of the Rule of Law. Cuba has once again demonstrated the fatality
of such a course.

During the less than four years of its existence, the government of
Fidel Castro moved from a moderate climate of democratic reform
into the violent atmosphere of an extremist authoritarian régime.
"Freedom with bread and without terror" was the slogan of the
first days. "Terror without freedom and with insufficient bread"
is the solution arrived at today. Perhaps it is not the theory and
technique of, in many respects, a unique revolution by which its
achievement will be judged in history, but rather by the ways in
which it has affected the lives of the people.

The Castro régime has had and continues to have a dominating
and compulsive impact on all aspects of the life of the Cuban popula-
tion. The régime permeates both the public and the private sphere
of human endeavour and subjects all to strict control. A flood
of Acts, by-laws, administrative decrees and police orders has swept
away all safeguards of individual freedom. The false image of the
country's social and economic backwardness, created and spread by
the Castro régime, has served to justify the gradual establishment of
a totalitarian system and to legitimize the corollary violations of the
Rule of Law. Consequently, it would be futile to analyse in the
present Report only the Cuban revolutionary legislation and to ignore
the history, the social and economic features and the main political
events influencing and often determining the course of the recent
revolutionary process.

The following scheme has therefore been adopted in the preparation
of this Report.

The Report is divided into four parts. The first comprises in five
chapters a survey of the relevant political, sociological and economic
features of Cuba and deals in particular with various aspects of the
country's geography, economy, ethnology and history. Special
attention is given to the most important institutions, groups and
enterprises, the interaction of which affected the pattern of Cuba's
society before the Castro revolution. The last chapter of this first
part records the various stages of the development of the ideology
of the new régime and of its implementation as seen through two
crucial speeches made by Fidel Castro in 1953 and 1961 respectively.
The position of the Judiciary and of the Bar has been analysed here

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