Evening star., 1938-01-23
BY WILLIAM E, SHEA.

4 ND now the Republic of Cuba is
~ on the way to adopting. a Plan"
n Ell Plan Trienel it is called,
Three-Year Plan. If the republic
does adopt it, as seems probable-part
of 1t is now being enacted into law-there
will be in the neighborhood of ten Plans
operating in countries in Europe and
America. Soviet Russia started the vogue.
In 1928, with the first of its three Five
Year Plans
And because Cuba is to have a Plan
some Of the "haves' among the Cubans,
business men and the owners of property.
are apprehensive. Apprehensive also are
foreigners who have money invested in
Cuba. among them hundreds of thousands
OF citizens Of the United States It is
estimated that American capital in Cuba
amounts to more than billion and a
hall dollars. Three quarters of the giant
Cuban sugar industry is American-owned
Railroads and tobacco and mines account
Tor hundreds of millions more. Well above
hundred million Yankee dollars have
gone into the purchase of Cuban govern
ment bonds
10 IlleIe JuSllllCdtlOH lOI Cle Tears OF
the "haves"-Cuban and American "haves"
that adoption by the republic of Plan
means that Cuba is going the way of Rus
sla; that the bonds issued by past regimes
are to be repudiated: that industrial and
agricultural properties are to be national
i1ed. without compensation to the owners;
that IN short, Cuba is headed for total
itarlanism of the Communist order?
Not Necessarily Left Step.
The mere fact that Cuba is adopting a
Plan does not necessarily mean that the
country is going Bolshevist, or even that
1t is going in the direction OF left-wing
collectivism. Plans are not exclusive with
Communist governments The Plan idea,
to be sure, originated in Soviet Russia, but
the device, in one form or another, has
been borrowed by countries having demo.
cratic political systems and by other coun-
tries having Fascist relationships Liberal
democratic Mexico has a Six-Year Plan:
Nazi Germany haA a Four-Year Plan.
Thus it does not necessarily follow that
adoption by Cuba of the Plan Trienel will
be the ushering in of a Communist regime
on the island republic. Indeed, such an
outcome is extremely unlikely 1t is un-
likely because the Cuban people are too
strongly individualistic in temper ever to
submit to the discipline and rekimentation
OF Communism. The soundness of that
conclusion is further indicated by the fact
that the strongest opposition to the Plan
Trienel comes from such groups as the
islands left-wingers, the intelligentsia,
the extremists among those who carried
on the revolution against Machado in the
early 1930s, and from the professed Com
munists. They oppose it on the ground
that it will bring Fascism to Cuba!
AS matter of strict fact, the Plan
Trenel is not plan at all in the sense
Of the word made familiar by Russia. It's
official name, literally translated into
English, is program for the economic
and social reorganization and co-ordina-
ton of the Republic of Cuba" The title
plan Trienel' was coined by a Cuban
newspaper man, at the time the text of
the plan was published in Havana last
July. And because that name is much
easier to pronounce in the rapid-fire
discussions the Cuban loves to engage in,
It has completely supplanted the official
one. Nobody in Cuba now uses the longer
title, though Plan Trienel' is, or comes
pretty close to being, q misnomer.
The Russian Plan and the Plans in ef-
feet in totalitarian countries, concern
themselves in the main with specific
branches Of production and industry-in
three years, or five, or seven the mining of
coal must be stepped up so many hundreds
Of thousands Of tons; the output of electric
current must be increased by so many per
cent; the number of automobiles and trucks
and tractors manufactured must reach a
certain total The Plan Trienel contains
no such provisions. 1t sets no goals" for
any Cuban industr to point to- In the
range Of the subjects it deals with it is
incomparably more general than any of
the Plans of totalitarian countries In
deed, 1t resembles the Russian and other
Plans much less than it resembles the IA
miliar political reform movements Of demo-
cratic countries. such as Mr.. Roosevelt's
New Deal" Mr.. Wilson's New Freedom"
President Theodore Roosevelt's Square
Deal" the French Popular Front"
Few Specific Recommendations.
Examination of the 100 points Of the
Plan Trienel reveals that it contains very
few recommendations of a detailed and
specific character. At least three-fourths
of the points limit themselves to calling
attention briefly to some particular eco
uomic or social i'll or maladjustment and
suggesting investigation and study by ex-
perts for its correction. That is the case
with the knotty problem of the public
lands Of the republic, estimated to total
more than 100000 acres, and it is also
the case with the problems of tenancy on
farms, mining, forests, agriculture, cattle
raising. maritime industries. Existing Gu
ban legislation in all Of these fields is far
behind the times. Among the recommen-
dations that are more or less specific are:
The creation of a pure food and drugs bu-
feau, erection of q modern leprosarium,
nodernization Of the labor laws. deporta-
ton of West Indian laborers, enforcement
OF school truancy laws, subsidies TO en-