Bad Blood In The Tropics

A fortnight ago, as Fidel Castro dispatched Cuba's mighty 280-man delegation to the Ninth Central American and Caribbean Games in Kingston, Jamaica, he gave it some fatherly advice. His 30-minute harangue, much of it preposterous, had a theme of dark foreboding.

"There will be women in Kingston who will try to seduce you," said Castro in his cheerless pep talk. "There will be people who will try to put marijuana in your coffee. There will be people who try to kidnap you. If there is any demonstration from exiles you must be ready to fight for the honor of Cuba." The team's mission, Castro said, was to win, and by winning to demonstrate that socialism is a superior system to capitalism. His advice—and unpublicized instructions to his subordinates—effectively assured the unscheduled and often perilous events which marred both the spirit and function of the Games and the celebration of Jamaica's independence.

To insure that Cuba would triumph on the playing fields, her finest athletes were brought together months before the Games in regimented training camps, where they were given a special diet—milk three times a day and beef rations—and impressive quarters, and where they were trained, in part, by Russian and satellite-nation coaches. To insure that they would not fall prey to the capitalistic blandishments of wicked Kingston, they were lectured frequently by political commissars who used Russian texts. In case the indoctrination didn't take, Castro sent along G-2 (or military intelligence) operatives. They were disguised as managers, coaches and even, in one instance, a bat boy. One authoritative count put the number of plainclothesmen at 142.

By Castro's standards, socialism received a stunning setback in Jamaica. Cuba not only isn't winning, it has fared poorly, and its chances of improving in the events which remain before the Games end this Saturday are extremely dim. But, once in Kingston, winning no longer became the major concern of the Cuban delegation. Nor was its concern the Dominican Republic, which defeated Cuba in volleyball, nor Puerto Rico, which edged it in baseball, nor the Mexicans, who slaughtered the Cubans in soccer. It was, instead, a 20-man defection team led by a pale, slender, intense man with horn-rimmed glasses, a quick mind and an overriding sense of duty. His name is Frank D�az.

A defector himself two and a half years ago, D�az is a former member of the Revolutionary Council, an anti-Castro organization, with headquarters in Miami, which is directed by Jos� Mir� Cardona. Rather than quit his proselyting and return to Miami as the Council and, according to reports, the embarrassed Jamaican government wished him to do, D�az resigned last week. "The work here could not go on without me," he said defiantly. He became a freelancing defection specialist. His work all last week was harrowing and dangerous, and the political skulduggery lent an odd and bitter flavor to the often quaint course of the tropical Olympics.

By Sunday D�az' recruiters appeared to have regained Cardona's blessings. The Jamaican government had reconsidered its position and was offering strong but quiet assistance to the defectors. A system had been set up at the Kingston airport whereby a Cuban athlete returning home had only to sprint to the immigration booth to ask for asylum.

D�az' modus operandi was to travel the streets of Kingston in a closed car. When he saw a Cuban athlete by himself, he offered him a ride. His favorite hunting grounds were the brand-new National Stadium, where many of the events were held, and Jamaica College, where the Cuban delegation stayed. D�az would tell the potential defector that he could furnish him or her with food, a plane ticket to Miami and a secret hiding place until departure time. He also guaranteed protection. Once the escape was arranged, it was usually D�az himself who furnished the car which whisked the defector to the hideaway. In a day or so the escapee was flown to Miami, where U.S. Immigration officials have a processing program for Cuban refugees.

In the first week of the Games, D�az helped nine Cubans to freedom: four men on the weight-lifting team and their coach, a photographer with the delegation, the basketball coach and a basketball player and Jos� Ra�l Grande, second in command of the Cuban team. Two girl swimmers also expressed a desire to flee, but the plan was discovered and they were immediately shipped back to Cuba. D�az is disappointed that the defection rate is not higher. Two months ago, when he and his colleagues made their plans, he expected 50 defectors.

"But the Cubans have got G-2 men everywhere," he said a few days ago at the stadium. "They're called coaches, or trainers, or whatever you like, but they're G-2. I'm positive. Even the bat boy is a G-2. He's a rotten bat boy, too. Because my friends and I know all their faces, they're sending down new G-2s. When an athlete is finished with his event, back he goes to Cuba." The official Cuban stand is that the athletes have been sent home to conserve dollars. There probably is at least some minor truth here: it is possible to buy 10 of Fidel's new pesos for one American dollar. In 1959 the rate of exchange was one for one.

Most of the escapes have had an aura of understated melodrama. The weight-lifting team calmly walked off the stage of Kingston's Ward Theatre during the competition, ran out of the theater through a public park into a waiting taxi. The defectors were driven to a transfer point, where they got into a car that took them to a deserted building on the outskirts of Kingston. There they huddled, still in their blue sweat pants, on straw mattresses under a dim, naked bulb. Said Negro middle-heavyweight Sergio Oliva, who had been forced to take part in a propaganda film so Castro could show a Negro departing for the Games: "They insulted me and my people."