Castro Claims Gains in Debt Campaign

President Fidel Castro declared Friday that his campaign calling for Latin American countries to repudiate their collective foreign debt of $360 billion is gaining “more and more strength.”

Castro said the proposal is becoming an increasingly popular “battle” because of a severe economic crisis in the region that is made worse by the huge debt.

However, Mexico and Brazil--the two largest debtor nations in the region--have dismissed the plan as politically undesirable and financially irresponsible.

Despite these open rejections, Castro maintains that pressure for Latin nations to endorse his plan is building.

‘Nothing Can Stop It’

“This battle is gaining strength,” he said. “Nothing nor anyone can stop that struggle, founded on principles and on our peoples’ necessity for survival.”

Castro spoke for two hours to more than 100,000 people gathered in Guantanamo, an eastern Cuban city of 172,000 people, to celebrate the 32nd anniversary of a rebel attack that sparked his revolution.

As he has in numerous speeches and interviews during the past several months, Castro insisted that Latin American countries cannot and should not pay their foreign debts. He said his hope is that they will “abolish the debt, yes, categorically.”

Much of the $360-billion debt is owed to American banks.

Castro has said that Latin Americans have a moral right to repudiate the debt because they have been exploited by U.S. “imperialism.”

“Of course the imperialists have lost sleep, they cannot sleep thinking about this advancing snowball, this erupting volcano, which this struggle has become,” he said in his speech.

‘New Economic Order’

The Cuban leader also has been campaigning for a “new international economic order,” to give developing countries better terms of trade with industrialized countries, and “the economic integration of Latin America,” to unify the region’s countries in common markets.

He said Friday that the movement was not in his hands, but was in the hands of “the masses” of Latin America. “And these are really sure hands,” he added, “because it is a life and death struggle for our peoples.”

Castro has invited hundreds of Latin Americans to a meeting next Tuesday in Havana to discuss the debt and related matters. He said participants in the “continental dialogue” will include politicians, churchmen, laborers, farmers, students, professionals and others.

“Imperialism”--Castro’s code word for the United States--is trying to scuttle the meeting, he said. “But all of the activities of imperialism will not succeed in stopping it,” he vowed.

U.S. Base Near

The plaza where Castro spoke is about 15 miles from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. He complained that the “illegally occupied” base deprives Cuba of “one of the best bays in the country.”

“There they are, hampering the development of the region,” he said, “and threatening our homeland.”

The site of the 26th of July celebration and speech is rotated each year among Cuban cities. It marks the date in 1953 when Castro led 135 men in attacks on two army barracks and other installations under the dictatorial government of Fulgencio Batista.

The main barracks attacked was the Moncada, in the city of Santiago. The attack failed, and Castro was jailed along with most of his rebel followers.

He and others were later released in an amnesty, and his rebel organization--named the 26th of July movement, for the date of the Moncada attack--toppled Batista on Jan. 1, 1959.