Cuban Women Defy Jets of Fire Hoses To Attack Regime

Special to The New York Times

HAVANA, July 31 – About 200 women demonstrated against the Government at the City Hall of Santiago de Cuba this morning. The demonstration occurred while United States Ambassador Earl E. T. Smith received the keys to the city.

The demonstration was broken up by the police and soldiers. More than thirty women were arrested.

The women, many of them dressed in black, gathered in Cespedes Park in front of the City Hall shortly after the Ambassador entered the building. They began chanting “Freedom! Freedom!” When the police attempted to disperse them they shouted “assassins!” at the police. Soldiers were called out and a fire truck brought to the scene began drenching the women with water.

Some of the demonstrators fled but the majority knelt in the street and remained firm against the streams of water. They were cheered by several thousand persons who gathered on near-by sidewalks and balconies.

When the Ambassador emerged from the building the drenched women who were still waiting for him tried to reach his automobile but were kept back by the police and the soldiers.

Ambassador Smith deplored the “excessive action of the police” who dispersed the demonstration.

In a press conference this afternoon in Santiago he expressed his regret that his presence in Santiago “may have been the cause of a public demonstration which has brought on police retaliation.”

“Any sort of excessive police action is abhorrent to me,” he said.

The Santiago authorities had assured him that the women detained this morning had been released, he said.

Santiago de Cuba is the center of rebellious activity against the Government of President Fulgencio Batista. Seventy miles to the west of the city Fidel Castro, rebel leader, and his band of insurgents are operating in the Sierra Maestra.

Ambassador Smith, accompanied by Mrs. Smith and several embassy staff members in Havana, arrived in Santiago de Cuba this morning.

Meanwhile in Havana the police dispersed a demonstration of more than 100 lawyers in the Vedado residential section at noon by the use of clubs and shots fired into the air.

The lawyers had gathered to visit a television station near by to protest against the failure of the Government to remove Col. Ugalde Carillo, chief of the Isle of Pines prison, who is accused of having mistreated political prisoners.

About sixty young political prisoners in the Principe Fortress jail in Havana have been on a hunger strike for thirteen days in protest against Colonel Ugalde.