1.5 The revolutionary leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro first became prominent as a militant leader against Batista's dictatorship during his days as a law student at Havana University. On July 26, 1953, he tried, and failed, to take the Moncada barracks, Santiago. He was captured and imprisoned. Released under amnesty in 1955, he trained as a guerrilla in Mexico and with 82 men (of whom only 12 survived) landed in Cuba in December 1956. Castro eroded Batista's power from his mountain base, entering Havana in triumph in January 1959. His relationship with the "imperialist" US degenerated into open conflict with the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1962. Castro, now a self proclaimed Marxist-Leninist, became dependent on the economic aid of the USSR in spite of frictions caused by the settlement, over his head, of the missile crisis of 1962 and his occasional outbursts of nationalist independence. Social and educational reforms were matched by mistaken economic policies which reached crisis levels with the withdrawal of Soviet support. Although his intervention in Angola strengthened him as a Third World leader, his Cuban model did not spread in Latin America, while the changes in the USSR have left him isolated. His hold over Cuba is secured by a combination of police repression and direct contact with the population via mass meetings and television. He remains, however, a hero to much of even non-communist opinion in Latin America @ 2.2 Dr. Fidel Castro has pursued with fanatical persistence his vow to wipe out every vestige of what had become a police State under General Batista. Last year, when rebel activities were intensified and the Batista regime reacted with increasing ruthlessness, support for the rebels increased. Until recently the regime, by its control of union leadership and often brutal suppression, had succeeded in intimidating the mass of Cubans into passivity. In April, the measures taken to forestall a general strike called by the rebels (in which suspects, some still in their teens, were tortured or summarily shot or hanged) shocked even some of General Batista's apologists. But thanks to strict censorship, the outside world had but a vague and often distorted impression of what was happening. The Fidel Castro revolt only really gained impetus when more moderate opposition leaders had failed in their efforts to persuade General Batista to exercise restraint and reinstate the constitutional government he had always promised. What became known as the Fidelista crusade began in November, 1956,when 82 Cuban exiles, led by Dr. Fidel Castro, landed in Cuba from a fishing schooner. They were expected, and from their first encounter with government troops on the beaches only 12 survived. These survivors escaped into the hills and made their headquarters in the remote Sierra Madre, in the eastern province of Oriente. The operation was dismissed as a failure by the government, and nearly forgotten by the opposition, still trying to press its cause by reasoning. Meanwhile Dr. Fidel Castro, with his brother, Raul, built up the guerrilla force. Soon, ragged columns of Fidelistas were spreading through the province of Oriente, raiding Army depots and blocking roads. Later rebel organizations and sympathizers in Central America and the United States, but chiefly in Venezuela, began to smuggle in arms, equipment, and funds. By about the middle of 1958 the Fidelistas controlled nearly the entire eastern part of Cuba. From there they set off into central Cuba and beyond to the province of Las Villas, to cut the island in two and isolate Havana. General Batista, who is 57, joined the Cuban Army in 1921. Previously he had had a variety of jobs, from farm-hand to barber's assistant. In 1933 he led the "sergeants' revolt" against President Machado and seized power, which he relinquished years later as required by the constitution he had introduced. In 1952 he led another successful revolt against President Carlos Prio, and again seized power. Nearly two years later, in an election in which he was virtually the sole candidate, he was "constitutionally" installed as president. Much of what he did for Cuba has been outweighed by his methods and the corruption of his administration. He once boasted that he was one of the most shot-at heads of state in the world. In latter years he never appeared in public without a platoon of bodyguards. Dr. Fidel Castro, in spite of the success of his crusade, has opponents even in the anti-Batista camp. He is only 32, an ascetic, a devout Roman Catholic and an intellectual, and is something of a puzzle to many Cubans. He proclaims that he has no political ambitions. Long ago he nominated Dr. Manuel Urrutia, a judge who had to flee the country because he refused to pass judgement on captured rebels, as interim President while the country was prepared for free elections. Cuba is about a fifth of the size of France and has a population of less than six million. Its importance is often overlooked. It produces more than a tenth of the free world's nickel, and about an eighth of the world's sugar exports. @ 2.3 Crowds estimated at more than 500,000 persons, including a great many women and boys and girls, cheered and waved frantically as Dr. Fidel Castro made his triumphant entry into Havana today. Aircraft flew overhead and a 21- gun-salute was fired by the navy when he reached the outskirts of the city, preceded and followed by companies of bearded combat veterans in lorries, buses, and cars. The huge column, which included tanks, was hailed as the "caravan of liberty." As the new leader passed on his way to Camp Columbia military headquarters, in suburban Marianao, the television service transmitted the scenes to viewers in their homes. Mothers and wives of rebels who fell in combat were at Camp Columbia, where Dr. Castro promised to greet them and speak to them individually. The yacht Gramma, in which Dr. Castro and his expeditionary force of 82 men landed in Cuba in 1956, came into Havana harbour piloted by naval veterans. Recognition of the new Cuban Government by the United States, Britain, and France has been generally well received here. A senior member of the revolutionary movement at Camp Columbia told your correspondent today : "We are beginning the process of building a new Cuba out of chaos, and we need and want the help and cooperation of all friendly democratic nations of the world." @ 2.4 Dr. Fidel Castro, the Cuban Prime Minister, said in Havana yesterday that he was taking Cuba along the path towards communism, which is the way, he maintains, that all the world is heading. He also declared that he was himself a "Marxist-Leninist", and announced the formation in Cuba of a single party of the socialist revolution. Dr. Castro made these announcements during a five-hour television speech marking the sixth anniversary of his revolutionary activities. It is the first time he has publicly acknowledged his allegiance to communism, and told his people unequivocally of the direction he proposes to lead them. During his speech he said he had hidden his belief in communism from the Cuban people because "otherwise we might have alienated the bourgeoisie and other forces, which we knew we would eventually have to fight". Dr. Castro's admission may produce some reaction in the Organization of American States (OAS), whose council meets in Washington tomorrow to consider the Colombian request for a Foreign Ministers' meeting on Cuba. Among the Central American republics, feeling against Cuba has become much harder recently. In Costa Rica last week the five republics proposing to form a loose federation - Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Costa Rica - were joined by Panama in signing a resolution asking the OAS to deal with "the menace to the peace and political independence of the American states posed by the intervention of foreign powers". @ 3.1 A call to arms by the leaders of the Cuban anti-Castro revolutionary movement in the United States has been accompanied by a rising of tension and uncertainty in Cuba, but has not inspired any immediate popular uprising against Dr. Castro. The appeal to the islanders to rise in revolt and overthrow the Castro regime was made in New York yesterday by Dr. Jose Miro Cardona, who was Dr. Castro's first Prime Minister and who now leads the Cuban National Revolutionary Council, an uneasy alliance of the anti-Castro forces in exile in the United States. Dr. Miro Cardona said that it was the object of his movement to restore the ideals of social revolution discarded by the Castro Government. It sought to achieve this by creating a revolutionary movement inside Cuba, and not by invasion from without. At the same time the movement has been sending parties of saboteurs and shipments of arms to the island, and if an uprising occurs will be ready to provide a government and men to run essential services. In spite of the recent increase in sabotage in Cuba, most of it perfunctory and ill-directed, there is no doubt that the army has successfully stamped out most of the potential revolutionary movements, notably by subduing the rebel gangs in the Escambray mountains. The Government continues to act ruthlessly against any suspected opponents. Two youths were executed on Friday night after being convicted of terrorism by a military court earlier in the day. Dr. Miro Cardona is confident that such harsh measures by the Government will not prevent a popular uprising - will indeed encourage it. In its declaration yesterday, which included a long indictment of the present regime for betraying the liberal ideals of the revolution of January, 1959, the revolutionary council called on Cubans to establish in Cuba a permanent democratic regime "in which liberty and social justice will operate effectively and harmoniously". In its final appeal the council declared: "Cubans! Our country is occupied by a foreign army at the service of those who betrayed the revolution. It is our duty to our revered liberators to expel the tyrant from our soil. They said that to live in chains is to live submerged in insults and degradation. They had the courage and decision to give up this country which we must reconquer. To arms, Cubans! We must conquer or we shall die choked by slavery. In the name of God we assure you all that after the victory we will have peace, human solidarity, general wellbeing, and absolute respect for the dignity of all Cuba without exception. Duty calls us to the war against the executioners of our Cuban brethren. "Cubans! To victory! For democracy! For the constitution! For social justice! For liberty!" These stirring words have created a fever of excitement and activity in Miami, where a general mobilization order among Cuban rebels has been in force for nearly two weeks. The supply of arms, which go first to other revolutionary camps in central America and thence to Cuba (though they do not there always end up in the hands of those for whom they were intended), has been increased, and it is reported that trained guerrilla forces and sabotage experts have also been leaving Miami for unrevealed destinations. But the enthusiasm of the exiles has yet to be echoed in Cuba, and Dr. Miro Cardona's statement that invasion from outside Cuba is not planned, in spite of contrary reports from Miami and from other Cuban exiles, suggests that those who are waiting to form the next Cuban government would have to continue to be patient for some time yet. Meanwhile the fact that a sudden spurt of revolutionary zeal has broken out among Cubans in the United States so soon after the publication of the State Department's pamphlet calling on Cuba to sever its links with the international communist movement (which the Cuban Foreign Minister said constituted a formalization of the undeclared war which the United States is waging against his country) can be expected to be used by Cuba as new evidence of the United States hostile intentions. Dr. Miro Cardona has met a number of State Department officials, including Mr. A. A. Berle, the coordinator of Latin- American policies, and Mr. Philip Bonsal, formerly Ambassador of Cuba. @ 3.2 The small rebel force which invaded Cuba last Sunday has been dispersed by the Cuban Army, and what is left of it has taken to the Escambray mountains to carry on a guerrilla campaign against the Castro regime. Revolutionary leaders said today that the fight would go on. Both sides have acknowledged heavy losses in the fighting, but neither has given figures. Dr. Castro, the Cuban Prime Minister, has claimed a total victory but has also said that he is expecting further landings on the island soon. The majority of rebel troops have still not been brought into the attack. Cuban exiles in the United States are bravely saying that the first part of their mission, the joining up of the invaders with rebel bands in the hills, has been successfully accomplished, but there is no doubting that they have sustained a heavy defeat. The plan to secure an early beach-head and set up a revolutionary Government in opposition to Dr. Castro has had to be abandoned, and the hope of initiating an immediate popular revolt within the island has been proved false. The White House announced this evening that President Kennedy received Dr. Miro Cardona and four other members of the Cuban Revolutionary Council at the White House yesterday. The Cuban leaders had flown from Miami to report on the Cuban situation and afterwards spoke with President Kennedy's advisers, among them Mr. Adolph Berle, special State Department adviser for Latin American affairs. It would appear Dr. Cardona informed the President the landings had failed. Mr. Salinger, White House press secretary, said the leaders pressed the President to use his influence with the Organization of American States to assure prisoners would be treated humanely. The President said he would help if he could. A statement issued by the Cuban national revolutionary council said last night that there had been "tragic losses" in yesterday's fighting among a small holding force "which courageously fought Soviet tanks and artillery while being attacked by Russian Mig aircraft", and which by its action allowed the major part of the landing force to reach the mountains. The statement confirmed that the landing was to be numbered by hundreds and not thousands, as some reports have said. A rebel broadcast, monitored by exiles in Miami today, and claiming to come from "Radio Escambray, somewhere in Cuba", said that the liberation forces had now joined with other rebel forces already fighting in the mountain area. The rebel radio said that the communist equipment used by Dr. Castro's army had taken a toll of casualties, "but not of such magnitude as to stop the liberation forces from accomplishing their mission". A statement read over Havana Radio today, claiming total victory over the invaders, said that the Cuban Army and militia had overrun the invaders' last position at Ciron Beach, at Cochinos Bay, last night. The broadcast, which was attributed to Dr. Castro, admitted that the Cuban forces had suffered many casualties but said that they had, in less than 72 hours, destroyed the army, "which was organized over many months by the imperialist Government of the United States". The statement said that some of the raiders had tried to escape by sea but their boats had been sunk by Cuban aircraft. "The remainder of the mercenary forces", it continued, "after suffering numerous casualties in dead and wounded, dispersed completely in a swampy region from which no escape is possible." A large quantity of arms of American manufacture was captured, including various Sherman heavy tanks. This last claim seems unlikely, unless the size of the rebel landings has been underestimated by both sides. Yesterday's report by Havana Radio of the details of the American pilot alleged to have been shot down and killed has also proved to have a number of inaccuracies. No man of the name given can be found in any records of Boston's inhabitants, and the holder of the social security number quoted as belonging to him was at work in a Manhattan office yesterday afternoon. The exiles' fears that Monday's invasion was precipitate have been well justified. A reason is being found mainly in the lack of coordination among the leaders of the revolutionary organization. One report from an exile organization in the United States said today that the invasion had been hastily decided and that one waiting group had not even received instructions by the time it began. Many exiles in Miami were under the impression for the first two days that all, or nearly all the available armed rebels - perhaps 5,000 of them - had gone into the island in the first attack. Was this the original intention and was it changed by the revolutionary council when it was discovered that only a few hundred had carried out the invasion? Or had it always been planned that the first landing would be small, with the principal object of setting off an internal revolt, and that the remaining outside troops would be used for a decisive blow when the Cuban Army was fully occupied? This will be known only when the leaders tell their story. Meanwhile Dr. Castro has been imprisoning large numbers of Cubans and executing others, probably more as a deterrent to revolt than because potential rebels revealed their loyalties too soon. Seven men, including another American, were shot today. Among them was Major Humberto Sori Marin, a former member of Dr. Castro's Cabinet. Apart from the triumphal cries of the Havana Radio, reactions from Cuba have not been reported. Most overseas correspondents in the island seem either to have been locked up or to be under constant watch. None, except the reporters of some communist news agencies, has been able to file a report since the invasion began. @ 3.4 During the day and night of October 27-28, 1962, the world hung on the edge of nuclear war. In Havana, Prime Minister Fidel Castro, President Osvaldo Dorticos and several Cabinet ministers sat waiting in a room of the old Presidential Palace. They had no doubts about what would happen if Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev refused to withdraw the nuclear missiles and bombers that the Russians had placed in Cuba. "We knew" Fidel Castro said to me, "that the cost of the war would be high, and we were prepared to face it." He added that "an American invasion force would also have paid a high price." While they were waiting in the palace, Antonio Nunez, then the head of Cuba's agricultural organisation and a close associate of Castro's, telephoned from Rome where he was attending a conference of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, saying that he wanted to be with them and was returning to Cuba. Fidel told the minister who answered the telephone to tell Nunez to stay in Rome so that after the holocaust he could write a history of the Cuban Revolution. All accounts agree that the Cuban people were remarkably calm, although they had been told of the great danger and were mobilised on October 23, the day after President Kennedy's speech. On the afternoon of October 28, Khrushchev surrendered and agreed to withdraw the missiles and Ilyushin bombers. Fidel Castro was furious. His associates were bitter and scornful of Comrade Khrushchev who, Castro was reported to have said at Havana University a few days later, lacked "cojones" (balls). Cubans all over the island felt let down, almost disgusted, judging from the way ordinary Cubans still talk about it. "What do you think about the crisis now that ten years have passed?" I asked Castro. "On the whole," he replied, "I think it did some good, and it worked. We didn't get an absolute guarantee against a United States invasion, but in practice it was good enough. We could have got more - and we would have if Khrushchev had been stronger. "There really was a danger of an invasion from the United States before the crisis. I am sure of it. We needed the protection of the missiles. As it turned out, there is no telling what might have happened. Kennedy was assassinated; Johnson came along, and we were saved by Vietnam. Who can say whether the immense American force that went into Vietnam in those years would not have turned on Cuba? The missile crisis brought a reduction in American-backed incursions from pirate ships, subversion and other forms of intervention - and then came Vietnam. "Of course, we had no thought of waging war in 1962 - not in the least. It was done for protection. Yes, I was furious. Our relations with Russia started on the downgrade after that for some years. Now they are better than they've ever been." Fidel's younger brother, Raul Castro, who is commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and who negotiated for the missiles in Moscow, made a shrewd comment when I asked him about the crisis. "If Eisenhower or Nixon had been President in 1962, instead of Kennedy," he said, "Cuba would certainly have been invaded." @ 3.5 Dr Fidel Castro, the Cuban Prime Minister, drew laughter from the Cuban Communist Party congress today when he described elaborate plots by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to murder or discredit him. It was his first public comment on the CIA plots disclosed by an American Senate investigation. There were smiles among the 3,000 delegates and 85 foreign delegations when Dr Castro spoke of a CIA scheme to expose him to ridicule by poisoning his cigars with a drug which would cause disorientation before he delivered a speech. Many burst into laughter when he told of a powder which was supposed to be spread on his boots to make his beard fall out. @ 4.1 Dr. Castro, the Cuban Prime Minister, the Paris newspaper Le Monde, the Soviet news agency, Tass, and other news agencies all became involved today in a controversy about remarks made by Dr. Castro in a seven-hour interview with M. Claude Julien, a correspondent of Le Monde. One of these reported remarks was that Dr. Castro did not agree with the Soviet withdrawal of missiles from Cuba without consulting the Cuban Government. He was quoted as saying that Mr. Khrushchev "avoided war but did not win the peace". Today Tass, in a message from Havana, said that Dr. Castro categorically repudiated statements criticizing Mr. Khrushchev and denied having given an interview, though he admitted having had an "accidental" unofficial conversation in Havana with M. Julien. This had "served as a pretext for reactionary and pro-imperialist elements" intent on harming Soviet-Cuban relations. Le Monde is to publish a clarification tomorrow. It may be assumed that nothing will be retracted. M. Julien has described his article not as an interview but as extracts from a conversation which lasted through the night and which Dr. Castro was apparently willing to prolong still further. What was to appear in print was left confidently to him. What seems to have provoked today's denial is the distortion in news agency versions, particularly Spanish- language ones, of the attributed statements. In Spanish Dr. Castro was made to say that he would have given Mr. Khrushchev a "slap" had he come to Cuba in place of Mr. Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet Deputy Prime Minister. In fact Le Monde made it clear that he said "I would have boxed him" - as a laughing after-thought - having expressed praise for Mr. Khrushchev and the Russian people for the aid given to Cuba. Le Monde takes exception to these "unauthorized" and misleading versions, especially in the American press. In the first article, published yesterday, Dr. Castro was reported as criticizing Mr. Khrushchev at length for withdrawing the rockets without Cuban consultation or acquiescence. Asked on whose initiative the rockets had come to Cuba, he hesitated before replying: "We considered among ourselves the possibility of asking Moscow to supply us with rockets. But we had not reached a decision when Moscow offered them to us." He was asked why Mr. Khrushchev wanted to install them only to withdraw them at the first foreseeable American threat. "It is a mystery," was the reply. "Perhaps historians will manage to bring it out in the clear in 20 or 30 years' time. I do not know." Concluding the account, Le Monde quoted Dr. Castro as complaining, for all his reaffirmation of socialist faith, of the reactions of the communist satellites - among whom, he had declared earlier, Cuba was not to be found. "Every time Moscow takes a decision, whatever it be, the satellites throughout the world applaud. Khrushchev withdraws his rockets from Cuba without consulting us - and all the satellites cry out 'Khrushchev has well served the cause of peace'. And when in Moscow Khrushchev criticizes abstract painting, the satellites ask me to ban abstract painting. I tell them that our enemies are capitalism and imperialism, not abstract painters." @ 4.2 There seems to be little realisation in the United States of the extent to which Cuba has been transformed by the Revolution in these last ten years and especially since Castro's disastrous attempt to achieve a ten-million-ton sugar harvest in 1970. Cuba's normal annual sugar crop is five million tons, which used to be gathered in about 135 days. During the Revolution, the harvest generally took six months. Castro decided in 1967 to make a supreme gamble: produce a 10 million ton crop in 1970. The whole economy was turned toward sugar: 365 days were allotted, many thousands of volunteers were taken from other work - but the result was a crop of only 8,526,000 tons. The 1970 sugar harvest was as great a defeat for Fidel Castro as his madcap attack against the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953, and the disastrous landing in the yacht Granma from Mexico, when all but a dozen of his men were captured or killed. The Cuban economy was wrecked, and the man who said so most scathingly and in great detail was Fidel Castro himself, in his remarkable mea culpa of July 26, 1970. Like Nasser after the Six Days War, Castro not only survived but won greater understanding, sympathy and support than ever from the Cuban people. More importantly, he seems to have learned the lesson in economics that 1970 taught. Meanwhile, the radical social revolution that Fidel Castro always had in mind has taken hold in almost dramatic fashion. The commonest mistake made about the Cuban Revolution since the beginning, especially in the United States, is to measure it almost exclusively in economic terms. The social and political changes are what have transformed Cuba into a nation so new and different from pre-revolutionary years that a Cuban exile returning from Florida would find himself in a strange land. Every child now goes to school, wears shoes, is well fed and clothed, and gets medical care - all free. There is a drop-out problem between the ages of 12 and 16, but taken as a whole the educational system is incomparably better than before, and better than in any other Latin American country. Revolutionary doctors, nurses, clinics and hospitals are available free to everybody, dentistry included - as I discovered when I had to have a broken tooth mended. Polio, diphtheria and malaria have been completely eliminated. There is no longer any racial discrimination. Before the Revolution, unemployment was the highest in Latin America; trade union leaders assured me that there is no unemployment today. All basic necessities are rationed at low prices and are available, except during local distribution shortages. Religious worship and free-masonry are tolerated and practised but not encouraged or taught in schools. Few Cuban children are baptised now, and it is rare for marriages to be performed in church. However, diplomatic relations with the Vatican have never been broken. The Cuban people, who are exceptionally intelligent, understand the revolutionary process and appreciate the fact that for the first time in the nation's history they have a patently incorruptible administration. They know that Castro and his associates have no real estate in Florida and no numbered accounts in Swiss banks. They live modestly and work to exhaustion. @ 4.3 The death of Ernesto Guevara in 1967 and his romantic revolutionary extremism made him the hero of young revolutionaries the world over. The asthmatic son of an upper-class Argentinian family, Guevara interrupted his medical studies for a hitch-hiking tour of Latin America which convinced him of the necessity for violent revolution. He was in Guatemala when the revolutionary government of Arbenz was toppled by a CIA-backed invasion. He joined Castro in 1955, and became a noted guerilla leader and theoretician. In revolutionary Cuba he became minister of industry, responsible for the early failures of industrial development there. Never an orthodox Marxist, he was more concerned with the morality of a new socialist man than the efficiency of a new socialist economy. In 1965 he left Cuba to start a Latin American revolution by guerilla activity in the countryside; he was wounded in a skirmish in eastern Bolivia and shot by his captors @ 4.4 HUNDREDS of desperate Cubans continued to launch themselves into the treacherous Florida Straits yesterday in the biggest exodus from the Communist island since 1980. As the flood of makeshift rafts and leaky rowing boats attempted to cross the 90-mile stretch of water separating the two countries, pilots from the volunteer group Brothers to the Rescue flew over the Straits marking each tiny boat with green dye and yellow smoke bombs. They dropped notes in bottles telling the refugees that the US Coast Guard was overwhelmed but would soon come to their assistance. Stephen Walton, one of the volunteers, predicted that the situation could only get worse. "This is getting real crazy," he said. "You can walk to Key West on rafts." Describing the exodus as reaching "critical" proportions, Lawton Chiles, the Governor of Florida, declared a state of emergency and called on President Clinton to follow suit. The Governor said: "Hundreds of people, maybe thousands, are lined up on Cuban shores, waiting to leave. There is no effort by Castro to stop them. In fact, it looks like every effort is being made to encourage them." In declaring a state of emergency, Mr Chiles insisted that Washington also immediately implement its mass immigration emergency plan. "The emergency is a direct responsibility of the federal government," he said. He demanded an increase in Coast Guard ships patrolling the Florida Straits and the release of funds so that refugees can be fed and housed. The White House has resisted pleas for stronger action. Janet Reno, the Attorney-General, insisted that the Administration was managing the problem "in an orderly way and without disruption". She said that by today 86 immigration agents would have been assigned to handle refugee cases. In the past few days the Coast Guard said that the waters had been busier than at any time since the Mariel boat lift that brought more than 125,000 Cubans, and, with them, crime and economic hardship to the Florida coast 14 years ago. There have been more than 1,330 rescues in the past month and more than 6,000 this year. It is thought that hundreds more will undertake the journey after President Castro signalled last week that his navy would not prevent the boats from leaving. Dr Castro has appeared on state television several times to castigate Washington, accusing the Administration of encouraging the exodus for propaganda purposes. He has expressed endless disappointment that an American president is still unwilling to restore relations with Havana and lift the trade embargo.