THE AMERICAS

A light rain sifted down on southeast Florida one night last week as the 62-ft. cabin cruiser Harpoon eased out of a remote cove near Miami and zigzagged through mangrove islands to the sea. Suddenly, a blinding spotlight blazed through the mist. The U.S. border patrol cutter Douglas C. Shute roared alongside and two agents leaped to the Harpoon's slippery deck yelling: "Keep her on course!" As a defiant helmsman slammed the Harpoon into a mangrove thicket, uniformed Cuban revolutionaries poured from the cabin. One tried to fire his submachine gun, failed only because the clip was in backwards; another exploded a defective hand grenade blowing off a finger. The rest purpled the air with curses.

The haul was the biggest in months--31 rebels (who were charged with plotting against a foreign state), $30,000 worth of mortars, antitank guns, rifles and medical supplies headed for Fidel Castro's revolutionary forces. Next day, in luxurious homes along Biscayne Boulevard, in such southwestern Miami hangouts as the neon-bright Blue Derby Restaurant and the Tropical dance hall, Cuban faces were as long as a rum sour. And Cubans were not the only residents of Miami with a particular interest in the night's events. The city is a hive of revolutionists; hardly a day goes by without at least one new plot abrewing.

This Badge for Hire. In the past two years, gaudy, gritty-Greater Miami (400 sq. ml.; pop. 840,000) has become revolutionary headquarters of the Americas, with guns, boats, planes and men to man them all for the buying. In April Nicaraguan exiles boldly hijacked a C-46 transport at Miami International Airport and flew off in an abortive assassination try against President Luis Somoza. In July a boatload of revolutionaries from Miami stormed ashore in Haiti only to be riddled by President Francois Duvalier's army. The next day Dominican rebels were nabbed loading arms on another C-46 in Miami, apparently with the suicidal intention of invading Dictator Rafael Trujillo's ironclad state. And for every expedition caught, many more plotters get through to stir up big and little trouble down south.

The revolutionaries have chosen their GHQ well. With three airports and a mazelike coastline of winding waterways, Greater Miami is a plotter's playground for its terrain alone. What makes it paradise are the cops, many of whom make less than $300 a month and are in the market for a little extra spending money. Rebels admit privately that the officers "give us the vista gorda"--the blank, unseeing eye. Nor do the police play favorites. Three Dade County deputy sheriffs junket down to Batista's Cuba, come home bragging openly that "it didn't cost a cent; we got the red-carpet treatment." Marcos Pérez Jiménez, former dictator of Venezuela, gains the gratitude of Miami Beach policemen by hiring them at fat fees to spend off-duty hours watching his $315,000 home.

Help from 85,000. In the case of Cuba, Miami's colony of 85,000 Latin Americans is not so bipartisan as the police. It is heavily anti-Batista and spares neither time nor treasure in support of the rebels. Financed by ex-President Carlos Prío Socarrás, who salted away millions during his 3 ½ years in office, by rich expatriates and by wealthy Havana sympathizers who donate as much as $50,000 apiece at clandestine rallies, the rebels trade with arms dealers all along the Gulf and East Coast. The rebels sometimes get shortchanged e.g., dummy grenades, ammo cases padded out with empty cartons, but their big money also buys solid merchandise: carbines at $100 each, Thompson submachine guns at $350. The weapons are cached in cars and apartment closets, buried in sand dunes; the rebel-owned Trade Winds Hotel Apartments was a dynamite storehouse until deputies raided it recently.

So far this year, federal agents have halted 15 shipments worth an estimated $200,000, but they stop only a fraction of the traffic. Cuban rebels brag that 90% of the arms get through.