Peten's Passenger

(See front cover)

George Andrews, third secretary of the U. S. Embassy in Havana, went fishing with a Captain Leslie Waggett last week and saw something pink fluttering over the water about three miles off the Jaimanitas Yacht Club. It was a light summer dress tied to an oar and the oar was held by Cinemactor Alexander Kirkland clinging to the keel of an overturned sailboat. With him, without her dress and painfully sunburned, was Actress Ann Harding Bannister with her secretary Marie Lombard. Hysterically they told what had happened and how the boat's skipper, one Majin Alvarez Piedra, had started swimming to shore. Gibbered Miss Harding:

"A fin cut through the water . . . going at the swimming man, and there was a scream and he was dragged down. We drew ourselves up further on the keel."

Here was news, news that all Cuban newspapers could print without fear, and they spread themselves with pictures, columns of text and descriptions of the inquest of the shark-killed boatman. Miss Harding flew for Hollywood, heavily veiled, after providing a $25-a-month pension for the boatman's widow. Only briefest mention was given another ship far more important to every Cuban, the United Fruit liner Peten carrying lean young Benjamin Sumner Welles from "New York to his post as U. S. Ambassador to Cuba.

Terror still gripped Havana. In socialite Vedado suburb a young Negro attempted to steal a bicycle, ducked round a corner when he was seen. It was a stupid move for round that corner was the wall of Principe Fortress, on the wall was a prison guard with a rifle in his hand and nothing to do. The reaction of a Cuban guard to a running Negro is precisely that of a British sportsman to a rocketing pheasant. He killed him with a single shot.

In Oriente Province, where armed rebellion still sputtered and flared last week, Cubans learned of the resourcefulness of Corporal Gort. With two privates Corporal Gort captured six men accused of participating in the rebel raid on San Luis fortnight ago (TIME, May 8) and started to march them back to Santiago. Suddenly he realized that he was outnumbered two to one. Drawing his revolver he shot four prisoners dead and herded the other two into town.

President Machado's own police were not safe from President Machado's gunmen. Despite denials from frightened neighbors and government officials, U. S. correspondents took enough stock in the battle of the Sixth Police Station to cable full details north: Two armed soldiers swung up in a car, rushed into the building and emerged in a few minutes with three uniformed policemen and two plainclothesmen. Following the honored formula, the five were told to run, were shot in the back. But the plainclothesmen had not been sufficiently searched. They returned the fire. Before they too fell, the soldiers were badly wounded.

For too many months too many men have died in just such ways for Cubans to be particularly incensed at these new assassinations. The one thought in every Cuban mind was: what was the United States going to do? What orders had been given long-headed young Sumner Welles?

According to his own statements, Ambassador Welles was going to do nothing. At the time of his appointment he summoned reporters and wordily announced :

"The very practical fact that Cuba is potentially one of the greatest customers of the American continent for United States goods and that she herself depends upon fair and generous treatment from the United States for her economic life, all combine to demand today, more than ever before, that the two nations join as equal, sovereign and independent partners in the consideration of those measures best adapted to further the economic and commercial interests of each one of them and of the world at large."

Again on the deck of the Peten last week he tried to make New York reporters believe that there would be no U. S. intervention, no official pressure on the Machado Government.

"I am sailing," said he, "with the belief that the relations between this country and Cuba will be that of sovereign countries. . . . Political unrest in Cuba is something which concerns the Government of that country alone."

Dictator Machado believed that a show of good intentions was at least worth trying. While the Peten was still at sea he suddenly signed orders liberating some 300 political prisoners. At the same time walls and fences broke out in a rash of red-lettered posters: OPPOSE AMERICAN INTERVENTION. To the delight of U. S. correspondents, plans for a magnificent "Red Riot" leaked out three days too soon. According to the scheme Dictator Machado's ever useful Porra (strongarm squad) was to equip a mob of hoodlums with sticks, red flags, Communist banners. Just as the Peten was warping in to its berth the "Communists" would assemble at the quayside with hideous cries and frightening gestures. At the proper dramatic instant up would rush a squad of well-groomed police to disperse the howling Communists in the most efficient manner. All this would entertain and instruct Senor Welles during the irksome time that his baggage was being landed. The arrival and landing of Ambassador Welles was not quite according to schedule. For some unexplained reason he disembarked with Charge d'Affaires Edward L. Reed at the port captain's pier instead of at the dock where the Machado reception committee was waiting for him. Embarrassed by advance publicity, the great "Red Riot" was called off. but again there was confusion. Half an hour after the scheduled time, 50 pseudo-Communists turned up at the pier to "riot," were shooed away by disgusted police.

Junta. All the polite protests of Sumner Welles could not convince close observers last week that the Roosevelt Administration entirely approved of Gerardo Machado. Certainlv anti-Machadoans did not believe it. Reporters discovered that the 3,000 Cuban exiles in Washington. Miami. New York were convinced of and acting upon the following: Hating 10 revive the old war-cry of Yankee Imperialism before the World Economic Conference at London next month. Washington has fought shy of armed intervention under the Platt Amendment.* The April series of political assassinations shocked President Roosevelt into the determination that Machado must go. From Washington wires were gently twitched to force his resignation. The State Department let it be understood that the wires would not be pulled until the exiled opposition in the U. S. could unite on a definite program of action after Dictator Machado's removal. They must present a candidate acceptable to the U. S. Until last week the five different parties that form the anti-Machado junta in New York had just one point in common: a burning desire to take every Machado appointee out and shoot him. Faced with the prosaic necessity of organizing a real government, they were thrown into greatest confusion. They remained locked in conference rooms in Manhattan's Hotel Ansonia, arguing themselves hoarse. Growth of a Tyrant. For a fortnight bellicose Representative Hamilton Fish has been rumbling about U. S. intervention in Cuba and denouncing the backing of the Machado dictatorship by U. S. banks and utility companies as an outrageous example of "dollar diplomacy." Stories of the backing of Dictator Machado by U. S. tycoons are even older than stories of Dictator Machado's murders. A few facts are undisputed. In 1924 horn-rimmed Gerardo Machado y Morales was an officer of the Santa Clara subsidiary of Electric Bond & Share, to whom he had sold his own power company a few months earlier. His son-in-law, Jose Emilio Obregon. sometimes called the "Wood Louse" because of his handling of shiploads of lumber donated to Cuba by the American Red Cross after the 1926 hurricane, was manager of Chase National Bank's Havana branch (1927-31). The Chase Bank first loaned the Machado Government $30,000,000, paid off by an issue of gold , bonds payable in 1945; then another $20,000,000 which is still frozen on its hands. Cubans like to add some additional data: Electric Bond & Share is supposed to have provided the $500,000 campaign fund that won Machado his first election; as an inaugural present an official of Electric Bond & Share is supposed to have given him a $20,000 armored car; of Chase's $30,000,000 first loan. $2,000,000 went into commissions--$500,000 to "Wood Louse"' Obregon.

U. S. business almost certainly did not realize what it was setting up in Cuba. In 1924. Businessman Machado was a very different man from the pale, pocked, suspicious butcher of today. Gerardo Machado y Morales is an Hombre del '95, one of the veterans of Cuba's War for Independence in which he rose to be a brigadier general. His handling of his electric power company, and later of a sugar company, was admirably efficient and he talked loudly and most convincingly against the corruption and inefficiency of Cuban politics. The best President Cuba ever had was her first, a hand-picked candidate of General Leonard Wood--General Tomas Estrada Palma. The cost of government rose from $8 per capita under Estrada Palma to $45 under Mario Garcia Menocal, a bearded Cuban socialite who bears a marked resemblance to Brigadier General Cornelius Vanderbilt. All this General Machado--old veterans called him El Gallo, "The Rooster"--promised to stop. The U. S. tycoons that backed his candidacy so substantially thought they were giving Cuba another Estrada Palma. The Blood Standard. Two things might have given critics some hint of what was to come. Before his election Gerardo Machado was bitterly opposed by Armando Andre, editor of El Dm. Ninety days after Machado took office Editor Andre was brutally murdered by hired thugs. That was the first "Machado murder." The retaliatory organization, the A. B. C., was not established until six years later when political assassinations mounted well up in the hundreds. Cuba never abolished the death penalty but not since the days of Estrada Palma had it ever been inflicted. No sooner was El Gallo in office than he ordered the garrote hauled from the National Museum and put to work. Cuba's garrote is a barbarous relic of the Spanish regime, a high-backed oaken chair equipped with an iron collar and a plunger just beneath. A powerful lever at the back of the chair tightens the collar, strangles the condemned, at the same time forcing the plunger into the back of his neck, dislocating the spine. For years President Machado's garrote was operated by Francisco de Pineda, a confessed murderer serving a life term, who rejoiced in the official title of "Minister of Executions."

Sugar Crash. Sugar soured the nature of El Gallo. While Cuba remained prosperous no one objected violently to President Machado's habit of lining his pockets with a little of every money-making concern on the island. His extravagant interest in ladies was excused as Latin temperament, as was his passion for bloody and immediate vengeance. But Cuba's prosperity depends on sugar and sugar crashed long before Wall Street. Following several recoveries and relapses after its first crash in 1921, sugar collapsed completely in 1930. The money that he so ardently desired could only be collected from the Government. President Machado became as effective a grafter as he had been a business man and administrator. The famed Central Highway was already under construction. President Machado acquired control of the stock of a construction company known as Warren Brothers, then awarded them the contract. They built the road at the magnificent rate of $120,000 a mile (similar road building costs about $40,000 a mile elsewhere in Cuba) which netted nearly $30,000,000 in graft for Machado & friends. Similar business with the new Cuban capitol building brought in another $12,000,000.

Porra v. A. B. C. To keep this up Gerardo Machado had to stay in office. To keep him in he established the Partida de la Porra, the Party of the Bludgeon, to beat and shoot opposition out of existence. For a brief period a female Porra was set up among husky prostitutes who attacked the wives and daughters of anti-Machadoans on the streets, ripping their clothes off with razor blades. Violence begets violence. In 1931 after the collapse of ex-President Menocal's abortive revolution (TIME. Aug. 17. 1931 et seq.) the A. B. C. was established to murder and bomb the Porra and other Machado henchmen. Strange as it seems careful observers believe that the A. B. C. may be the savior of Cuba. It, of all the opposition groups, has a program that consists of more than fighting Machado and hoping to fill its own pockets. Other opposition leaders beside ex-President Menocal are Colonel Carlos Mendieta. highly esteemed but generally considered too old for the job; and former Mayor Miguel Mariano Gomez of Havana, a genial politico. All these men are Hombres del '95 and the A. B. C. is heartily sick of its revolutionary ancestors. It is a youth movement, largely Fascist in ideas. It believes in breaking up the vast U. S. controlled plantations, establishing a real national currency, a national bank of issue, ending the Government lotteries and having compulsory military service to replace the swaggering professionals of the present Cuban army. But the A. B. C. has as yet no Mussolini, no Hitler.

*The Platt Amendment to the U. S. Army Appropriation Bill of 1901 provided in part: 1) that no foreign power should ever obtain lodgment in or establish control over Cuba. 2) that Cuba should contract no debt for which the revenues were inadequate. 3) that the United States might intervene to preserve independence, order, and Republican government, and to sec that Cuba discharged her obligations to other nations.

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