*THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, OCTOBER - 31, 1959.
OUR CORRESPONDENT GOES TO SEE A MAN FLUNG FROM POWER BY A NATION'S REVOLT.
I talk to the ex-Dictator
on his island of fear
AM sitting on the terrace of a Madeira hotel.
Out on the blue, sun-sparkling waves of the South Atlantic, an English holidaymaker is learning to water ski. And, in a £45-a-day suite on the third floor, a man waits and wonders whether this semi-tropical day will bring an assassin's bullet.
A luxury hotel suite. Sunshine. A brimming bank balance. This in life in exile for deposed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. ` But always at his ride the shadow thrown by the threat of death from an assassin's gun.
Nights. man.
When he had stopped laugh- a dictator with his self-portrait, He is 58-year-old Fulgencio Batista, dictator ing he said: "That is like The of a kindly father and family
Thousand and One of Cuba until he fled before Fidel Castro's revolu- Every Ume a new story, every tion last January. In any competition for the time a new figure. world's most hated man Batista could expect to come in the first three. To keep power he executed and imprisoned many of his opponents.
Now he is in search of a home out of reach of Caban vengeance. He has come to his remote island, accessible only by sea. He planned to take a villa, but the Fortu- guese authorities insisted that he would be safer in an hotel. Here he is guarded day and night.
At the hotel reception desk the clerk looked blank when I asked to speak to Batinta.
His cigar
"Batista 7" he queried, as if he had never heard the name. "I will see if I have
of that anyone
name
staying here." Batista had been there a month.
Then the clerk went to get the manager. Finally, my credentials checked, I reached the third floor and was shown into a small
ante-room.
The door was draped with the Cuban flag. A powerful chort- wave radio stood on a table. Two tough looking young men looked up as I entered.
One, who was chewing gum, went back jo studying the South American football results. The other, pußng at a seven- Inch Havana egar, strolled the doorway, leaned against and eyed me suspiciously.
10
it,
100
"Sometimes its 14,000,000, sometimes 35,000,090, sometimes I wonder what it will be next."
70,000,000.
he
knows how long I shall live?
Perhaps tomorrow
Then Ruben Batista, 30-year- He pointed the cigar at old graduate, of Princeton ke a pistol, and pulled ut Univeralty, appeared, and said: Imaginary trigger. "My father, the general, will see you now."
me,
an
"It is true," he insisted. "I
people,"
"But you shot opponenta?" I said,
·From LLEW GARDNER
man,
· Madeira
•
con-
Part-time rocket men plan to shoot space
A
20-STRONG team of British amateur space scientists plan to blast off a fully-instrumented rocket 50 miles high over Britain next July. The 12ft rocket will be liquid fuelled and will carry a nose cone packed with devices to record its height, spoed, temperature and data about gravity and atmospheric pressure. It is now being built at Hertford.
The builders? Members of Ine British-U.S. Amateur
The World
of Science
By Peter Fairley
He spread als hands in wide was right at the time," he said. Rocket Club---the first such club dld only what was best for my appeal and said: "I am a family Batista, relit his cher which had In Britain. They estimate that
gone cut during our A man of Cuba A
the unofficial British rocket, versation. He went on: "I give called Project B, will cost £50. Christian. Would a Christian do Castro a year. No longer." political such things?
Much of it will be made out of "History" will judro me. I did What will happen
or then? "junk"
accond-hand what I could for my country. I Batista paused before
answer-materials, bullt the ronds. I built the Ing. Slowly he said: "A new schools and the hospitals. I built leader will be found. But it will hopes, the 2ft nose cone will be At maximum height, the club the houses.
not be me. Batista has played autonintically "kicked" his part."
from the rocket cosing. Both containing tape recorders, -ro We spoke about the attempts parts will float cently batte to celving instruments and devices at counter-revolution that have Earth by
re- to decode signals from the Pro-
Jest Brocket. been made since Castro came to covery. power. Batista said: "Naturally I support such attempts watch the efforts of my country- secure their freedom men to with pride and sympathy. But
The heart
to
paruchute for
away
Where to fire it?
The site is a disused gravel
pit near Potters Heath, no used by the club to test smaller
I admired the gold ring set "Not all of them," he with a cluster of diamonds and answered. "I am in favour of Both looked as if they had a huge amethyst that glinted on opposition parties so long as
Raymond his anger. many
I eyed the mono- they behave themselves and act read
I interrupted the stream. grammed silk shirt and the legally. But I was fighting say: "Why, if you did so much. Chandler novels.
Remembering that Castro's stylish suit. And I said: "You Communist terrorists. With did the people turn against men
famed were
for their have enough to inst you the rest them you must be strong."
you?" beards, I was glad that I had of your days?"
It appeared Agoin
And forture? laughed. "Who shaved of the two-day growth
that I had made another joke. Batista rocked with loughter. that I had sprouted on the boat from Lisbon.
Buch "Thoney, phoncy, all tales of torture are phoney," he Batista answered: "It was not spluttered. He went on: the heart of Cubs that turned
A radio transmitter will send "Castro's propagandists pro- against me. The people loved I do not organise these adven-space data back during flight. duced photographs of a machine me. It was
But the club has one problem the ignorant that tures."
"Until now," said Mr Frost, for extracting the fingernalls Castro bribed.
I asked my last question where to fire the rocket Mr "our home-made rockets have from prisoners, but they did not
"Castro said to them: Look, "Do you finance them?"
Ian Frost, the secretary, ex- all been solid-fuelled and no produce an ex-prisoner with his there is a big house, Fight with
than three feet long. plained: "We are taking advice, larger balls torn out."
me and it will be yours. Look, Once more Batista erupted and we may ask the RAF to climbing to a height of some 600 Quietly I suggested: "Perhaps there are fields. Come with me into laughter. "Thero are help us are it. So for none of feet. they were all shot"
and I will give them to you! others to do that How could I our rockels have done anything Batista ignored me and went Well, they went with him and give money for such work? I dangerous, But this one could "Using a liquid fuel-It may en: "They said I poked out the now they have nothing."
am a poor man. I have only make quite a bang if
be a mixture of oxygen and eyes of other prisoners. But they In 1951 Batista arrested the enough for, myself and for my thing went wrong."
petrol, or nitric acid and fluorine did not produce a man with his young Castro but later released family."
is a much more tricky' busi- eyes poked out. I tell you it was him. He does not regret this This time I joined in the
The club is also buliding a ness. Things can go wrong all lies,"
action. "I did what I thought laughter.
| "space" centre"”—a blockhouse even with solids.
Batista, £171 Immaculately clad, bouncy, roly-poly figure of
His laughter
to
a man, came forward to shake
I asked: "Will you go back my hand. He offered me Cuba f Castro gives you a clgar. "Cuban," he said. Then guarantee of safety?" ndded a little regretfully: Again he exploded Into "Export quality, of course." laughter. "I think not. Castro Of the suggestion that he is a sick inon. How do you say walks in fear of death, Batista it? He is sick in the head. You cald: "Yes, Castro's men may cannot accept the word of И seck me out even here."
man Bke that."*
Then he turned from the
window, looking out to the high Madeira hills, and added: "But, if I thought all the time of my, life, I would never be at peace."
His fortune
And the future? Batista shrugged his heavy shoulders. "I do not know. Perhaps I will stay here. Maybe, I will take a villa in time. To Batista it does not matter where he lives when he is not in Cuba.
"One day I shall go back to Cuba. But not as a politiciun. Batista intends to write his am through with pailties. memoirs. "It is very difficult." Batista wants only to be 4 he said, in his thickly accented family man." voice. "All my papers were lost in the revolution." He tapped his head. "My papers are up here, I have to write things who bids fair to outweigh his down before I forgét."
But Batisto did not lose every thing in the revolution. He has a large personal fortune. Just how large he declines to say.
Some estimates put it as high 29 £14,000,000, but when I mentioned this figure he roared with loughter.
As it to prove his point he said to Ruben: "Fetch Carlos."
His nine-year-old son Carlos,
father within a couple of years, came into the room, He shook Batista pinched my hand and his cheek saying: "Say "How do you do?' to the gentleman."
Carlos sald: "Ilow do you do?" Then he went.
I said that I found it hard to
reconcile Balista's reputation as
It's Quicker To
FAT
Walk!
London.
NAT smiles, complacent smiles, eager smiles... barely a face above the cardboard lapel tickets that denote "Official" was not smiling when Britain's giant Earls Court Motor Show threw open its doors in a flourish of pomp and back-slapping last week,
Ostensibly, there was plenty to smile about. Not since the early 'Twenties, when W. R. Morris cut the price of the Morris Cowley overnight by £100 and Herbert Austin created the Austin 7, has the British industry known such a year of change and triumph.
New, cheaper, better, faster models are crowding on to the market. Production is hurtling upwards (827.384 cars in the nine months up to September 30, compared with, 782,098 in that time last year); overseas orders are flooding in; and the British people, of whom only one in seven fuenilles owned a
„Peter Burgoyne's-
NEWS FROM BRITAIN
car eight years ago, are today Last weck the 15th Mr Labour's leading front-bench buzzing around at the rate of Speaker of the United Kingdom one car for every three and a Parliament, Sit Harry Hylton- half families.
On that joyous note, I take Foster, after
struggling and
my leave of the miles that protesting in a fine show of iraditional modesty, took his
Hght the vast interior of Earls reat, adjusted his diarranged Court, si into my new, cheaper, better, faster car-and full-bottomed wig, and faced his
first point of order.
what do I Ind?
+
Trafic marled up and bleat- It wasn't long in coming.
hour Late.
spokesmen.
Marathon
TWELVE men and women mat
down last week in the Old Baller's Number One Court to
of there ant not much
before
ponder Over the country's curious jury system and the
ing all over Central London. Within a few minutes * stuf- bear a case that will keep th Trapped buses running an aing, jockeying gaggle
Arterial roads MPs was queueing up to the Christmas. strangled; side roads cluttered Table to take the oath and to No doubt in the coming weeks with parked vehicles. And shake the hand of the new they will have much time to that appalling panorama is Speaker. not confined to London, Where on the ronds of Bri- At first, the struggle for Hardship ft can inflet on the tain is the room for all these places behind the Father of the ordinary Belton. shlay now cars?
House, Sir Winston Churchill, Seven of the jury tried, be- Week by week, day by day, was tense and wordless. Then fore the case began, to get thousands more of them spew up spoke Liverpool's large, themselves excused this irksome from the production lines on to tight-lipped Mrs Bessie Brad duty. · Four of them including a already jam-packed roads. The dock (Labour) in on exaspera- dock labourer, a man just re- British Motor Corporation has ted hool.
Leased from hospital and a self-
sald that within two years it "A point of order," she called employed plumber, were told atono wil be gutting 1,000,609 IL VThe Tortes, apparently, they could leave. vehicles a year on the road, were queue-jumping.
These men can be forgiven And Fords of Dagenham will be Tory Sir Harry met his first for their reluctance to become ruming a close second.
tost with ignity. "I cannot involved in such a legal mara- What is the British Govern- trom this place," he ruled thon. For jurors Cart expect ment doing about this? Last sonorously, keep vigilant eye. small compensation ---- a maxi- year, the Chancellor of the on that kind of practice, He mum of 22 a day, plus a 75 Exchequer collected 2587 hoped, „however, that the daily subsistence, allowance. million in the taxes that road "practice" would stop.
Clearly, some of the remains- users have to pay. Only £133 But later, as the sworn-in' der stand to lose a considerăble million of it.was spent on roads MPs flooded back to their amount in earnings.
and much of that was for Borod benches, there were still The enomaly that allows this maintenance, only
some dissotioned faces.. Bir situation is in the low which
At that rate, I glue Britain Harry's appointment was still states that mea and women 20 years as a motoring nation, ranking the Socklists who had over 10 are unfit for Jury att- After that, we'll be back to themmelves been offerent the vice.
radling. Even now, in some chance of providing the Houte Yet the judge himself is often | plly centres, it's quicker.
with a Speaker.
70 or more. The Tories offer, however, There is a growing feeling WBK" TRỜI, 80 "mignanimous as if that this provision should be might have appeared..
scrapped. Añā –there are no
Point Of Order You can pick anyone you doubt mutteringe more this
like," House Lauder R. A. Buller particular, "jury, the retired had told them, In effect, "pro-, people, whose income would, be
Device
© 2šritain's $39»mourer Hosing » Tile no coincidence that Sir could have done the job st of Commens saker some banking, Fʻravilo happens to be one of well
JACKYS DIARY
by
Jacky Mendelsohn Age 32/2.
Yesterday Daddy TOOK ME TO WATCH a PEAL BASKET-BALL game, BOY WHAT BUNCH of Big Babies they Hap PLAYING
FIRST OF ALL
any-
rockets.
You Could TELL Right WAY THEY were over-gROANED Kids on A COUNT of THEY STILL WERE Wearing SHORT PANTS
another Reason is Daddy Said They Were Students ALSO YOU COULD TELL They Were Big Babies Cause all from his OLD SCHOOL. ONLY DON'T UNDERSTAND THEY did was DRIBBLE ALL OVER THE PLACE how THEY fit in the desks.
1959
Buch!
King Features Studicate World rights Reserved.
(OOH!
[ow."
Little Baby DRIBBLing
ANOTHER WAY YOU COULD TELL was They Were Trying to make a BASKET & didn't even KNOW HOW Learn how IN arts& CRAFTS WHEN was still in Kinder Garden.
O
Lucky for Them There Was A Police Man Witha Whistle who made Them give iT BACK, or Else They would of I been fighting ALL THE TIME.
TWEET
BIG BABY Dribbling
En STEAD THEY SPENT THE WHOLE Time fighting over a biG BALL THAT ONE of them hap Brought With HiM.
10-4
Mine
iris NOT.
BUT WURST of ALL THEY WERE Big Babies on A COUNT of THEY STILL drank From A Bottle
FOOEY
Next time Daddy i
BALLSOME PMSONNA Stay Home