CASTRO'S FACTIONAL POLEMICS
In the April 2 issue of. the National Guardian, a progressive weekly published in New York that is widely read among American leftist circles, Cedric Belfrage deplores the recent involvement of Fidel Castro in factional polemics. Belfrage, a founder of the © National Guardian, was one of the prominent victims of the McCarthyite period. Deported from the United States, his name has been carried in the weekly's masthead ever since as "Editor-—in-Exile. " At present he is in Mexico where he has. been following Latin-American developments. _
Just. before the Tricontinental Conference ended in Havana, Cedric Belfrage sent a dispatch to the National Guardian in which he | said that in "the buoyant atmosphere of Cuba, unity against imper- . ialism triumphed over internal Left disputes..." Writing now from Mexico City, he reports that while no one at the Havana gathering hoped that the rifts would be magically healed, still it "seemed that the epic struggle of the Vietnamese had forced disuniters into Silence." The conference was thus a triumph for the "nonpartisan" attitude of Cuba in the conflicts of the anti-imperialist "schools."
"Many delegates were startled," continues Cedric Belfrage, "when Primer Fidel Castro, in his speech winding up the proceedings, himself launched the first intramural attack. Attributing to the Fourth (Trotskyist) International libelous statements about the disappearance of Che Guevara, he denounced it as a ‘discredited, antihistoric, fraudulent' movement which had 'become a vulgar instrument of imperialism and reaction.' One ‘well-known theorist of Trotskyism' attacked by Castro was Argentine journalist Adolfo Gilly, an enthusiast about Cuba and a champion (in U.S. progressive but non-Trotskyist publications, among others) of the Luis de la | Puente guerrilla movement in Peru and the Yon Sosa guerrillas in Guatemala. The Guatemalan movement was represented at the conference by Luis Turcios, leader of the rival guerrilla group which insists that the Yon Sosa group is not only ‘dangerously infil-. trated by Protskyists' but by police and CIA agents masquerading as such. .-
"But Castro's blast seemed out of context since the Peruvian’ guerrilla movement, which the conference treated with the same respect as all others, is well-known to have been sparked by Trotskyists. Furthermore Trotskyists have since shown from the record that the sources quoted by Castro on Guevara's disappearance were not Fourth International spokesmen, and that groups affiliated with the International have in fact always supported Castro and the Cuban. revolution.
"By itself, the denunciation of the Trotskyists might have been shrugged off as an aberration from Castro's prudent line. But it turned:out to be the first of a-series of onslaughts, bringing , Cuba into: the thick of the controversy within the world movement.
| ‘The Ea@itor-in-Exile of the National Guardian then notes that
Castro's restraint about the reduction of Chinese rice supplies to Cuba turned to "outright hostility toward China's leaders."
This was followed by an acrimonious reply to an editorial in Borba, the official organ of the League of Yugoslav Communists on the Tricontinental Conference.
‘Then came Castro's denunciation of "Chile's: Eduardo Frei, | leader of the only South American regime elected on a radical plat- — form, as a 'coward' and ‘liar.'"
Cedric Belfrage deals in greater detail with these latter three disputes and also with Castro's comments on the ‘recent trial in which seven defendants were charged with an assassination plot. However, he does not examine the possible reasons for Castro's plunge into this type of polemics. Perhaps he will return:to the subject in a coming article. . : - wean
CIA. DOES