Star Tribune Minneapolis, Minnesota Sunday, January 08, 1967 - Page 44
Castro's No Pawn in Game of Chess
Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, who has won world acclaim as an orator, baseball pitcher and back-country guerrilla, also has creditable skills as a chess player.
This is reported by Fred Cramer, a former president of the U.S. Chess Federation and the official U.S. representative at the recent FIDE (International Chess Federation) meetings and World Chess Olympiad in Havana, Cuba.
Cramer, 54, who is a partner in a lighting fixture manufacturing company in Milwaukee, Wis., spoke at the Downtown YMCA Saturday and showed slides of his Cuban travels. The meeting was sponsored by the Minnesota State Chess Association.
THE HAVANA meetings marked a departure for the U.S. State Department. After years of intransigence, the State Department decided that “the national interest” would be served by allowing the American chess team to travel to Havana for the competition.
As Cramer described the setting in an interview, the Olympiad was the biggest thing to hit Havana since the revolution.
He said about 400 players and officials from 52 countries were the only guests in the splendor of the 630-room former Havana Hilton for the five weeks of meetings and chess play. They were celebrities. “Ever since I left Mexico City I was surrounded with newspaper photographers,” Cramer said.
NEWSPAPERS were filled with tournament news. Store windows were filled with giant chess displays. “It was like Christmas.”
Just to open the games took three days, Cramer said. “In Minneapolis, we'd say, ‘O.K., everybody go to your tables and start playing.’”
The formal opening festivities were conducted at the Coliseum, where the Cuban treason trials were held only six years earlier.
Cramer said 15,000 filled the stands, although many were young, uniformed children who obviously had been trucked to the Coliseum.
After the speeches and formalities, Castro played a young Mexican in an ex-officio game, Cramer said. “The Russian champion was kibitzing Castro, and Fischer (Bobby Fischer, the No. 1 American player) was helping the Mexican. It was a very serious game.”
CRAMER SAID photographers, particularly the two who stay at Castro's side, had a field day. The game lasted two hours.
“One of the funniest things I saw was the Russian waving to the other Russian to help because Castro was losing.”
But, in the end—Cramer said—Castro won, and the whole entourage was taken across the street from the hotel for ice cream. (“You have to eat ice cream to be a good Cuban,” Cramer reported.)
Cramer started to quote Fischer as saying Castro was a good player, but he stopped short. “Well, Fischer won't say anybody's good,” Cramer said, reinforcing the out-spoken public image of the young chess champion.
“Fischer gave him his book and told Castro he hoped it would help him.”
CRAMER CITED several instances when school children or audiences cheered the American entries. On several occasions, Cramer, who speaks Spanish, visited Havana slums, and got the same impression.
