Forgiving and Forgetting

...In it, Matthews enumerates a number of truths which are worth repeating for the American reader...

...Matthews, it should be emphasized, does not tamper with the facts...

...His account of the Huber Matos story epitomizes why...

...This implies that throughout 1959 the U.S...

...This is quite true, and explains why so many young Cubans today are ready to take up arms against Fidel...

...Matthews' interview literally brought Castro back to life...

...Reviewed by LEO SAUVAGE New York Correspondent, "Le Figaro" When Herbert Matthews interviewed Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra mountains on February 17, 1957, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and all the leading American press agencies insisted that Castro was dead...

...But Matthews disapproves of the anti-Castro rebels...

...Commenting on Castro's reversal of a Cuban court's decision, Matthews describes this as "one of the first evidences that Fidel Castro had no conception of what was normally considered justice, and -also that he was utterly ruthless...

...Then he forgives or forgets, as if unaware that others may judge differently...

...Alas, it has...

...Matthews' reasoning strikingly recalls those German Communists who, in 1933, anticipated that Hitler's advent to power would be followed by a Communist takeover...

...Matthews admits this, and he also admits that the Cuban leaders "often followed policies that deliberately provoked American reaction...

...indeed, he is unable to comprehend them...

...Yet Matthews ends by blaming both sides equally...

...but in presenting them he strenuously resists drawing the conclusions to which they lead...

...This decision was reached, according to Matthews, in the late summer or early autumn of 1960...

...tried to find a formula for coexistence with Havana...

...This background perhaps explains the nature of the case— more emotional than rational— which Matthews makes in his unique book, The Cuban Story, and the contradictions which run through its pages...

...Yet Matthews can write, in conclusion: "I retain my sympathy and, in many respects, admiration for Fidel Castro...

...Aside from this, Matthews cites the American press campaign against the executions of Batista followers...

...Whenever Matthews leaves the general for the particulars of relations between Washington and Castro, his emotions get the better of his reason...

...In one place, the reader learns that "he [Fidel] and his top advisors became convinced that the answer to their revolutionary problems lay in the methods of totalitarian Communism...

...the welcome given other Batista supporters in this country by Senator Eastland (D.-Miss...

...This "problem" Matthews solves a few lines later with the same dialectic that enabled many intellectuals to justify the Moscow purge trials of the 1930s: "By the logic of the revolution, Huber Matos was a traitor...

...His portrait of Castro is anything but flattering...

...I feel sure that the young Cuban revolutionaries did not fight, as they saw it, against 'Yankee imperialism' just to fall into the jaws of Russian imperialism...

...Moreover, he seems to think that if Cuba were going Communist Castro's regime would fall apart...

...Only one of the seven chapters that make up The Cuban Story, "The Hemisphere," can be read with profit...

...the discouragement of tourists...

...Two further quotations from The Cuban Story reflect the confusion in Matthews' mind as to the nature of Castro's regime...

...Yet elsewhere Matthews writes: "New evidence may change the picture but on the evidence available and on my personal knowledge of Fidel Castro, I have always said and I still say that he was not and is not a Communist...

...He was power hungry, and the appetite grew by what it was fed on...

...None of this adds up to much...

...As he puts it: "Allowing for all the weapons and power that a totalitarian regime puts in the hands of a modern government, I still think that Communism could not survive in Cuba...

...Certainly, it is difficult to regard these as equivalent to the deliberate incitements of the Lider Maximo, who, according to Matthews, "has done many things simply to shock and defy us...

...Matthews admits the trial was an "utterly shocking business,' but he adds: "A revolution is not a tea party, and a great deal happens in revolutions that is shocking...

...Second, "The unhappy lesson of all modern social revolutions is that the moderate, the liberal, the democratic elements have to wait until the revolution has spent its force.' Logically, it would almost appear desirable that the revolution reach the stage of totalitarian Communism as quickly as possible in order to hasten its decline...

...The Cuban people are too violent and brave, as well as too individualistic to put up with a totalitarian regime indefinitely...

...Those who condemn the outrageous way he was treated, had to condemn the revolution...

...The author himself stresses this by suggesting another comparison: "in similar circumstances, Premier Khrushchev would have acted sooner and with complete ruthlessness...

...Castro, he adds, "has done things to us Americans that would have seemed incredible if one did not know that he is capable of anything...

...It took a gradual unfolding of Cuban developments to make it clear that so long as Fidel Castro remains in power there will not and cannot be democracy and freedom in Cuba...

...But Matthews is unable to discover any American provocations after Castro's assumption of power, i.e., during the period when he maintains both sides were equally guilty of provocations...

...United States policy toward Cuba since early 1960," writes Matthews, "has been to destroy the Castro regime...

...Is Castro's regime Communist...

...There is no question that Americans had much to atone for in their Cuban record: among other things, a half century of economic exploitation and years of supporting Batista...

...He is aware of Fidel's defects, describes them frankly and does not try to embellish them...

...But these are isolated pages...

...The Cuban Story will not enhance Matthews' reputation...

...One sees it in the case of Fidel in the way he has become more and more autocratic...

...Still later, the author states: "He [Fidel] had no conception of the true meaning of freedom and democracy, and was never to have one...

...A year's patience in the face of "Cuban provocation" is not negligible in the history of international relations...

...his enthusiasm endowed the rebel leader with prestige and stature...

...Asked to intervene on Matos' behalf, Matthews refused, explaining that the case "involved delicate, and essentially subjective problems of what is or is not treachery during a revolution...

...Unfortunately for Matthews, his book—written before Castro's recent admission that he is a long-time Communist—contains no coherent answer...

...Those of us," writes Matthews, "who were in touch with him and were watching him from the beginning had to ask ourselves if Lord Acton's famous dictum—that all power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely—would apply to Fidel...

...Matos, Castro's intimate friend and his commandante in the Sierra Maestra, was sent to prison after a farcical trial which proved nothing, except that he held anti-Communist views...

...Cuba cannot be Communist, Matthews repeats untiringly...

...In Matthews' view, there are two main reasons why it would be futile to fight against Communists taking power in Cuba: First, if they took control, they would be unable to keep it...

...As Matthews sees it, it was not unreasonable for American refineries to refuse to process Soviet oil, the very act cited by Havana as Yankee imperialism at its worst...