JOHN F. DAVIS

I feel compelled to pay some attention to these attitudes when the president of the United States insults the Cuban nation in a speech so rife with misstatements of fact and so riddled with moralizing nonsense as to numb the senses. I also feel an obligation to respond to the anti-Cuban posturing because I had an opportunity to spend two weeks in Cuba at the invitation of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party in December of 1982. During my stay there I met people from all walks of life. I traveled all over the island and I visited stores, factories, schools, and hospitals. I spent time in the homes of ordinary Cuban citizens. I think I know something of conditions there.

Last week Ronald Reagan spoke to the Cuban people via a Voice of America radio broadcast. He told his listeners that Cuba's economy since the revolution had been "incapable of providing you and your families with your most elementary needs, despite massive subsidies from abroad."

With regard to the American invasion of Grenada, the president told the Cubans that "Cuban lives could have been saved if your government had respected the will of the Grenadian people and not ordered your soldiers to fight to the death." As if he is bereft of all decency Reagan went on to inform his Cuban listeners that a new source of information will soon be available to them through what will be known as "Radio Marti" which he observed was "named for your great Cuban patriot, Jose Marti."

When I went to Cuba I went as an American who was sympathetic to the Cuban people and their revolution. I also must confess to considerable respect for Fidel Castro. Despite those feelings I found myself genuinely shocked by what I didn't find in Cuba. I had been, in spite of myself, conditioned to believe that the Cuban people were, for the most part, poor and ill-fed. I expected housing conditions to be terrible and I expected the political atmosphere to be one of coercion.

Upon arrival at the hotel where I stayed I was astonished to find the place full of tourists. They were from Mexico, from South America, from West Germany, Italy, and Canada . I was embarassed at the stupid conclusion I had reached that if Americans didn't go to Cuba, nobody did. Alas, I discovered that no one shares in this hostile view of the Cubans clung to by the very people who were the cause of the revolutionary fervor.

In the two weeks I spent in Cuba I saw no poverty like that which I have seen all over the Caribbean. I did not see anyone begging or anyone who looked like they were starving. Nor did I see people living in shacks. It is a fact that housing is a problem and living space is not abundant. But housing conditions were not anywhere near what the Americans news media had led me to expect.

Havana streets were full of new Russian-built automobiles. The stores that I read were empty seemed to be full. The lines for food were not as common as I expected and the variety available to the Cuban consumer surprised me. But more important than all of that was the attitudes of the people I met, both in the company of Cuban party and government officials and when I was alone, which was anything but that of a cowed and coerced people.

Cubans are remarkably well-informed people. Everybody I engaged in conversation knew what the party line was, knew what the government policy was and supported it. Ronald Reagan may comfort himself with the thought that Fidel Castro holds power in Cuba through force of arms, an army of informers, and sheer intimidation. That is, in the plainest language, utter bullshit. After a long history of plunder in Cuba, Cubans have come to hate all that American capitalism represents and understandably so.

The only dissent I heard in Havana was on the question of whether Cuban exiles should be permitted to return to Cuba to visit their families. Castro believed they should but there were those who believed that those folk who left were traitors to their country and were entitled to no special consideration. I did meet several Cubans who spoke against the Communist government. They were the same ones who offered to sell me some "loose joints" and to exchange my American currency at blackmarket rates.

When I asked Cubans why their government had troops in Angola they looked at me with some impatience and said that they were Latin Africans and had as much right to fight for the liberation of an African country as the Americans had to fight for colonialism. I had no quarrel with that.

I found the status of black Cubans to be better than in any Latin country I've visited and that includes Puerto Rico. There are no obvious racial distinctions in Cuba and the blacks I talked to assured me that Castro had delivered on his promises to wipe out color distinctions.

I do not mean to argue that life is perfect in Cuba. I just want to make the point that more Americans should go to Cuba and see what tremendous strides the Cuban Communists have made. If they did, more Americans would conclude as I have that the real reason for all the opposition to Castro is due to the American chagrin with regard to the success that the Castro government has had. Nothing scares Washington more than the determination of the people in Cuba, and in Nicaragua, to improve the quality of their lives. The success of those efforts inevitably will demonstrate to others that submission to American hegemony is a prescription for death and that the revolutionary path is the way to a better life.

All of the talk about elections in Nicaragua would be funny if people weren't being killed. Does anyone remember American demands on Somoza for elections?