Special correspondent ‘The Revolution has made quite a difference in Havana. It is still quite beautiful; a Mediterranean city with a touch of Miami beach; the houses cream coloured and pastel yellow, pink and blue. But most of the rich merchants and middle-class doctors and other professional men have gone, ‘Castro has got rid of the worst of the Havana slums and has built a vast new city of workers' apartments. He has closed the Havana Country Club, once the social and sporting centre of the Cuban rich, and built a spectacular modern art institute and various other schools on the premises, Outside Havana on the road to Santiago de Cuba, it is a different world, Although life is still very poor in these parts, it is much better than it was a decade ago'. These comments on the state of the Cuban revolution were not made by someone committed to the ideas of the Cuban revolution, but by Mr. James Reston, the well known American newspaper reporter and Associate Editor of the New York Times, writing in the Sunday Times, Mr. Reston could hardly be described as a friend of the Cuban revolution yet he is undoubtedly impressed by the achievements of eight years of Fidel's revolutionary leadership. Of the mansions that now remain in the capital after the flight of the merchants and other middle-class professional people, and opponents of the revolution, some have been taken over by diplomatic officials and Soviet technicians. 'The others', reports Reston, 'have been assigned to more than 100,000 scholarship students, from 8 to 22 years of age', The vast expanding education system is only one of the achievements of the Cuban's that Reston points to, In agriculture; 'Before the revolution, the workers here spent four months in the privately-owned cane fields, Since the land-reform programme, a large number of peasants have their own land, and many more are working on state farms.,. ‘A vast programme of land reclamation is beginning. Castro has invested heavily in modern earth moving machinery, He has bought $35 million worth of heavy bulldozers from the French, This year he plans to have 142 bulldozers in the reclamation project; next year 250 bulldozers plus another 250 caterpillar tractors', This programme under the direction of the Cuban army plans to clear every cultivatable acre of land in Cuba by the first quarter of 1969. - And in housing; 'We were driven to a new housing development, a collection of prefabricated four storey cement buildings with bright blue, orange and yellow perches. 'The Russians had provided the machinery for the building, but this was nothing like the bleak geometrical apartment blocks around Moscow. It was designed by a Cunan architect who obviously had a little poetry and sunshine in his soul', How tragic that Reston misses the sunshine and poetry of the revolution as a whole. ‘Castro is building a new Cuba. He is creating a new consciousness among the Cuban people, He has liberated the women, and inspired the young', but this is, ‘an education of hate and violence', says Reston. The vast expansion in education is likely to develop into, 'a nasty little militaristic sparta’, Can it really be true that the liberation of the Cuban people since the revolution, and its considerable economic and cultural achievements are all signs of tyranny and despotism to come. No; the violence of the Cuban revolution that Reston talks about is the violence of the oppressed against the oppressors - the violence of the liberation forces of 'Our America' against Imperialism - the violence of the people against their exploiters.
based on 'World Outlook'
report