Dockside Dictator

On the far side of Havana's crowded harbor, the, massive crane that unloads the Seatrain stood stark and still. The Seatrain itself, a seagoing ferry that brings 105 loaded U.S. freight cars to Cuba weekly and returns them packed with Cuban freight, languished at its home berth in New Orleans. Cuba's belligerent dock workers, backed by the compliant Grau San Martin Government, had decided that the Seatrain was cutting them out of jobs.

Since the Seatrain started operating in 1929 the dock workers had watched with anger and frustration as the great crane plucked loaded cars from its hold and set them on the railroad tracks bound for Cuba's warehouses. Their countermove was a demand on Seatrain Lines, Inc. to hire one-third more stevedores and let them load and unload each car at Havana ("for customs inspection"). Result: by last week the Seatrain had stopped running.

The Boss. There was not much doubt along the dockfront's rough-&-tumble Calle Desamparados about who called the play that shut down the Seatrain. Boss Arcelio Iglesias, Cuba's No. 4 Communist, had knit 9.000 dock wallopers into a powerful Maritime Federation that usually got what it wanted. With many more hands than jobs they contrived to shorten hours, specialize functions, make work. Their weapon: the slowdown.

In the war years, the dockers had run pay levels up 100% and employers charged their efficiency had dropped 70 to 80%. The workers took time off to parade past the presidential palace every time employers hesitated. Some Seatrain workers took home $29 a day. Although they averaged only a few days' work a month, they got more than customs inspectors.

The Workers. But most stevedores, the braceros (day laborers) handling imports after they reached the docks, were not so lucky; Grau's Government has fixed a daily pay of $6.38.

One such bracero is compact, mustachioed Catalino Delgado Morales, 26. A stevedore like his father, he usually works on the United Fruit pier. About three or four days of the week his name moves high enough on the union hiring hall's list for him to get taken on. Then, togged like the rest of the gang (some 365) in old pants, shoes and T-shirt, he wallops sacks of sugar, coal, assorted cargo from 7 till 5. At week's end he may have earned $25.

This, says Catalino, is just about enough to pay the bills. With his wife Violeta and their two-year-old son, he lives in two rooms (rent: $18 a month) in the working class barrio of Jesus del Monte. Most days Catalino comes home to a dinner of beans and rice, and Sundays, before going out to the ball game, he favors arroz con polio. But rice is almost as scarce as meat these days, and lately Violeta has filled out the meal with vegetables.

Docker's Saturday Night. Some evenings Catalino likes to put on his suit, stop for a beer at the corner bodega, and then take a turn at the rumba at the neighborhood dance hall. More often lately he has hurried away to a union meeting. But, though Catalino is a good unionist, forking up 30-c- a day for dues and the benefit fund, and never failing to consult his delegate on all important matters, he is no Communist. He voted for Grau and the Autentico Party at the last elections, and he goes to church, though not quite so often as Violeta. Although he reads the Communist Hoy for its detailed waterfront news coverage, Catalino does not yet share with the Communist leaders of his union their hatred for the U.S. He thinks the U.S. is the greatest country in the world and wants to go there--when his union can get him more money, that is.

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