’

1 eee

3 a statement

— will

TORONTO “The press

aign condemning .the
trials and sentences of Batista
war criminals, must warn
Canadians against the danger
of intervention in Cuba,” says
issued by the
Labor-Progressive party’s na-

tional executive committee this
week. ?

gy “The fact is that the Cuban
people are justly punishing
Batista criminals who
slaughtered and tortured at

- Teast 20,000 Cuban patriots,”

“We recall the brutal and
arrogant U.S. interventions in

British Guiana and Guatemala
_ which were preceded by simi-

lar hypocritical protestations
by people who never uttered
even a whispered protest

against the crimes of the im- —

perialists and their agents dur-
ing the long years of popular
struggle for democracy in
those countries,

“A similar pattern is being
prepared for Cuba. There, too,
assistance was given to the
Batista tyranny in his attack
upon the patriots of Cuba.
But all in vain. .

Intervention plans|
condemned by LPP|

“The labor and progressive
movements of this country
should greet the Cuban peo-
ple and their new democratic
government. They should also
alert their members to the
danger of intervention—mili-
tary, diplomatic and economic.

“The Cuban revolution is
part of a world-wide move-
ment for national and demo-
cratic freedom which is par-
ticularly active and succes-
ful in Latin America.

“The big investments of
Canadian bankers in Cuba,
Brazil, Mexico:and other Latin
American countries means, of
course, that Big Business here,
tied in with U.S. interests, op-
poses the march of democracy
in Latin America.

.“Everything possible should
be done in our country by
Canadian: democrats and their
organizations to declare their
solidarity with the Cuban peo-
ple. Messages should be sent
to the Cuban government ac-
cordingly, and public state-
ments condemning prepara-
tions for intervention should
be widely circulated.”

MISCELLANY )

President Harry Bridges of International Longshoremen’s

and Warehousemen’s Union is now on a six weeks’ tour of

foreign ports and other cities, to confer with labor leaders and

observe cargo handling methods and conditions in the ports.

’ He will visit London, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Athens, Cairo,
Tel-Aviv, Istanbul; Prague, Copenhagen and Hamburg.

Pending the obtaining of
visas while abroad, the trip
also include Moscow,
‘Leningrad, Helsinki and Stock-
holm,

Bee te. eS ot
e- Harlow Curtice has re-.
signed as Chairman of the

Board of General Motors. He
will now get a pension of $93,-

- 000 per year.

barons

As negotiator for the auto
Curtice was

_ pension plans for workers.

_ As proof. that truth is’ some-
_ times stranger than fiction Le-

_ Roy J. Curtice, a brother of

the executive retired a couple
of years ago on the magnifi-
cent sum of $63 per month.
LeRoy was a paint and metal
inspector in the plant,

$03 xt it

The Russians have Sputnik,
ut the Americans have NC
the world’s first atomic
peanut. Developed by US.
eneticist Walter P. Gregory,
the nuclear goober is now
being made available to ‘Bear
nut planters.

oy 5o 3 Tisha Te
Reported in Newsweek under
heading, Sleep, Perchance:

ritain’s Slumberland, Ltd., i

against .

HARRY BRIDGES

marketing a “hydraulically ad- .

justable, electrically heated,
mink-covered, tape-recording,
vibro - massaging, tea - making,
TV-equipped bed. Price: $7,-
000.”

bok De i

Conscientious objector Lew
Ayres will play his first role
as_a soldier since his 1929 role
in the film AN Quiet on the
Western Front in an upcoming
TV. show called Corporal
Hardy. It’s all about the Civil
War.

EYEWITNESS IN HAVANA

People rejoice at
toppling of tyrant

By JOSEPH NORTH

J

HAVANA (By Mail) — I was in Cuba even before I set foot on its sacred soil. “As
the mile-high plane approached land, three young Cubans unfurled their native flag with
its solitary white star on a red background, knelt before their emblem and kissed it. The

planeful of Cubans coming home broke into their national anthem as the lights of Havana

twinkled in the dusk.

When ‘the wheels touched
ground, the men_ shouted
“Cuba is free,” the women be-
gan to weep, and foreigner or
‘not, you shared the exalta-
tion about you.

It clung on as I came down
the gangplank Sunday and the

« bearded soldiers approached,

the ever-present rifle slung
across their backs. The red-
and-black armband with the
magic numerals — 26 — Cas-
tros’ Movement of July 26 —
signifies they are veterans.

It was virtually incredible
when you saw these young
men with black beards and
long manes carry babies of

the returning Cubans in their -

arms, while their grim but
eloquent rifle hung from their
shoulders. A people’s army,
Negro and white.

Walking down the Prado,
the capital’s main avenue, tree-
lined and beautiful with a
Latin grace, you saw> the
bearded men everywhere, ad-
oring mobs of citizens about
them. The streets are, crowd-
ed from curb to curb these
days and_ nights.

Gesticulating Cubanos are
agog with freedom and victory.
They talk politics as only a
people stifled for almost a
decade can, and they speak

their minds.
There is a great deal on
their minds. Exaltation con-

tinues but the earnest prob-
lem of reconstruction is ahead.
They seem to be engaged in it
en masse with an enthusiasm
that has to be seen to be be-
lieved.

The enthusiasm is well-war-
ranted. Batista is gone — the
renegade sergeant whose kill-
ers tortured and murdered
well over 20,000, as the maga-
zine Bohemia, a long-estab-
lished conservative periodical,
today enumerated.

The national tragedy, caught
by camera, is spread before
you in the million copies they
printed: The dead and the tor-
tured, the young men, the
women, whose nails are torn
from their fingers. You see the
mangled corpse of a baby in
Oriente, one of the many in-
nocents killed during the bomb-
ings Batista ordered — the
baby’s heart is visible through
the gaping wound.

It was killed by a bomb made
in the U.S.A., a Cubano tells
you. : *

BLAS ROCA
Secretary, People’s Socialist
Party of Cuba’ (Communist
party).

I talked with many men*and
women in from Camageuey,
Santa Clara, Oriente, who told
of corpses still being disinterred
from the basements of police
stations and the courtyards of
fortresses.

The killings were going on
for a long time. It is terrible to
be remirtded of Dachau whieh
I saw on V-E. Day when 5,000
bodies lay criss-crossed to be
cremated. Let nobady wonder
why the people in their wrath
demand revolutionary justice.

The air is-clean today as the
soft Caribbean winds blow in
from the Malecon, the highway
along the sea. I rode on it this
morning to interview Dr. Juan
Marinello, the famous poet and
scholar. I had met him here
some 18 years ago, shortly be-
fore he was elected a senator
in the days before Batista sold
out and became a Caribbean
Hitler.

Marinello is now the presi-
dent of the Partido Socialista
Popular (the Cuban Communist
party). The mane of hair is
white above the noble face.

He spoke of the grandeur of
the moment — the unprece-
dented juality of this revolu-
tion, its truly national charac-
ter, the participation in it of
virtually an entire folk—work-
ers in factories and sugar fields,
landless peasants and those for-
tunate enough to own a few

January 30, 1959 —

acres, professionals, students.
women, the youth — boys and
girls of high school grade age,
several of whom were in his
office—guns -on their backs —
just in from the. mountains,

A grizzled peasant leader here
pointed affectionately to one of
the youngsters — “Too young
even to grow a beard,” he
laughed. He himself had re-
fused to grow one — “age does
not need a beard. to prove its
wisdom,” he retorted when one
woman asked him where his
was.

Some 26 offices of Marinello’s
party, he told me, are open in
Havana alone today. That is

. not to speak of Santiago de

Cuba at the other end of the
island. And the towns and
countryside in between.

Hoy which means, “Today,”
the PSP organ, has been pub-
lished some nine days ai this
writing, and is sold on ‘the
newsstands along with all other
periodicals. It is one of the mcst
popular, a news vendor ‘told
me, and is gobbled up almcs?
at the moment it hits the stands. -
So it seems with all newspa-
pers, of every anti-Batista hue.

Cuba is one of the most .p
litically literate countries I
have ever _visited; even, 1
newsboys read the papers 1}
sel] and engage their custom
in ardent conversations eb-u
the headiines.

I raced. through the nice
copies of Hoy I got today. From
them you get the following’ric-
ture: Tyranny was overthrown
“thanks to an entire people who
fought in every conceivable
way.”

But Hoy warns its readers
and all Cubans that imperial-
ism and native reaction — de-

feated in ‘the field — wage an
incessant war “to divide and
deepen” any differences among
the victorious masses’ that op-
posed Batista.

And incessantly Hoy calis for
their “unity. It urges the fulJ-
est extension of democracy,
within which differences among
friends “can be aired, and de-
bated so that they can be re-
solved democratically to »-ne-
fit the nation as a whole.”
There is great accent ¢
proving the lot of the p
ry, of those who labor i: the
fields, for after all they consti.
tute the nation’s majority.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 3

asant-