Temper Trouble

Ever since his lieutenants projected the biggest legislative program in Cuba's history, swart Army Boss Colonel Fulgencio Batista has been trying to keep Cuba's Congress and Senate sitting in their chairs long enough to do something about it. Last month the Congress staged a stand-up strike over patronage, had to be bullied and cajoled back into the White Capitol. Last week Cuba's 36 Senators had stopped work to squabble in heated Cuban fashion over the strange behavior of Senate President Arturo Illas Hourruitinier.

Tall, tough President Illas, who had won a fearsome reputation for himself in Santiago by angrily shooting a panther for misbehaving in a circus and by beating up a journalist who accused him of misbehaving as Santiago's customs administrator, stormed into Havana last year as a Senator for the first time. When Senate President Justo Luis del Pozo resigned in a huff over patronage, hard-boiled Boss Batista liked hard-boiled new Senator Illas well enough to help boost him into the Senate's presidency. First thing the Senate knew, President Illas lost his temper again. One day when his 62-year-old uncle Jose Hourruitinier waylaid him in the Capitol to ask about getting his daughter restored to a government stenographic job, irascible Arturo Illas savagely caned the old man's head.

So infuriated was President Illas when this story appeared in Havana's gossipy InformaciOn last month that he devoted a session to a fierce harangue against the press, ordered InformaciOn's Senate reporter to be booted from the press gallery. At this point the Senators decided they had had enough "conduct unbecoming a Senator," began clamoring for President Illas' resignation. After they refused to appear in numbers sufficient for a quorum. President Illas growled that he would resign. But when, to save face on both sides, his friends got 20 of the 36 Senators to give him a vote of confidence last week, in the earnest hope that he would resign forthwith, Arturo Illas triumphantly boomed that he would do nothing of the kind. Out in high dudgeon strode just enough Senators to forestall a quorum, leaving a docket choked with 600-odd bills including preparations for Cuba's forthcoming Constituent Assembly.

With both sides appealing to Boss Batista to intervene, the Boss was disposed to caution. Cuba's stoutly independent Supreme Court last week ordered the Senate special tribunal to show why it had refused an appeal to onetime President Miguel Mariano Gomez, whom the tribunal impeached last December for balking at Boss Batista's military school program (TIME, Jan. 4).

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