Outward Bound

The voices were Cuban but the sentiments were those of any East European Communist satellite. "Kennedy is the pirate President of the 20th century," cried the Havana radio, complaining hysterically that U.S. aircraft had "fired shots" while flying past the south Cuban coastline. In a familiar Berlin-style reprisal, the Castro regime halted all vehicular traffic into the U.S. Navy's Guantanamo Base, forcing the Navy to pick up Cuban base employees at the gate and transport them to their jobs; next, Castro might try cutting off the base water supply from the Yateras River, 20 miles away. More and more, Cuban propaganda stressed what good friends the Communists were; Economic Czar Che Guevara announced grandly that Cuba has received $245 million in loans from "our socialist friends." and other speakers proclaimed that those same rocket-armed friends could destroy any Western Hemisphere nation with ease. By Ship & by Plane. The great exodus from the unhappy island, momentarily halted by invasion, resumed. In the past two years, some 200,000 frightened, disillusioned or dismayed people have fled into exile. They were Cubans of every class save the clergy, who remained to fight Castro in their own way. Now it was the Roman Catholic Church's turn to go, and Castro and the Communists felt strong enough to take on the church. Denounced as "Falangists," insulted and jailed, forced to obtain "work permits" to say Mass, Cuba's foreign-born clergy --500 priests and 2,000 nuns--started pulling up stakes. One group of 300 nuns sailed away on the Spanish liner Cova-donga; another 28 found space on the ferry to West Palm Beach; others scrambled for seats on the airliners shuttling back and forth between Havana and Miami.

So great is the exodus that the twice-weekly ferry has been sold out for six weeks ahead. In Havana, the Dutch KLM airline, with an average of 60 seats a week out of Cuba, finally had to lock the doors of its ticket office. Pan American was booked solid into August. As each plane landed in Miami, it was greeted by crowds of anxious exiles, beseeching the new arrivals for word of a brother, a husband, a parent remaining in Cuba.

Only a few Americans remained in

Cuba, and the U.S. State Department warned them to leave as soon as possible. Some 300 U.S. citizens waited nervously to see if the regime would grant them the exit permits to depart. Another 30 to 40 Americans languished in jail. Among them were two Villenueva Catholic Uni versity professors, the manager of Havana's Berlitz language school and A.P. Correspondent Robert Berrellez.

Into the Bin. One of the luckier Americans was TIME Havana Correspondent Jay Mallin, who got out last week. The Cuban G-2 arrested him the day after invasion, questioned him, and then inexplicably released him. At 10:30 that night he heard car doors slam in the street outside his apartment house, looked out and saw his janitor leading a squad of G-2 men into the building. Mallin ran up a flight of stairs and hid in a hallway storage bin. The G-2 men waited in the apartment; Mallin waited in the bin. At 5 a.m. Mallin crept down the stairs, shoes in hand, and made it past his apartment to the street. He rode a city bus downtown, found a Jamaican cabby he knew who drove him to the former U.S. embassy residence, now occupied by the Swiss. Bluffing his way past Castro's militia guards, he was admitted as a "guest," and there he stayed until he was able to make his way out of Cuba.

As other visitors with experiences to tell sought safety in the embassy, Mallin was able to put together the story of Castro's police-state terror during the invasion crisis. Under Dictator Batista, the chivato, or informer, was the object of universal hatred; Castro, in the fashion of Communist and fascist dictators, has turned the government stool pigeon into a national industry. Every block has one. In the great invasion roundup of 250,000 Cubans, the informer was apt to be the untipped janitor, the office wasp, the neighborhood malcontent--all of whom now had their chance for revenge. In the city of Matanzas, thousands of Cubans were penned up in the baseball stadium, and when they sent up a chant of protest, guards fired submachine-gun bursts over their heads. Sanitation was so bad in Havana's overcrowded Morro Castle that several prisoners fell sick. Doctors among the prisoners set up a makeshift dispensary in a dungeon once used by Spaniards for garrote executions; other prisoners held in a dry moat outside dug holes in the ground with shovels for makeshift toilets. In Havana's huge Blanquita Theater, the militia used dogs to guard 5,000 men and women. The dogs panicked the prisoners, and the militia fired into the crowd, wounding two. After the initial wave of 30 executions in the invasion's first 48 hours, the regime stopped issuing bulletins--but did not stop killing. The reports are that it still goes on, and travelers from Pinar del Rio province say that for a time after the invasion, executions were quietly carried out there almost every night.

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