A Stubborn Castro

ONE person who may not be so enthusiastic about Mikhail Gorbachev's reforming impulse is Fidel Castro. While Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika earn admiration from both developed and developing countries, Cuba has yet to give its stamp of approval. For Castro, Cuba's leader for the past thirty years, "restructuring" may entail betrayal of the revolution, a return to what he has called "capitalist euphoria."

Little is heard in Cuba of the current changes in Soviet economics and culture, although some news trickles in from the American Radio Marti. Cuban human rights groups, as well as other Cuban citizens fascinated by the cult-like figure Gorbachev, have hailed the Soviet premier's visit with flag-wavings, cheers and motorcades. Gorbachev, it is hoped, will help guide a resistant Cuba into policies of economic "opening" and increased political freedoms.

The apparent strain between Gorbachev and Castro is widely publicized in the United States as Gorbachev's appeal among even conservative U.S. policymakers broadens. The United States has gloatingly lauded the Soviet Union's recent elections, in which locally chosen politicians defeated many party officials, Many here see the Soviet "restructuring" as a challenge to open the Cuban dictatorship.

Both U.S. officials and a good portion of the Cuban citizenry expect to see the new Soviet influence spread in a country which considers itself the USSR's greatest ally and which receives five to six billion dollars in aid each year. But Castro has characterized the new friendliness between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the new Soviet policies, as "difficulties from the camp of our own friends."

CASTRO'S hostility to detente may look like stubbornness, just another facet to the repressive character of his government. Cuba and other developing countries of the Western Hemisphere, however, have good reason to be wary of a potential U.S.-Soviet alliance.

The United States portrays itself as the protector of Latin American interests from Soviet or Marxist imperialist aggression. But the Soviet Union has its own protective role in the hemisphere, guarding Socialist states from imperialist aggression from the United States. Latin America may wonder what will happen to the principle of national sovereignty in the face of newly allied superpowers.

Cuba has had a very short history of independence. The last country to be liberated from the Spanish, in 1898, Cuba quickly found itself under the control of the United States. Until 1902, U.S. marines were stationed as advisors to Cuba. Until 1934, under the Platt Amendment, the U.S. State Department held official control over Cuban foreign and trade policy.

As U.S. economic investment grew in Cuba in the 1950s, so did the powers of the brutal Batiste dictatorship. Castro's revolution in 1959 gave Cuba its first experience as a nation independent of the United States.

WHILL much of its independence was eventually compromised in return for economic aid from the Soviet Union, Cuba has retained many independent policies, modifying its economy in a centrally directed process of "rectification," not "restructuring." Cuba's foreign debt is substantially lower than that of its U.S.-supported counterparts.

Clearly, the United States and the Soviet Union should not give up prospects for peace and increased understanding. But they should reassure Latin American and all developing countries of their commitment to national sovereignty and independence.

This commitment could include, on the part of the United States, a withdrawal of all aid, "humanitarian" or not, to the Contras in Nicaragua. It could include, on the part of the Soviet Union, an already likely debt-forgiveness program for Cuba and other poor debtor nations.

The superpowers have often forced developing nations into their conflicts. Now a superpower alliance may leave these nations more vulnerable than before.