CRISIS LOOMS IN CARIBBEAN
By Joseph Hansen
As was expected, the first major act in foreign policy undertaken by the Branco government, which seized power in Brazil April 1 with Washington's fervent blessing [see World Outlook April 10, April 17], was to break off diplomatic relations with Cuba. on May 135, Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a note declaring, "The conditions for maintaining relations between Brazil and Cuba have ceased to exist,"
The excuses offered for thus arbitrarily breaking off diplomatic relations included the “impropriety" of Castro's declarations about the counterrevolutionary coup d'état and its meaning, and. the charge that under the bourgeois-democratic government of Joao Goulart, which was toppled by the camarilla of generals and reaction-~ ary politioians representing the oligarchy, the Cubans had "direotly or indireotly encouraged" the “process of Communizing" Brazil.
President Johnson's pleased response to this move by the Brazilian government might be called typically "American," A few days later, on May 18, the Department of Agriculture announced that it was sending Brazil $93,000,000 worth of food products, including 1,000,000 tons of rice, 20,000,000 kilos of vegetable oil, butter and powdered milk, This was considered by the press to be a first step in resuming the economic aid which Washington had reduced to a trickle as part of the plot to overthrow Goulart,
These moves were but part of the bigger plan to tighten the screws still more on tiny Cuba. While aid was being rushed to the counterrevolutionary Gen. Branco, Washington announced fresh measures against the Cubans. On May 14, the very day after Branco broke orf relations with Cuba, the Commerce Department slapped an embargo on the sale of all food and medicine to Cuba.
This closed the long chapter of consistent lying in the White House, Congress, and all the moralistic circles of capitalist America who had sworn that the world's richest country would never, no never, commit such a depraved, inhuman act as cutting off food and medicine to any people, including the Cubans.
Even grimmer things were in the wind. On April 30 the Republican Critical Issues Council, a part of the Republican Citizens! Committee, headed by Milton S. Eisenhower, brother of the former President, issued a report calling on the United States to finance, arm and unleash anti-Castro exiles to overthrow the Cuban regime, with U.S, military help as a last resort,
This was not only political assurance that the Democrats could count on full Republican co-operation in precipitating a new crisis in the Caribbean, it was even a challenge to do it before the
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election next November.
Johnson, it appears, needed little prodding, as can be gathered from the following dispatch from Washington which appeared in the May 11 New York Herald Tribune:
"Invasion fever again has struck Cubans -- harder in the past. few weeks than at any time since before the October, 1962, missile crisis,
"The exile grapevine in Miami is afire with rumors, Cubans with military background are suddenly gone, leaving no trace in the city. In the last three weeks impressively large sums of money nave suddenly begun cireulating among exile leaders and groups in Cubats underground,
"From Costa Rica,» Nicaragua and Honduras come reports of stepped-up exile activity in training camps,"
This was the background to an attack in the dawn of May 13 when "commandos" of the "Revolutionary Recovery Movement" boasted that they had landed at Pildén and dynamited a sugar mill, The counterrevolutionaries revealed that they had a number of boats at their disposal, "Very soon," said their spokesman, “we will strike again and we. won't wait for six- months." (The U.S, elections are six months off. )
Fidel Castro charged. that the raid was a “new act of piracy. committed by the government of the United States.
He said that the counterrevolutionaries did not land, but bombarded the port with naval cannon. The shots set fire to a ware~ house, burning 70,000 bags of sugar.
In Miami, where he is an eagerly sought journalist among the counterrevolutionary Cuban circles, New York Times correspondent Tad Szule reported May 17 that tinfiltration teams began to move across the Caribbean toward Cuba this weekend in a prelude to the planned landing on the island before next Wednesday by Manuel Ray, leader of the anti-Castro 'Revolutionary Junta. '"
The reactionary riffraff that infest Miami's dives are more often given to exaggeration than not, yet Szulce seemed to share their feelings: "The plans of the revolutionary [counterrevolutior-«ary] junta, and the deliberate publicity given it by its leaders have created an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation in the huge Cuban exile community here that has not been felt since the days of the abortive 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion."
It would seem that radio Havana is living up to its reputation for accuracy in warning almost daily that U.S. planes and ships
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are poised in Florida and the Caribbean ready for an aggressive attack. ar cra erer "ead
And Castro is absolutely right in the repeated calls he has made the past month and a half for the utmost vigilance.
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