Drama on the Cuban Stage
NIEBUHR, REINHOLD
Drama on the Cuban Stage By Reinhold Niebuhr The Kennedy Administration is making a most creative impact on the economic and political life of Latin America with its Alliance for Progress...
...proposal...
...The lesson is that arbitrary power is always dangerous, whether wielded by romantic nationalists and revolutionary heroes, such as Castro, or by greedy egotists such as the late Trujillo...
...This seems likely, but then one would think that we could have communicated our evidence or our fears to our Latin American friends...
...Perhaps he was unable to get Brazil's backing for his pro-U.S...
...On the other hand, President Joao Goulart is well to the Left of the ex-President...
...It is significant that Brazil has the largest Communist party outside of Europe, an indication of the disaffection of its workers...
...Our massive power has made Fidel Castro an unimpressive actor in the drama perennially re-enacted in history, namely, the tragic and ironic drama of dreams of justice turning into a nightmare of tyranny...
...It has incidentally created unemployment in the Florida cigar centers and robbed our cigar smokers of the pleasure of a good Havana...
...It has aroused the latent antiYankee resentment and fear of our power throughout the Hemisphere...
...Hatred and fear of our power may blind their eyes...
...Our policy has enabled Castro to blame all his economic problems on our policy...
...More seriously, should the embargo hasten Castro's demise it would also obscure the moral and political resentments which have prompted so many of his former supporters to resist the tyranny fastened on Cuba in place of the promised freedom—so eloquently stated in Castro's address to the court in Batista days and now published under the title, History Will Absolve Me...
...It would prevent the Latin American people from clearly seeing that history, far from absolving him, has convicted him...
...It would be a pity if we interrupted it before its lesson was clearly discerned...
...he might have been against us on his own...
...Yet the same Administration engaged in what is now generally recognized as a fiasco, the abortive invasion of Cuba...
...In Argentina they brought down the Peron dictatorship and prevented various coups until democracy could take over...
...No less puzzling is why the Administration risked an effort to throw Fidel Castro out of the Organization of American States (OAS) at the recent Punta del Este Conference...
...Drama on the Cuban Stage By Reinhold Niebuhr The Kennedy Administration is making a most creative impact on the economic and political life of Latin America with its Alliance for Progress program...
...They didn't know what this absent politician might say or do if they voted for the U.S...
...Whatever the answer to the enigma of our Pyrrhic victory at Punta del Este, the real puzzle is why we have found it necessary to declare an embargo on Cuba...
...stand because the Brazilians were watching ex-President Janio Quadros plotting behind the scene...
...The military's power to do all these things may be too great, but we must judge Latin American situations with criteria less rigorous than those from the history of our democracy...
...Beginning with the French Revolution, this drama has been played on many stages, and finally it is on the Cuban stage...
...And even so, the big Latin American nations came out against us...
...In Brazil they may have prevented a coup by the mysterious Quadros...
...Brazil and Argentina were against us despite the promise of support made to President Kennedy by Argentina's President Arturo Frondizi...
...It finally had to be content with a watered-down resolution...
...Most Latin American governments have a radical group of Communists and their sympathizers on the Left, and the military on the other side—but not exactly on the Right...
...We have not sufficiently appreciated the military's role in Latin America, particularly in Argentina and Brazil, as guardian of constitutional tradition...
...Some Latin American anti-Communists hint that our hazarding an embarrassing situation at Punta del Este can only be explained by our knowledge that Castro was using the OAS for some plotting in behalf of the Communists...
...The latter type of dictator goes in for exploitation, the former for expansion...
...President Frondizi subsequently withdrew his Ambassador to Cuba under pressure from his military chiefs, who were displeased with the Argentine delegation's stance at the Conference...
...We ought not prevent our Latin American friends from pondering the meaning of this drama on the tiny Cuban stage...
...They certainly prevented Goulart from taking office before the Constitution was changed to give him the status of a European, rather than an American, President...
Vol. 45 • March 1962 • No. 5
