Fidel Castro, who had bitter experiences with the old Cuban Communist Party in the pre-1959 days and himself a guerrilla leader of some repute, did not play a disinterested role in this ideological battle over tactics. "The armed struggle," blared billboards everywhere on the island, "is the only road to the liberation of Latin America."

The message that the armed struggle is the only way was all too clear, and it did not sit well with some delegates from Latin American Communist Parties. After all, many of these men had spent their lives groveling their way through the political process, every now and then presenting candidates, every now and then going underground when events took a nasty turn.

"We are moving to control our African-American communnities, as you are moving to wrest control of your countries, of the entire Latin continent, from the hands of foreign imperialist powers."--Stokely Carmichael in Havana, 1967.

But Fidel Castro, who had screened the guest list, was able to announced when it was all over, that the conference had been "a great ideological victory." The "victory," however, was not easily won.

The conference ended four days late as major splits developed in the backroom ideological bickering. Traditional Communist Party delegations balked at resolutions denouncing the Venezuelan Communists, who have now agreed to run candidates for election; denouncing "some socialist states"--read Russia--for offering financial aid to Brazil and Colombia; pronouncing the armed struggle as the only road to liberation.

Nine delegations reportedly threatened a walk-out over the Venezuelan issue, but when the door was opened for them, they remembered that they were attending a solidarity conference, and stayed put. The resolution passed. So did the resolution condemning the USSR. But "la unica camina" was changed to read: "The armed struggle is the principal road to liberation of Latin America. All other forms of the struggle must be subordinate to it."

It is over the issue of armed struggle that Fidel has been carrying on a violent polemic with the Venezuelan Communist Party since last March. The PCV refused to attend the OLAS conference, charging Castro with arrogance in trying to guide and direct the Latin American revolution personally.

Castro replied that the PCV was a group of cowards, traitors, and counter-revolutionaries" for having abandoned the guerrilla movement, now fighting in the hills against the government.

In what Cuban and foreign observers both agreed was one of the best speeches he has ever made, Castro returned to the problem of the PCV as he closed the OLAS conference Aug. 10. Alternately pleading with his audience through a pity-me-hurt-little-boy argument, then pouring out a withering sarcasm and finally fulminating moral indignation, Fidel delivered a devastating attack on the Venezuelans. By some amazing feat of logic, he linked them to what he called the "International Mafia," which includes the full battery of demons--the American press, the CIA, the Israelis, and other assorted ghouls.

The speech was a tour de force in which Castro managed to touch on every single sore point of the solidarity conference. He delivered a stinging slap to the Soviets, denouncing their assistance to Brazil and Colombia. Capping it off, pounding on the lecturn and waving papers in the air, he said:

Strangling Cubans

"And if internationalism exists, if solidarity is a word which merits pronouncing, the least we can expect of any state in the socialist camp is that it not lend financial aid, nor technical aid, nor any kind of aid to those governments, those governments which are aiding imperialism in the attempt to strangle the Cuban people by hunger!"

Practically the whole auditorium was on its feet, cheering wildly, beginning the chants of "Fi--del! Fi--del! Fi--del!" Except not everybody was cheering. Up on the stage, sitting in front of a massive portrait of Che Guevara, were the heads of the delegations, and it was one of those moments of total choice: you either cheer or you don't. Rodney Arismendi of Uruguay didn't. He had tried to play the role of chief peacemaker at the conference, and now he was defeated.

"This continent is pregnant with revolution," announced Fidel Castro at the closing of OLAS, and Fidel Castro is a man who is serious about seeing that revolution succeeds. "Latin America has said 'Enough!' and has started to move forward!" the signs say. But does a conference like the Organization of Latin American Solidarity really lend much effective aid to that struggle?

It may.