Could the War Have Been Avoided?
Azicri, Max
IN 1978 FIDEL CASTRO DISCUSSED WITH A U.S. diplomat what had happened between their countries. "Yes I must acknowledge that I may have had some responsibility for our first divorce," he said....
...Whether U.S...
...The Cuban Revolution was determined to end that domination...
...Talking directly to people from different walks of life seemed to have impressed Castro favorably...
...Szulc's spotlight on communists close to Castro may be factually correct, but it fails to illuminate the broader reality: that Castro maintained equally close working relationships with other, politically moderate forces...
...officials waged low-intensity wars against what it perceived as Soviet client states and allies in the Third World...
...50-51...
...While not synonymous, Cuban nationalism remained closely identified with socialism...
...and any radical social reform would be viewed by Washington as creeping communism...
...6. Ibid...
...We agreed that none of those Communists must be allowed to slip into Fidel's public appearances or photographs...
...By 1960 attitudes favoring the Cuban revolution, or even those calling for "hands off Cuba," acquired unpatriotic if not downright subversive connotations...
...There was, then, an inherent conflict of interests...
...But the Cubans could never be sure and took each threat quite seriously...
...Eisenhower then cancelled the Cuban sugar quota...
...Quoted in Lee Lockwood, Castro's Cuba, p. 155-159...
...From January 1959 to October 1960, in only 22 months, Cuba put an end to its initial "semi-dolonial" status and began "building socialism...
...aid and also end Washington's domination of Cuba...
...That same month, after Esso and Texaco refused to refine Soviet crude, the government took control of their refineries...
...This refusal surprised Felipe Pazos, then president of Cuba's National Bank...
...military omnipotence, and perception is the key to U.S...
...Now Cuba has won freedom of trade with every country in the world...
...Nixon was baffled by Castro's lack of interest in the files...
...As the revolution unveiled the extent of its radical reforms, U.S...
...This frustrates U.S...
...This indicates the first danger of U.S...
...This misunderstanding had all the ingredients of future ones...
...Castro was at his most charming throughout the visit-conciliatory, gracious, often forcing himself to speak in English...
...power...
...6 Castro scoffed at the U.S.embargo, claiming Cubans could obtain all they needed and wanted from the socialist countries and "neutrals...
...and, of course, that the dynamics of a social revolution are hardly subject to the exclusive will of any group of conspirators...
...negotiating positions have shifted over time...
...actions to be true...
...For Cuba the outstanding issues include: ending the economic embargo and other forms of commercial pressure...
...Although never confirmed, estimates of the number of victims run as high as 20,000...
...He also promised that the controversial revolutionary tribunals would soon cease since they had "already fulfilled their essential function...
...naval base at Guantknamo...
...Castro later denounced Washington's embargo-or the economic blockade, as it is called in Cuba-blaming it for many of the economic problems the revolution faced...
...Soviet military aid, in part, has enabled Cuba to pursue foreign policy aims in the Third World by military means...
...And when I know them, I will do away with them...
...The more radical Ratil Castro (who paid his brother a surprise visit in Texas during the trip) and Che Guevara were not part of the entourage...
...2 7 No one is certain how many drowned...
...How could he achieve self-determination without breaking economic dependency...
...In June 1960, the government took over four U.S.-owned hotels...
...ambassador in March 1959, to replace the pro-Batista Earl T. Smith, raised some positive expectations at home and abroad...
...Fast-moving events were soon to leave behind the conciliatory mood of the trip...
...bases...
...In September, three U.S...
...influence...
...The United States insists on: obtaining financial compensation for confiscated U.S...
...For seven years, Batista had brutally persecuted the political opposition, killing and imprisoning many innocent civilians...
...In 1990, the containment doctrine no longer applies to the Soviet Union...
...This limits Bush's possibilities for negotiating with Cuba...
...trip was reassuring to moderates...
...The world viewed from Havana could not be farther away from that viewed from Washington...
...The United States had dominated us too long...
...the events confirmed the validity of his anti-U.S...
...Then he proceeded to prove "to his companions that he had not made a single unworthy or submissive speech (which was true...
...The assault began on April 15, with an air attack to destroy Cuba's minuscule air force...
...A decade after coming to power, Castro's frustration was very much alive: "At that time [1959] the United States didn't talk about agrarian reform...
...Unrelenting tension opens the way for a miscalculation on the part of either of these well-armed neighbors...
...On December 2, 1961, Castro declared "I am a Marxist-Leninist and will be a Marxist-Leninist until the last day of my life...
...That is a language the United States began to use some years later, out of fear that new revolutions like the one in Cuba might break out in Latin America...
...Since Fidel had not yet become prime minister, his visit was unofficial...
...credibility...
...Che Guevara explained Castro's conversion to MarxismLeninism, and his own, in terms of United States hostility to Cuba: "I knew [Castro] was not a communist but I believe I Cuba...
...48-49...
...The New Cuban Presence in the Caribbean (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983), pp...
...Though Cuba is hurting from the loss of Eastern European trade, that trade accounted for only about 15% of Cuba's total, and some of it can be made up elsewhere...
...forces would take part in any military action against Castro...
...Bringing justice to a bereaved nation was paramount to the new regime...
...Whatever support Fidel Castro had won inside the United States for overthrowing a brutal dictator Fidel Castro directs Cuban forces at the Bay of Pigs, 1961: The CIA's exile army was routed in 72 hours lution could not achieve that program without challenging U.S...
...Under his direct command, Cuban forces defeated the CIA-sponsored, financed and directed invasion in less than 72 hours...
...To keep the revolution moving forward, they could not start blaming themselves for U.S...
...Theodore Draper, Castroism: Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 1965), p. 144...
...According to chances for survival...
...The U.S...
...enmity became a foregone conclusion...
...T HE UNITED STATES TERMINATED RELATIONS with Havana in the waning hours of the Eisenhower Administration on January 3, 1961...
...The leaders of the old communist party (Partido Socialista Popular) and others on the Left viewed it with suspicion...
...The Cubans could not comprehend the U.S...
...We would not in any event have ended up as close friends...
...Lee Lockwood asked Castro if he was already a communist in 1959...
...Their activities have not necessarily been antagonistic to immediate U.S...
...The second danger comes from a different sort of miscalculation, one about the revolutionary regime's entourage: It was as if the United States did not care what Cuba was, provided it was not communist...
...The visit looked like a sincere effort to win over the U.S...
...As Castro learned from his 1959 trip, one liberty the United States would not allow was to consider communism a national choice...
...Quoted in Hugh Thomas, Cuba, p. 1211...
...In July, a law authorizing the nationalization of U.S...
...9. Teresa Casuso, Cuba and Castro (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 2 1 5 . 10...
...On January 7, 1959, a week after the rebels' triumphal entry into Havana, Washington recognized the new government, and 20 days later nine U.S...
...Cuba has a high standing in Africa because of its support for Angola and its defeat of the South African military there in 1988...
...The events confirmed Washington's worst fears...
...An element of low-intensity warfare is "perception management...
...Quoted in Hugh Thomas, Cuba, p. 1211...
...Compensation for expropriated U.S...
...4 The first public clash came soon enough...
...Bush's passivity acts as a catalyst for congressional action, which, in turn, pressures him to take an irrational hard line...
...Fidel was developing a cordial attitude toward the United States...
...2. David L. Larson, The "Cuban Crisis" of 1962: Selected Documents and Chronology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), p. 295...
...8. Quoted in A. SuAirez, Cuba: Castroism and Communism, 1959-1966 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U., 1967), pp...
...Quoted in ibid, p. 95...
...Teresa Casuso, Cuba and Castro, p. 216...
...Marti, or a Cuban provocation to reciprocate a high seas caper like the Hermann interdiction, could lead to bombastic calls in Congress for a U.S...
...For example, Cuba no longer receives a subsidy on its oil imports, and recently has paid the Soviet Union more than the world market price, though the exchanges are in the form of barter for sugar, nickel and citrus fruits...
...Cuba's history of frustrated'nationalism seemed finally redeemed...
...Washington asked for "prompt, adequate and effective compensation...
...removing troops from Angola (already agreed to in 1989...
...Cuban-U.S...
...Sovereign self-government only became a reality in January 1959, when Fidel Castro and a radical guerrilla army triumphed...
...He had begun to formulate a humanistic policy that threatened to upset the design which the Communists had been tracing [all along...
...C OULD CUBA AND THE UNITED STATES HAVE avoided conflict...
...2 4 Reagan zealots, such as Secretary of State Alexander Haig, even thought that the policy offered a mandate for placing a naval quarantine on Cuba, the supposed "source" of terrorism in Central America...
...Later,] the conflicts between all that the revolution stands for and everything the United States stands for became clear....That process completed my political education...
...An account of CIA covert actions against Cuba can be found in B.E...
...The invasion proved Castro's warnings of forthcoming U.S...
...For a well-informed account of the 1961 invasion, see Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story...
...among some of his supporters...
...How could Fidel Castro receive U.S...
...banks were nationalized...
...In the 1960s, the United States was not willing to welcome a genuine social revolution in the Western Hemisphere-nor is it today...
...Havana and Washington became entrenched in the Cold War...
...Four months later, in August 1959, Eisenhower took Nixon's advice and authorized $13 million to recruit, arm and train an exile army.7 The communist issue was an obsession in the United States, but it was also a major concern in Cuba, as no one was sure what direction the revolution would take...
...Although forced by world events to change practical priorities when he assumed office in 1989, he did not make corresponding changes in the way he talked about the Bay of Pigs went down in history as another U.S...
...See Azicri article above.] After the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, the strategic component of U.S.-Cuban relations became serious...
...There was a troubling rumor in Cuba that he had "sold out to the Americans...
...When asked if he had come to seek foreign aid (which Washington was reportedly willing to grant), he replied, "No, we are proud to be independent and have no intention of asking anyone for anything...
...planners...
...According to a close associate of Castro during the years of exile in Mexico, Teresa (Tete) Casuso, who defected in 1960, opposing factions fought for Castro's attention and for controlling access to him: "Our arrival in New York coincided with that of several Cuban Communists from the press and radio....They were sent by Vilma Esp(n, Rail Castro's wife...
...Through his rhetoric, Bush has begun to paint himself into a comer on Cuba...
...and returning the U.S...
...By itself, Cuba was not a strategic threat to the United States...
...Cuba was a special object of attack, and it became the focus of a considerable effort to arouse the public to the need for VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 3 (NOVEMBER 1990) 23Cuba on AmericA4 Cuba II According to Ernesto Betancourt (who was an economic adviser at the time but defected and most recently was head of Radio Marti), Castro said in an offhand remark after meeting Nixon, "What we have to do is stop the executions and the infiltrado[s]"-that is, the infiltration of Communists...
...On March 31 President Kennedy cut the Cuban sugar quota to zero...
...On October 24 alone, Cuba nationalized 166 properties wholly or partially owned by North Americans...
...reaction: Where was their outrage during the seven years of Batista's crimes...
...Ibid...
...Once Cuba invited the Soviets to come into the Western Hemisphere, the U.S...
...On June 25, the government seized three U.S.owned cattle ranches...
...2 Some part of the Reagan Administration's bravado toward Cuba may have been no more than bluff, a threat without the intention of accompanying action...
...Lisa Howard, television interview with Emesto Che Guevara, ABC News, 22 March 1964, as cited in Hugh Thomas, Cuba, p. 1049...
...During the intervening months, there were numerous attempts at armed counterrevolution, including bombings in Havana...
...surrogate, Castro gave to Cuban socialism a new and lasting legitimacy...
...On April 3 the White House issued a white paper expressing support for a future democratic government in Cuba...
...Following the downfall of Gerardo Machado in 1933, people had wrought their own form of justice, brutally lynching many former members of the security forces...
...The subtlety of the last distinction was lost on Cuba, and it did not go over well in the United States either...
...So it was advantageous to the old communist party (Partido Socialista Popular) to heighten the growing conflict between Havana and Washington...
...The appointment of Philip W. Bonsal, as the new U.S...
...interests...
...And the revolutionary leaders had to put on their best possible face in public...
...Still, even adversaries find it useful to maintain bridges between them...
...military response, which in turn might generate a spiral of confrontation...
...When Senate and House members respond to special interests, they rarely take into account overall U.S...
...In his report to President Eisenhower (who would have liked to refuse Castro a visa and was conveniently out of town during the visit), Nixon recommended that he form a brigade of Cuban exiles to fight Castro...
...Security Council, with more votes than any previous nominee...
...As it turned out, the United States could not accept the revolution's radical program ofsocial change-and the revoMax Azicri is a professor at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of numerous works on Cuba and Cuban-Americans...
...Another Cuban defector, Rufo L6pez-Fresquet, who was then minister of the treasury and travelled with Castro, confirms the thrust of Betancourt's story...
...I cannot say that it was a clear or conscious knowledge but it was an intuition, the consequence of a...careful assessment of the development of the attitude of the United States...and the way in which [the United States] acted at that time...
...The U.S...
...The night before Castro addressed an audience of mostly Latin Americans in New York's Central Park, he received a call from his brother Rail...
...Hostilities became inevitable...
...policy elite possessed a two-pronged discourse with which to attack the revolution...
...Cuba has remained a strategic worry for U.S...
...ensuring human rights...
...S PART OF PRESIDENT REAGAN'S STRATegy for confronting the Soviet Union, U.S...
...It would not be difficult to imagine how Cuban retaliation against T.V...
...Political partisanship could have motivated Roca's jubilant statement...
...At the public meeting celebrating his return, Castro put some distance between himself and the more radical, pro-Marxist cadres...
...And on April 12 it made public a pledge that no U.S...
...Robbins, The Cuban Threat (Philadelphia: ISHI Publications, 1985), pp...
...Could the War Have Been Avoided...
...Yet, as historian Hugh Thomas put it, "The constant and obsessive concern of North Americans, public and private, with the single question of communism irritated Castro and indeed others in his a war on communism...
...7 The nature of the revolution compelled the regime to terminate preponderant U.S...
...Initially, it seemed that things could have worked out...
...Both Cuban and U.S...
...Cuba has sent military missions to more than 20 countries, and at one point had more than 50,000 troops in Ethiopia and Angola...
...companies advanced it tax payments totalling $2,560,000...
...Cuban bravado was more than just posturing-it was an expression of their guerrilla approach to politics...
...retaliation.'" Reacting in kind, Cuba appeared eager to sever ties...
...By declaring the revolution socialist when the country was under attack by a U.S...
...Although nothing beyond trade, cultural and commercial agreements had been signed with the Soviets, Cuba had become a Soviet client state, according to the policy dogma of the early 1960s, and ipso facto it was a pawn in the East-West struggle between communism and freedom...
...The State Department had recalled Bonsai a year earlier for consultations...
...12 AMBASSADOR BONSAL RECEIVED CASTRO AT the airport on his return, and had a long chat with him...
...Regino Boti, minister in charge of the economy, told him, "We have no intention of asking now, during Castro's visit, but you, Pazos, will return in a fortnight to make a request.'" As it turned out, the request was never made...
...public...
...Without a basis for resolving differences through non-military means, and for treating Cuba as a sovereign state, the administration may be forced to accede to domestic pressure to provoke Cuba...
...investment in Cuba at the time totalled some $1 billion.' On October 19, 1960, Eisenhower imposed an economic embargo on all but medicines and foodstuffs...
...Che Guevara insisted it would have few serious consequences, and that the United States would be hurt even more than Cuba...
...The leaders of the exile brigade tell their story in H. Johnson, The Bay ofPigs: The Leaders' Story ofBrigade 2506 (New York: W.W...
...Containment of Soviet communism coincided with the existing anti-revolutionary tradition, and provided a more popular appeal...
...posture...
...As reported by the CIA deputy director at the time, C.P...
...It was a humiliating defeat for the newly inaugurated Kennedy Administration...
...ending the pirate attacks against Cuba from U.S...
...Between January and July, 198 people were rescued from crude rafts in the Florida Straits...
...The Cuban challenge threatens the perception of U.S...
...The following day, at the funeral of those killed, Castro declared the Cuban Revolution to be socialist...
...T HE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NEWSPAPER EDItors invited Fidel Castro to visit the United States in April 1959...
...Castro insisted on talking about Cuba's socio-economic problems (which he compared to Latin America's), and the revolution's social programs, especially the agrarian reform...
...The revolutionary leadership was eroded by national security posturing...
...It took less than three years to complete the radicalization of the revolution...
...actions...
...Expropriation was extended to the remaining sugar mills and banks, and nearly all other large enterprises...
...Nobody can say that he reaches certain political conclusions except through a process....A lot of time has to pass before one reaches reliable political conclusions....Long before I became a Marxist, my first questioning of an economic and social kind arose when I was a student at the university....You might say that I had begun to transform myself into a kind of utopian socialist....Later on, I read The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engles, which made a deep impression on me....In many ways I was still not a Marxist, and did not consider myself a communist...
...Ibid...
...Washington's hostility could hardly be contained...
...I remember his words, his imposing attitude, and how our reactionary press received him almost as if the Savior had come...
...More than Havana, the United States was inflexible...
...Evidently there was very little room in which to maneuver...
...which gave the United States the right to intervene in internal Cuban affairs...
...troops participated directly in the invasion of April 17, 1961, often work at cross purposes with higher priority needs of the United States...
...Cubans tried on several occasions to challenge the Platt Amendment, but were unsuccessful even after it was formally abandoned in 1934...
...All that Cuba could offer were twenty-year bonds at 4.5% interest...
...To have global peace ensured by U.S...
...Cabell, "The Communists were concerned when, at the time of his trip to the United States, he [Castro] showed evidence of a friendly attitude toward the United States...
...Allegedly, he had a secret kitchen cabinet working on Marxist programs and legislation to be eventually implemented...
...2 2 According to Tad Szulc, all along Castro had planned the radicalization of the revolution and the move toward Marxism-Leninism...
...Levine (ed...
...81-82...
...Yanes [Lt...
...military intervention in Latin America...
...animosity is rooted in three distinct concerns about Cuba, and removal of the Soviet threat would leave in place two of them: its role in the Americas, and its role in the rest of the Third World...
...It turns on the problem of language...
...A passive administration could find itself being pushed to act with a degree of aggressiveness that even Bush would be inclined to avoid...
...Today, Cuban tourist shops sell small plastic bags containing sand from Playa Gir6n (Bay of Pigs...
...What probably impressed Castro most was how readily the United States identified any program for social change with communism...
...23 Still, Havana could have profited from a less antagonistic response to U.S...
...7. Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), p. 30...
...Thus on October 1, 1962, two weeks before the discovery of Soviet ballistic missiles on the island, President Kennedy ordered that a naval blockade of Cuba be NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 22was determined to avoid such excesses by bringing the criminals to trial...
...The rest of the world recognizes that Cuba may be isolated ideologically, but not politically...
...Quoted in A. SuArez, Cuba: Castroism and Communism, pp...
...2 3 Though the missiles were removed, Soviet reconnaissance flights continue to emanate from Cuba, the Soviets maintain an advanced communications intercept facility there, and the Soviet and Cuban militaries have close ties...
...Nixon was far from friendly...
...It could barely do so amicably...
...Cuba's stature, and Castro's own, grew to new heights in Latin America and the world...
...policy...
...White House spin doctors found no domestic compulsions to alter the belligerent language used against a man and a revolution perceived as evil by the newsconsuming public...
...He spoke of a "humanist democracy" characterized by "liberty with bread and without terror...
...at that time the United States didn't talk about structural changes...
...But it did become a base for the projection of Soviet power...
...5. Quoted in Hugh Thomas, Cuba: ThePursuitofFreedom (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 1209...
...It will, however, hurt innocent victims: The United States often dawdles in processing visas, in order to build up pressure inside Cuba, driving desperate islanders to flee however they can...
...But it was not that simple...
...It had to do with the trials of Batista officers which began in January 1959...
...Upon presenting his credentials in Havana, Bonsai promised "increased cooperation in the economic field...
...Cuba recently secured the Latin American seat on the U.N...
...senator and a congressman asked for punitive actions against Cuba on January 12 and 13, less than two weeks after the revolution came to power.' In hindsight, almost a decade later, the memory of Ambassador Bonsai evoked anger in Castro: "...he came with the demeanor of a proconsul...
...2 6 By pushing Cuba, the United States is not likely to topple the regime...
...politicians or the media and official policy...
...properties was passed...
...According to Casuso, after hearing this news "Fidel almost wept...
...Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait (New York: William Morrow, 1986...
...In August, Castro announced the nationalization of U.S.-owned sugar mills and lands, the oil refineries, and the telephone and power companies...
...But the summary nature of the trials, which resulted in some 200 executions in January 1959 and over 600 by year's end, upset the United States, even though many of the accused received light sentences or were absolved...
...allies, as it did in the case of the Mack and Smith amendments, and diminishes U.S...
...Norton, 1985), p. 144...
...1. Quoted in Wayne S. Smith, The Closest of Enemies (New York: W.W...
...Tactical allowances, without compromising principles, were needed to deal with an ingrained imperialist value system that could not adjust to the changes wrought by the Cuban Revolution...
...property took place...
...They didn't talk about land reform, tax reform, or about social development...
...Caught between an active Cuba and an active CubanAmerican community, a passive policy is inherently dangerous...
...He was accompanied by some of his most moderate followers, mostly social democrats, including the well-known businessman and head of Bacardi Rum, Pepin Bosch...
...At that point, the United States shifted the basis of its hostility toward the Cuban Revolution from anti-revolution to the more acceptable rationale of Cold War anticommunism...
...It was another year before the major nationalizations of U.S...
...The leadership could have better understood the distinction between the statements of U.S...
...interests-in 1976, David Rockefeller called Cuba a "stabilizing force in Angola" -but they have undermined the 1940s vision of a Pax Americana...
...relations ceased to be a bilateral or even a Hemispheric issue...
...In retrospect, I can see a number of things I wish I had done differently...
...189-190...
...As we now know, Castro was not mistaken to accuse the United States of complicity...
...In order to secure Cuban independence from the United States, the Cuban leadership contracted with the Soviet Union to be a protective benefactor...
...Some 150 exiles were killed and almost 1,200 were arrested...
...Communist leader BIas Roca declared, "Now Cuba has freed her foreign commerce from the monopoly of an imperialist power...
...The lesson is clear: If the objective was to moderate the radical nature of the revolution and prevent Cuba from allying with the Soviet Union, respect for self-determination-rather than open hostility-perhaps could have prevented the long cold war of the Western Hemisphere from ever occurring...
...The pragmatism that the administration displayed in response to the Mack and Smith amendments may prove to be an aberration not easily repeated when re-election looms up before the President...
...Many interpreted his speech as a rebuke to communism: "Not only do we offer people food," he declared, "but also offer them freedoms, and that is our clear and definite ideological position...
...M. Azicri, "Cuba and the United States: What Happened to Rapprochement," in B.B...
...ceasing participation in any kind of violence in the Western Hemisphere...
...Contrary to the "proper" sequence of events laid out in Marxist-Leninist theory, the revolution moved rapidly from an initial bourgeois-progressive phase to a Marxist-socialist one...
...VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 3 (NOVEMBER 1990) 25Cuba II knew also that he would become a communist-just as I knew then that I was not a communist, but I also knew that I would become one within a short time, and that the development of the revolution would lead us all to Marxism-Leninism...
...ending all subversive activities...
...3. C.A...
...military might, the United States cannot cross swords with a small, upstart country and lose, as it did in Angola...
...ending all violations of Cuban air and naval space...
...At presidential inaugurations in Brazil and Ecuador, Fidel Castro was accorded great deference...
...He did meet with Vice President Richard Nixon on Capitol Hill, and he had lunch with Acting Secretary of State Christian Herter, who lit Castro's cigar for a pack of thrilled photographers...
...property remains an outstanding issue...
...2 Cuba could have used economic aid after years of Batista's mismanagement and corruption...
...hemispheric and global interests...
...At their meeting he complained about the execution of Batista officers and showed the Cuban leader files proving communist backgrounds readied because of the Soviet military buildup there...
...It was easy to see what they were up to...
...21 A recent Castro biography tells a different story...
...Norton, 1964...
...While agreeing with Guevara on the U.S...
...Congressional demagoguery harbors the third danger of the Bush approach to Cuba...
...The Cuban leadership seized the opportunity to continue with the radicalization process...
...Jesds Yanes Pelletier, who acted as Castro's military attach6 during the trip] and I had more or less expected something of the sort, and Yanes had brought along several friends of his with the objective of guarding Fidel closely...
...Given the radical nature of the revolution and Washington's political biases and policy intentions, conflict was probably inevitable...
...Narrowly framed measures NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 24official statements and local press reports, Cuba almost seemed to welcome it...
...strategy for "keeping order" in the Third World...
...But even without the missiles, the United States was concerned about the large Soviet military presence in Cuba because of its impact on the perception of U.S...
...And the longstanding tradition of cubania became closely identified with the revolution's brand of radical nationalism...
...He claims Castro told him, "Look Rufo, I am letting all the Communists stick their heads out, so that I will know who they are...
...4. Quoted in Lee Lockwood, Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), p. 159...
...The revolutionary leadership was not of one mind about the United States in the early days, and neither was the Eisenhower administration about the revolution...
...The bag is labelled, "The First Defeat of Imperialism in Latin America...
...But the global political thaw has not reached U.S.-Cuban relations, and the elements of strategy invoked to use aggressive tactics to defeat a serious threat still apply...
...Soviet aid may be cut, but the level of aid has been vastly overestimated...
...public liked Fidel Castro and he even enjoyed some support in the State Department...
...The final danger emanates from the likelihood that Cuban foreign policy will continue to be activist and to run afoul of both U.S...
...This was most evident in the 1962 missile crisis...
...properties...
...interests...
...Ayers, The War that Never Was: An Insider's Account of CIA Covert Actions Against Cuba (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976...
...One could safely predict that even if the Soviet Union announced tomorrow its intention to immediately withdraw its troops and military advisors from Cuba and abandon its intelligence facilities there, hostility toward the revolutionary regime would continue...
...With this statement, he gave official notice of the existence of the first socialist regime in the Western Hemisphere...
...Ten days after Castro's return, on May 17, 1959, the regime issued the first agrarian reform law, which immediately provoked national and international opposition...
...contribution to his political conversion, Castro gave a long and insightful answer...
...He made it when the revolution's ideological course was not properly defined...
Vol. 24 • November 1990 • No. 3
