Sugar & Shooting

"They still shoot a lot but they don't bring us more than eight or nine corpses a day now. We don't need to burn them in piles any more. I guess today we'll have time to wait and bury these in the cool of the evening."

This homely comment by the morgue keeper at Colon Cemetery summed up the less important, the bloody side of conditions in Havana last week as neat little

Provisional President Carlos Manuel de Cespedes worked like a nailer to entrench his new Government (TIME, Aug. 21). Most of Havana was gay and businesslike again, even though shots were heard every few hours as long-oppressed Cubans continued their man hunt to kill every member of ousted Tyrant Machado's detested terrorist squads, the Porra, blamed by all Cuba for countless political murders and ghastly torture of prisoners. Meanwhile the big white Cuban problem which most worried Provisional President de Cespedes, U.S. Ambassador Welles and President Roosevelt was--and seems likely to remain--sugar.

Barometer of Progress. "The destiny of Cuba is in the balance," cried Provisional President de Cespedes last week. "The price of sugar is the barometer of Cuban progress. Without a fair profit Cuba cannot produce sugar and the resources of the Government will diminish." The U.S. sugar stake in Cuba, virtually a one-crop country, can be estimated from the fact that U.S. citizens own through corporate investments nearly 70% of the islands' sugar production. Their sugar bonds, debentures and stocks, bought for some $600,000,000, are worth today less than $50,000,000, and at that the U.S. investor has been lucky. Small Cuban producers, unable to compete with the big corporate plantations, have been ruined on a nationwide scale, driven to suicide and beggary. As the able lawyer representing Cuba's sugar interests, tall, stalwart, snowy-crested Thomas Lincoln Chadbourne put through the International Agreement ("Chadbourne Plan"), running from 1930 to 1935, by which its signatories--Cuba. Java and the European beet sugar bloc (Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Belgium, Jugoslavia)--hoped to win a profitable price for sugar by heroic sacrifices in production. Cuba under Tyrant Machado made the greatest sacrifice, cut her production by 60%, but the ensuing rise in sugar prices did not begin to compensate. Cuba's future appeared to hang on negotiations into which Ambassador Welles plunged last week, to permit enough Cuban sugar to enter the U.S. at "Roosevelt prices" to restore living wages among the island's cane cultivators and thus prop up politically the new Government of President de Cespedes. Under no illusions last week as to who could make or break him, small Senor de Cespedes publicly embraced tall Ambassador Welles, lauded him in repeated public eulogies. What Cuba fears is that the U.S. beet sugar producers and the cane sugar men from Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines may succeed in their present drive at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to have U.S. imports of Cuban sugar reduced by a drastic quota to 1,700,000 short tons per annum--less than Cuba has exported to the U.S. in any year during the past generation. Cubans hoped that President Roosevelt would support their plea for a quota of not less than 2,200,000 short tons. Ever since the U.S. helped Cuba win independence from Spain, Cuban sugar has enjoyed a U.S. tariff preference of 20%. Cubans hoped that President Roosevelt would use his executive power to raise this preferential to 50%. In Washington the President, careful not to antagonize U.S. sugar interests, was publicly mum about his Cuban sugar policy last week, but at least one member of the new Cuban Cabinet seemed to think he knew what it was. This knowing member was Edouardo J. Chibas, President of the Cuban Society of Engineers and an exile living in Washington and New York until he was appointed Cuba's new Minister of Public Works. As he sailed for Havana last week Dr. Chibas exulted: "Cuba will go forward if we can get the new deal that President Roosevelt has promised: increasing the Cuban sugar quota here and reducing the tariff on sugar." Digging in at Havana. During the week President Roosevelt withdrew from Havana harbor the two U.S. destroyers Claxton and Taylor which he sent "to protect American lives." Secretary of State Hull said they had been sent only to give "moral support." In the Cuban Treasury, which President de Cespedes had expected to find empty, his new Secretary of the Treasury Dr. Toaquin Martinez Saenz found $2,500,000. Tax collections, which became impossible to enforce during the last months of the Machado regime, were found to be in such a chaos of arrears that Dr. Saenz spoke ominously of a "possibly necessary moratorium." Manhattan bankers, who estimate Cuba's external funded debt at $160,000,000, declared hopefully that under President Machado the national revenues were always sufficient to service this debt and ought to be so still. Irate Cubans pointed out that, excepting the Army and Navy, Cuba's entire Governmental personnel down to the lowest postmaster have been unpaid for months and that the Treasury owes staggering sums to long unpaid contractors. Clearly the new Government cannot dig in without a complete reorganization of Cuban finances. This reorganization Ambassador Welles got under way in a long telephone talk with Acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jefferson Caffery who soon afterward began to assemble a commission of U.S. fiscal experts, rumor being that it will be led to Cuba, by Princeton's famed Professor Edwin W. Kemmerer, repeatedly "Financial Doctor" to sick Latin American treasuries (TiME, Nov. 16, 1931).-- President de Cespedes, still in almost hourly contact with Ambassador Welles, proceeded to accept the resignations of Cuba's Supreme Court Justices (mostly scared Machado henchmen who were glad enough to resign), set about appointing a new Supreme Court. Since Cuba's Congress was also packed with Machado henchmen, many of them fleeing for their lives last week, a strong Cuban sentiment arose to declare Congress dissolved. This Ambassador Welles strongly and successfully resisted, since he feared such a move would impair the constitutionality of the new Government in U.S. eyes. "Congress still exists!" firmly proclaimed President de Cespedes, but Cubans guessed that a quorum of the frightened legislators will never be assembled. Four times last week Havana got a new Chief of Police, ending up with Major Alfredo Boffil. Meanwhile proceedings were started to extradite Tyrant Machado from his refuge at British Nassau. Since His Majesty's Government will permit extradition only for non-political crimes. The Cuban authorities charged former President Machado and several escaped members of his Cabinet with "murder." "fraud," "embezzlement" and a host of other civil crimes. Five times during the week Cubans rejoiced at premature reports that patriots had shot and killed Havana's detested former Police Chief Antonio Ainciart, odious "because he personally supervised the tortures ordered by Machado." Finally, according to the testimony of Cuban Air Corps Lieut. Augustin Gutierrez, "Ainciart was cornered in a house in the Almendares section, where he had gone into hiding after the military coup of last Saturday. He was alone and when he saw himself surrounded with no avenue of escape he jerked out a revolver and put a bullet through his brain, dying instantly." Death was not the end of Terrorist Ainciart. Soldiers, hoping to prevent too savage a celebration, rushed the corpse out to a small cemetery 15 mi. from Havana and two miles beyond the end of the trolley line. Insatiable, a mob of men and women trudged out to scream curses at Ainciart's remains which lay sprawled on a slab in the cemetery morgue. Again soldiers intervened, hastily buried the body naked and without a coffin. Still unappeased, mobsters soon dug it up, rushed earth-stained Corpse Ainciart to "the centre of Cuban culture," the great square in front of Havana University. Sharp knives did their work of mutilation. A humorist stuck a cigar between the teeth of Corpse Ainciart as it was being hung by the neck from an arc light beneath which a bonfire was lighted. While flesh sizzled the mob danced around and around with blood-curdling yells until the rope burned through. Before a new rope could be found an ambulance dashed up. Brave internes, finding the mob partially sated, picked up the charred flesh and bones, made off with them amid shouts of, "Dump Ainciart into the sea! He's not fit to be buried in a cemetery with human beings!"-- During the week President de Cespedes and Ambassador Welles failed to stop the night & day man hunt to kill Machadistas but they did settle the strike of dock workers which paralyzed freight loading in Havana harbor, deprived the Government of much-needed custom revenues. Employers recognized the workers' union, agreed to rotation of jobs. To promote swiftest possible sugar negotiations with President Roosevelt. President de Cespedes named as Cuban Ambassador to the U.S. an exiled Cuban diplomat who was already in Washington last week, scholarly Senor Manuel Marguez Sterling who was born in Lima. Peru, is proud of his descent from a Scotsman named Sterling who migrated to Spain 300 years ago. Matriarch Machado. After escaping from Cuba to Key West last fortnight, Machado's large, heavy-featured spouse Senora Elvira Machado--from whom he has been estranged for five years--arrived in West Philadelphia on a private car last week with her three daughters, five granddaughters and three sons-in-law, the most famed being Son-in-Law Jose ("Wood Louse") Obregon. thus nicknamed after Cubans learned how he handled shiploads of lumber donated to Cuba by the American Red Cross after the 1926 hurricane. On the way up from Florida, Matriarch Machado & Family were so frightened that they cooked their own meals in her private car, hastily got off the train at West Philadelphia when told that they might be mobbed in New York. "Drive us to the nearest good hotel!" commanded Son-in-Law Obregon, taking the lead in a fleet of taxis into which piled Machado refugees and railway police.

At the Pennsylvania Hotel, bellboys observed that Son-in-Law Obregon had to ruffle through a roll of $1,000 bills before he found anything small enough to pay the taxis. Installed in a 16-room suite on the loth floor of the hotel, the Machado grandchildren wept. Matriarch Machado talked on the telephone with her husband in Nassau, was told, "Everything is all right. Stay where you are!" After this Sr. Obregon beamingly told reporters: "We have plenty of money. . . . We thought New York might be too hot. . . . We are stopping here because we feel Philadelphia is such a quiet city and will be restful for the children."

*President Roosevelt, who originally appointed Mr. Welles Assistant Secretary of State in Charge of Latin American Affairs and then sent him to Cuba as mediator (TIME, May 15) let it be known last week that he wants Mr. Welles back in Washington as soon as practicable to initiate trade negotiations with all Latin American nations, prepare the way for the next Pan-American Conference. On Mr. Welles's return, according to the State Department, Mr. Caffery will succeed him in Havana as Ambassador and will round out a new U.S.-Cuba trade treaty.

*For an up-to-the-minute chronicle of misdeeds and horrors in Cuba since Spanish times see Carleton Urals's newly published The Crime of Cuba (Tippincott, $.3).

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