last claim seems unlikely, unless the size of the rebel
landings has been underestimated by both sides.
Yesterday's report by Havana Radio of the details of the
American pilot alleged to have been shot down and killed
has also proved to have a number of inaccuracies. No man
of the name given can be found in any records of Boston's
inhabitants, and the holder of the social security number
quoted as belonging to him was at work in a Manhattan
office yesterday afternoon.

The exiles' fears that Monday's invasion was precipitate
have been well justified. A reason is being found mainly in
the lack of coordination among the leaders of the
revolutionary organization. One report from an exile
organization in the United States said today that the
invasion had been hastily decided and that one waiting
group had not even received instructions by the time it
began.

Many exiles in Miami were under the impression for the
first two days that all, or nearly all the available armed
rebels - perhaps 5,000 of them - had gone into the island
in the first attack. Was this the original intention and was
it changed by the revolutionary council when it was
discovered that only a few hundred had carried out the
invasion? Or had it always been planned that the first
landing would be small, with the principal object of setting
off an internal revolt, and that the remaining outside
troops would be used for a decisive blow when the Cuban
Army was fully occupied? This will be known only when
the leaders tell their story.

Meanwhile Dr. Castro has been imprisoning large numbers
of Cubans and executing others, probably more as a
deterrent to revolt than because potential rebels revealed
their loyalties too soon. Seven men, including another
American, were shot today. Among them was Major
Humberto Sori Marin, a former member of Dr. Castro's
Cabinet.

Apart from the triumphal cries of the Havana Radio,
reactions from Cuba have not been reported. Most
overseas correspondents in the island seem either to have
been locked up or to be under constant watch. None,
except the reporters of some communist news agencies,
has been able to file a report since the invasion began.
@
3.4
During the day and night of October 27-28, 1962, the
world hung on the edge of nuclear war. In Havana, Prime
Minister Fidel Castro, President Osvaldo Dorticos and
several Cabinet ministers sat waiting in a room of the old
Presidential Palace. They had no doubts about what would
happen if Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev refused to
withdraw the nuclear missiles and bombers that the
Russians had placed in Cuba.

"We knew" Fidel Castro said to me, "that the cost of the
war would be high, and we were prepared to face it." He
added that "an American invasion force would also have
paid a high price."

While they were waiting in the palace, Antonio Nunez,
then the head of Cuba's agricultural organisation and a
close associate of Castro's, telephoned from Rome where he
was attending a conference of the UN Food and
Agricultural Organisation, saying that he wanted to be with
them and was returning to Cuba. Fidel told the minister
who answered the telephone to tell Nunez to stay in Rome
so that after the holocaust he could write a history of the
Cuban Revolution.

All accounts agree that the Cuban people were remarkably
calm, although they had been told of the great danger and
were mobilised on October 23, the day after President
Kennedy's speech. On the afternoon of October 28,
Khrushchev surrendered and agreed to withdraw the
missiles and Ilyushin bombers.

Fidel Castro was furious. His associates were bitter and
scornful of Comrade Khrushchev who, Castro was reported
to have said at Havana University a few days later, lacked
"cojones" (balls). Cubans all over the island felt let down,
almost disgusted, judging from the way ordinary Cubans
still talk about it. "What do you think about the crisis now
that ten years have passed?" I asked Castro.

"On the whole," he replied, "I think it did some good, and it
worked. We didn't get an absolute guarantee against a
United States invasion, but in practice it was good enough.
We could have got more - and we would have if
Khrushchev had been stronger.

"There really was a danger of an invasion from the United
States before the crisis. I am sure of it. We needed the
protection of the missiles. As it turned out, there is no
telling what might have happened. Kennedy was
assassinated; Johnson came along, and we were saved by
Vietnam. Who can say whether the immense American
force that went into Vietnam in those years would not
have turned on Cuba? The missile crisis brought a
reduction in American-backed incursions from pirate
ships, subversion and other forms of intervention - and
then came Vietnam.

"Of course, we had no thought of waging war in 1962 - not
in the least. It was done for protection. Yes, I was furious.
Our relations with Russia started on the downgrade after
that for some years. Now they are better than they've ever
been."

Fidel's younger brother, Raul Castro, who is commander of
the Revolutionary Armed Forces and who negotiated for
the missiles in Moscow, made a shrewd comment when I
asked him about the crisis. "If Eisenhower or Nixon had
been President in 1962, instead of Kennedy," he said,
"Cuba would certainly have been invaded."
@
3.5
Dr Fidel Castro, the Cuban Prime Minister, drew laughter
from the Cuban Communist Party congress today when he
described elaborate plots by the United States Central
Intelligence Agency to murder or discredit him. It was his
first public comment on the CIA plots disclosed by an
American Senate investigation.

There were smiles among the 3,000 delegates and 85
foreign delegations when Dr Castro spoke of a CIA scheme
to expose him to ridicule by poisoning his cigars with a
drug which would cause disorientation before he delivered
a speech. Many burst into laughter when he told of a
powder which was supposed to be spread on his boots to
make his beard fall out.
@
4.1
Dr. Castro, the Cuban Prime Minister, the Paris newspaper
Le Monde, the Soviet news agency, Tass, and other news
agencies all became involved today in a controversy about
remarks made by Dr. Castro in a seven-hour interview
with M. Claude Julien, a correspondent of Le Monde.

One of these reported remarks was that Dr. Castro did not
agree with the Soviet withdrawal of missiles from Cuba
without consulting the Cuban Government. He was quoted
as saying that Mr. Khrushchev "avoided war but did not
win the peace". Today Tass, in a message from Havana,
said that Dr. Castro categorically repudiated statements
criticizing Mr. Khrushchev and denied having given an
interview, though he admitted having had an "accidental"
unofficial conversation in Havana with M. Julien. This had
"served as a pretext for reactionary and pro-imperialist
elements" intent on harming Soviet-Cuban relations.

Le Monde is to publish a clarification tomorrow. It may be
assumed that nothing will be retracted. M. Julien has
described his article not as an interview but as extracts
from a conversation which lasted through the night and
which Dr. Castro was apparently willing to prolong still
further. What was to appear in print was left confidently
to him.

What seems to have provoked today's denial is the
distortion in news agency versions, particularly Spanish-
language ones, of the attributed statements. In Spanish Dr.
Castro was made to say that he would have given Mr.
Khrushchev a "slap" had he come to Cuba in place of Mr.
Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet Deputy Prime Minister. In
fact Le Monde made it clear that he said "I would have
boxed him" - as a laughing after-thought - having
expressed praise for Mr. Khrushchev and the Russian
people for the aid given to Cuba. Le Monde takes exception
to these "unauthorized" and misleading versions, especially
in the American press.

In the first article, published yesterday, Dr. Castro was
reported as criticizing Mr. Khrushchev at length for
withdrawing the rockets without Cuban consultation or
acquiescence. Asked on whose initiative the rockets had
come to Cuba, he hesitated before replying: "We considered
among ourselves the possibility of asking Moscow to
supply us with rockets. But we had not reached a decision
when Moscow offered them to us."

He was asked why Mr. Khrushchev wanted to install them
only to withdraw them at the first foreseeable American
threat. "It is a mystery," was the reply. "Perhaps historians
will manage to bring it out in the clear in 20 or 30 years'
time. I do not know."

Concluding the account, Le Monde quoted Dr. Castro as
complaining, for all his reaffirmation of socialist faith, of
the reactions of the communist satellites - among whom,
he had declared earlier, Cuba was not to be found.

"Every time Moscow takes a decision, whatever it be, the
satellites throughout the world applaud. Khrushchev
withdraws his rockets from Cuba without consulting us -
and all the satellites cry out 'Khrushchev has well served
the cause of peace'. And when in Moscow Khrushchev
criticizes abstract painting, the satellites ask me to ban
abstract painting. I tell them that our enemies are
capitalism and imperialism, not abstract painters."
@
4.2
There seems to be little realisation in the United States of
the extent to which Cuba has been transformed by the
Revolution in these last ten years and especially since
Castro's disastrous attempt to achieve a ten-million-ton
sugar harvest in 1970.

Cuba's normal annual sugar crop is five million tons, which
used to be gathered in about 135 days. During the
Revolution, the harvest generally took six months. Castro
decided in 1967 to make a supreme gamble: produce a 10
million ton crop in 1970. The whole economy was turned
toward sugar: 365 days were allotted, many thousands of
volunteers were taken from other work - but the result
was a crop of only 8,526,000 tons.

The 1970 sugar harvest was as great a defeat for Fidel
Castro as his madcap attack against the Moncada Barracks
in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953, and the disastrous
landing in the yacht Granma from Mexico, when all but a
dozen of his men were captured or killed. The Cuban
economy was wrecked, and the man who said so most
scathingly and in great detail was Fidel Castro himself, in
his remarkable mea culpa of July 26, 1970. Like Nasser
after the Six Days War, Castro not only survived but won
greater understanding, sympathy and support than ever
from the Cuban people.

More importantly, he seems to have learned the lesson in
economics that 1970 taught.

Meanwhile, the radical social revolution that Fidel Castro
always had in mind has taken hold in almost dramatic
fashion. The commonest mistake made about the Cuban
Revolution since the beginning, especially in the United
States, is to measure it almost exclusively in economic
terms. The social and political changes are what have
transformed Cuba into a nation so new and different from
pre-revolutionary years that a Cuban exile returning from
Florida would find himself in a strange land.

Every child now goes to school, wears shoes, is well fed
and clothed, and gets medical care - all free. There is a
drop-out problem between the ages of 12 and 16, but
taken as a whole the educational system is incomparably
better than before, and better than in any other Latin
American country.

Revolutionary doctors, nurses, clinics and hospitals are
available free to everybody, dentistry included - as I
discovered when I had to have a broken tooth mended.
Polio, diphtheria and malaria have been completely
eliminated. There is no longer any racial discrimination.
Before the Revolution, unemployment was the highest in
Latin America; trade union leaders assured me that there
is no unemployment today. All basic necessities are
rationed at low prices and are available, except during
local distribution shortages.

Religious worship and free-masonry are tolerated and
practised but not encouraged or taught in schools. Few
Cuban children are baptised now, and it is rare for
marriages to be performed in church. However, diplomatic
relations with the Vatican have never been broken.

The Cuban people, who are exceptionally intelligent,
understand the revolutionary process and appreciate the
fact that for the first time in the nation's history they have
a patently incorruptible administration. They know that
Castro and his associates have no real estate in Florida and
no numbered accounts in Swiss banks. They live modestly
and work to exhaustion.
@
4.3
The death of Ernesto Guevara in 1967 and his romantic
revolutionary extremism made him the hero of young
revolutionaries the world over. The asthmatic son of an
upper-class Argentinian family, Guevara interrupted his
medical studies for a hitch-hiking tour of Latin America
which convinced him of the necessity for violent
revolution. He was in Guatemala when the revolutionary
government of Arbenz was toppled by a CIA-backed
invasion. He joined Castro in 1955, and became a noted
guerilla leader and theoretician. In revolutionary Cuba he
became minister of industry, responsible for the early
failures of industrial development there. Never an
orthodox Marxist, he was more concerned with the
morality of a new socialist man than the efficiency of a
new socialist economy. In 1965 he left Cuba to start a
Latin American revolution by guerilla activity in the
countryside; he was wounded in a skirmish in eastern
Bolivia and shot by his captors
@
4.4
HUNDREDS of desperate Cubans continued to launch
themselves into the treacherous Florida Straits yesterday
in the biggest exodus from the Communist island since
1980.

As the flood of makeshift rafts and leaky rowing boats
attempted to cross the 90-mile stretch of water separating
the two countries, pilots from the volunteer group Brothers
to the Rescue flew over the Straits marking each tiny boat
with green dye and yellow smoke bombs. They dropped
notes in bottles telling the refugees that the US Coast
Guard was overwhelmed but would soon come to their
assistance. Stephen Walton, one of the volunteers,
predicted that the situation could only get worse. "This is
getting real crazy," he said. "You can walk to Key West on
rafts."

Describing the exodus as reaching "critical" proportions,
Lawton Chiles, the Governor of Florida, declared a state of
emergency and called on President Clinton to follow suit.
The Governor said: "Hundreds of people, maybe thousands,
are lined up on Cuban shores, waiting to leave. There is no
effort by Castro to stop them. In fact, it looks like every
effort is being made to encourage them."

In declaring a state of emergency, Mr Chiles insisted that
Washington also immediately implement its mass
immigration emergency plan. "The emergency is a direct
responsibility of the federal government," he said. He
demanded an increase in Coast Guard ships patrolling the
Florida Straits and the release of funds so that refugees
can be fed and housed.

The White House has resisted pleas for stronger action.
Janet Reno, the Attorney-General, insisted that the
Administration was managing the problem "in an orderly
way and without disruption". She said that by today 86
immigration agents would have been assigned to handle
refugee cases.

In the past few days the Coast Guard said that the waters
had been busier than at any time since the Mariel boat lift
that brought more than 125,000 Cubans, and, with them,
crime and economic hardship to the Florida coast 14 years
ago. There have been more than 1,330 rescues in the past
month and more than 6,000 this year. It is thought that
hundreds more will undertake the journey after President
Castro signalled last week that his navy would not prevent
the boats from leaving.

Dr Castro has appeared on state television several times to
castigate Washington, accusing the Administration of
encouraging the exodus for propaganda purposes. He has
expressed endless disappointment that an American
president is still unwilling to restore relations with Havana
and lift the trade embargo.