Big Eyes, Small Pocketbook

As the Cuban economy plunged deeper into ruin last year, Fidel Castro's Russian partners allowed him to sell the world 1,000,000 tons of sugar previously committed to the Soviet Union. With world sugar prices then as high as 100 per lb., the windfall netted Castro some $100 million in foreign exchange, which he immediately used for a shopping spree: buses from Britain, cranes and locomotives from France, trucks and fishing boats from Spain.

Fidel apparently ordered too much. From Havana now comes word that Cuba has "suspended" all further purchases abroad except for medicine and parts for the sugar and nickel-mining industries. As financial experts make it out, Cuba has gone through most of the $100 million-- and still owes $165 million to free world countries, plus more than $1 billion to the Communist bloc. To make matters worse, sugar prices have dropped 65% to 4-c- per lb. since January, thus eliminating another windfall sale on the open market.

This kind of mess naturally calls for scapegoats. A few weeks ago, Fidel "liberated" his Economy Minister and overall economic planner. The unlucky companero was Regino Boti, 43, a Marxist convert who once served on the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America. Boti's new assignment: a condensed-milk plant in Oriente province, where he will oversee 200 to 300 em ployees. The No. 1 man now in control of Cuba's economy seems to be Minister of Industries Che Guevara, 36, who has long been Fidel's all-round handyman.

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