Cuba: What Now?

...Del Cerro's editorial policy of endorsing the Cuban revolution's original aims was struck from the magazine's pages...

...This not only shocked the exiles...

...quarantine on Cuba was on, the Council was able to keep exile hopes alive...

...Telephone calls from Bohemia's office in New York became a regular feature of the day...

...One of the new organization's first actions was to issue a statement explicitly denouncing the recruiting of Cubans in the U.S...

...The message was inspiring to the Cuban exile community, which eagerly awaited the particulars...

...and the Kennedy Administration continued to support the CRC as though nothing had significantly changed...

...would dispose of Castro, and soon...

...Any policy change should be one of emphasis...

...A powerful underground had been founded inside the country among Cubans not associated with the FRD —an underground which stressed internal subversion of the Castro regime rather than invasion from without...

...First, it would cut deeply into the Communist line that the battle over Cuba is nothing more than a struggle between a tiny, courageous island and a brutish, bullying world power...

...invited Brigade veterans to join the Army, but the response was a good deal less than enthusiastic...

...Underground activities on the island were encouraged, but only as a means of distracting the Castroite forces...

...It served briefly to dispel the rumors about the U.S...

...Exiles connected with the Council were on the verge of packing in preparation for the return to Cuba...

...The President had received him only once after May 1961, causing some to suspect that his influence in Washington either was waning or never had been what he claimed it to be...

...Instead, Mirò seemed frankly relieved that Ray and the MRP had been dispensed with...

...The general tenor of his speech was firmly belligerent to the Castro regime...

...Although the decision was made after Havana had reached a point of no return in its adoption of a Communist system of government, the CIA'S venture was flawed from its inception...

...The Cubans' confidence in their ability to liberate themselves had been running high...

...Under great pressure from all sides, the MRP agreed to join in the coalition on the condition that any future expeditionary force would be under Cuban control...

...Everett Dirksen (Rep.-Ill...

...It could also weigh heavily with those Latin Americans who feel attracted to the principles of the AlJiance for Progress, yet shy away from endorsing it in the belief that it is nothing more than another ruse to preserve the status quo throughout the Hemisphere...

...From information provided by recent emigres and friends still on the island, the exiles accurately predicted the character and number of Russians in Cuba and pinpointed the establishment of military bases...

...The Revolutionary Council's stock rose, however, when the presence of Russian troops and technicians in Cuba became known...

...That coincided with the fact that from the time of the Bay of Pigs on, Miró's public and private utterances rested on two personal assumptions: first, that the U.S...

...Army...

...Government transportation was being attacked on the highways as well as on the back roads...

...Clearly, the approach was to play down the whole question of Cuba and to concentrate on economic development of the Central American countries as the best means of fighting off Communism...

...Kenneth Keating (Rep.-N...

...Perhaps the Administration's experiences with the Cuban exiles will result in the realization that it is the Cubans inside Cuba, not those in Miami, who should be Washington's primary concern...

...will learn to coexist with the Castro regime and, eventually, will restore diplomatic and commercial relations...

...Y.), J. Strom Thurmond (Dem.-S...

...freighter S. S. Floridian was harassed by Cuban-based MIGS in the Gulf of Mexico, moving Washington to swift action...

...Surely by now even he must have realized that the President meant what he said about no U.S...

...intervention in Cuba...

...The CRC'S own organ, Cuba Nueva, kept to its Left-of-Center position, but in August 1962 its editor, the Catholic liberal Angel del Cerro, was fired and the original August issue of the magazine was suppressed...

...Later in the month Comando L, a splinter from Alpha 66, severely damaged the vessel Baku in Cayo Frances...

...The success of these raids was one more strike against the CRC strategy of sitting back and waiting for an American invasion...

...Developments elsewhere in Latin America also implanted fresh expectations in the exiles' minds...

...challenge to Cuba not in terms of freedom and justice, but as a desire on the part of Washington to reaffirm its 'control' over the island...

...Politically, the CIA sponsored the formation of the Freme Revolucionario Democratico (FRD), a rubber-stamp organization composed of pre-Batista era politicians and young Cuban Catholics...

...Each time the pressure became intolerable, Mirò would romp off to Washington...

...Mirò appeared to endorse the view that the best way to destroy Castroism was through internal subversion organized and led by civilians...

...But recent developments, especially the Kennedy Administration's unqualified repudiation of exile hit-and-run raids, convinced Mirò that the U.S...

...For it was burdened with a double mission: to eliminate the Castro Government, and to replace it with a more reliable Cuban element...

...into drastic action in Cuba...

...As all this was going on, two other developments were taking shape: Guerrilla warfare of serious proportions was launched inside Cuba, and attacks were begun by the action groups...

...Moreover, internal resistance to the Castro regime continues to grow...

...The outcome of the conference was, of course, disappointing, and it led to still another rumor: The U.S...

...When the prisoners from the April 1961 invasion were freed on Christmas Eve, for the first time the rumor appeared to have a really sound foundation...

...was ready to begin a policy of "peaceful coexistence" with the Castro regime...

...When the Kennedy Administration came into office in January 1961, the Cuban situation was reappraised...

...It must be remembered, too, that any policy decision on Cuba reverberates throughout Latin America...

...Meanwhile, the Council veered ideologically further and further to the Right...

...Nevertheless, Miró's position as leader of the CRC was growing increasingly shaky...

...How much of this was true and how much was wishful thinking, only those present at the Washington meetings can say...

...From that moment on, Miro's choice was no longer whether or not to resign as head of the CRC, but whether to leave with a bang or a whimper...

...By whom...

...Almost simultaneously the action groups—all self-supporting— discovered a series of small keys in the Bahamas with drinking water...

...In the end, he did not release the letter from President Kennedy which he claims promised a U.S...

...The effort was probably no more than a formality on Miró's part...

...was willing to go as far as to mobilize the British to run the exiles off the Bahamas, how could Mirò sustain his promise of an impending American invasion...

...Ray's resignation and the withdrawal of the MRP'S support from the Council were the natural consequences of so blatant an action...

...The U.S...

...He demanded funds to mount a largescale invasion against Castro, or, at the very least, a formal promise of an early American attack on Cuba...

...The Council, however, still did not count itself out...

...And the worst has a tangible form—the status quo ante represented by the redoubts of Miami...

...Despondent exiles in Miami have a tragically easy answer: The U.S...

...The Administration, for its part, has withdrawn its support from the CRC, and cut off its purported $100,000-$200,000 monthly allowance to the organization...

...José Mirò Cardona from the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC...

...And it was an inability to reach agreement over these rudimentary yet delicate questions that brought about the rupture between the U.S...

...The round of rumors had thus come full circle —from the wildest optimism to the bleakest pessimism...

...In New York, many Cubans quit their jobs, closed up their apartments, and rushed down to Miami...

...The outcome of the October crisis was another bitter disappointment...

...What was involved here was a military and a political adventure, and each affected the other...

...That a rumor to this effect could spread among the exiles was itself open evidence of how low the CRC'S credit had fallen...

...As long as the U.S...

...Army...

...But, in the end, the CIA succeeded in turning Mirò and the CRC into nothing more than a smokescreen for its original strategy...

...In the middle of March, they attacked the Soviet ship Lgov in Isabela de Sagua...

...invasion of Cuba was imminent...

...Support for stern measures against Cuba was being whipped up by several members of Congress, including Senators Barry Goldwater (Rep.-Ariz...

...With the arrival of the October crisis, Miro's headquarters in Miami was again filled by eager exiles, journalists and hangers-on...

...Soon after his return, it was announced that Cubans were being recruited into the U.S...

...Such a policy offers several rather obvious advantages...

...They, after all, are the main victims of Castroism, they are responsible for the growing resistance to the regime, and they will probably make up the nucleus of any genuinely democratic government that will replace Castro...

...The CRC, as originally envisioned, was dead and should have been dissolved right then and there...

...Inevitably, he would return refreshed with new claims of support from the Administration...

...At this time, September 1962, a Cuban exile group calling itself Junta Revolucionaria Cubana was organized in Puerto Rico...

...As early as last summer, the rumor going the rounds in Miami had Mirò being replaced as president of the Council...

...The Administration's Latin American experts advised, therefore, that the representatives of the underground, known as the Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo (MRP), join with the FRD in united opposition to the Castro Government...

...Operations were no longer restricted to the hills, it was said, but were being carried out in the open on the plains...

...The launching of the Bay of Pigs invasion, on April 17, 1961, was a clear betrayal of the agreement that gave birth to the CRC...

...The chairman of the newly formed CRC was Dr...

...And in fact Castroites in the United States have already begun a campaign toward that end...

...When the Kennedy Administration played down the arrival of the Russians in Cuba, appearing to believe that the Soviet contingent was made up exclusively of technicians...

...And the CRC—sometimes covertly but often overtly—began discouraging both underground activities inside Cuba and exile raids...

...How was Cuba to be freed...

...action in Cuba and a pledge of personal support for himself as the leader of a free Cuba...

...Their views found a warm echo in pro-Council magazines like Bohemia Libre...

...On the surface, the conflict between Washington and the exiles appears clear-cut: As president of the CRC, Mirò was promised, or believes he was promised, an early and decisive American invasion of Cuba...

...Radio Havana reported the use of Cuban Air Force planes to quell guerrilla forces in the towns of San Miguel de los Bafios, Pedro Betancourt and Jagiiey Grande in the province of Matanzas to the east of Havana...

...Others, once firm supporters, became only nominally involved in its work while privately claiming to be on their own...

...The results of the Conference dashed these hopes...

...Instead, it placed its hopes on some action against the Castro regime emerging from the March Conference of Central American Presidents in Costa Rica...

...This development, plus the continuing inaction of the Council, raised doubts about Mirò once more...

...Late in March, for example...

...Mirò must have recognized that, under the present circumstances, he could no longer hope to keep intact either the CRC or his own leadership of the exile community...

...Actually, the roots of the crisis date back to May 1960 when, under the Eisenhower Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency was entrusted with the task of ousting Fidel Castro...

...The other leading Council figures were Manuel Antonio de Varona of the FRD and Manuel Ray of the MRP...

...A group promoted a hunger strike in Miami's Bayfront Park demanding action...

...The Front, following a fund-raising campaign for the support of guerrilla warfare, announced the beginning of internal actions in Cuba...

...As the United States has never stated what alternatives it backs, what people, what platforms, or what it will do about Cuban land reform, the expropriated companies or the emigration, Brazilians, like Mexicans and other Latin Americans, presume the worst...

...Every journey was followed by rumors among the exile community that a U.S...

...The same month, in the first election to take place in Cuba in two years, that for the Grand Master of Cuban Masons, the two pro-Government candidates polled a combined total of only 20 per cent of the vote...

...Mirò once again rushed off to Washington...

...Nor did anyone in the Administration or the agencies under its control attempt to quash or discount these rumors...

...BY electing to remain Council president after the abortive April invasion, Miro was openly seconding the position that only the United States could bring down Castro...

...But first he made still another—and, as it turned out, the last—trip to Washington...

...In the course of his trips to the capital, Mirò developed a talent for leaking information...

...By Antonio de la Carrera Antonio de la Carrera, a lawyer by profession, joined Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement in February 1956, After the Revolution, he served briefly as secretary to President Manuel Urrutia and later worked with the Cuban National Bank...

...A pact granting the MRP'S terms was signed, and the Cuban Revolutionary Council came into existence...

...Government and the exiles, climaxed last month by the sensational resignation of Dr...

...invasion of Castro's Cuba...

...When...

...Militarily, the CIA organized an expeditionary force and furnished it with an air force...

...It began to appear that Cubans inside Cuba might be able to do something to liberate their country...

...I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this Brigade in a free Havana," President Kennedy told the ransomed Cuban prisoners gathered in the Orange Bowl in Miami last December...

...In fact, the first news of the arrival of Soviet troops in Cuba was broadcast in August on a CRC-sponsored radio program...

...policy—away from the exiles and in support of those fighting the Castro regime inside Cuba—is so important...

...Units of Alpha 66-Second Front of Escambray (now combined) and other outfits established permanent headquarters there...

...But in late March the U.S...

...C.) and George Smathers (Dem.-Fla...

...For example, the Punta del Este conference of the Organization of American States in January 1962, according to CRC spokesmen, was to mark the beginning of military action against Castro...

...Third, it would enable the Administration, at long last, to maintain a consistent policy on Cuba...

...The State Department's new Task Force for Latin America recognized that now conditions in Cuba were different from what they were in the summer of 1960...

...Asked about this, Mirò denied having any knowledge of what was going on—then he took a pointedly critical view of operations which would, as he put it, involve the needless loss of Cuban lives...

...Other exile groups, many of them nameless, started to prepare similar attacks...

...Several members quit the CRC...

...This could be decisive to those Cubans on the island who have so far refrained from opposing Castro in the fear of establishing still another Unsupported regime...

...In one of his speeches in San lose, President Kennedy even spoke of a "wall of dedicated men," which sounded more like an attempt to contain Cuba than to liberate it...

...If the U.S...

...would not honor what he took to be its commitment...

...coexisting with Cuba—but only briefly...

...adopting the "peaceful coexistence" line became more rampant than ever...

...That is why a change of emphasis in U.S...

...only about a third of them signed up...

...In lanuary 1963 Bohemia Libre, suddenly deprived of the subsidy it had been receiving from a mysterious source, ceased publication...

...Bohemia Libre went so far as to publish an anti-Ray editorial under the title, "Once and for AU...

...Its leaders were Manuel Ray, Raul Chibâs and Rogelio Cisneros, the founders of the MRP, who had joined with members of other movements or splinter groups that had chosen to remain aloof from Miró's CRC...

...Second, it would relieve the Administration of having to deal with the dozens of exile organizations which have proved so difficult to please, as well as the various American pressure groups whose chief concern seems to be to push the U.S...

...The curtain now appears to have been drawn on the whole episode, despite efforts being made to keep the Council alive...

...Keith Botsford, in a recent article in these pages ("Slide-Rule Failure in Brazil," April 15), has written that Brazilian nationalists "see the U.S...

...Information from the island told of small bands of guerrilla fighters in the provinces of Matanzas, Las Villas and Camagiiey...

...Just as surely...

...Potential raiders were confined to Dade County, Florida, and, with British cooperation, the bases in the Bahamas were destroyed...

...No matter what the enemies of the Kennedy Administration's Cuba policy may say, there is no question that the deterioration of conditions in Cuba in the last year has reached such large proportions that Communism has been widely discredited in the Hemisphere as a means of quick economic development...

...The central question about Cuba, of course, remains: What now...

...In North American insistence on the 'menace' of Cuba, they see only an irrational obsession with Communism...

...The Cuban situation admits of no such easy answers, however...

...but once it was lifted, rumors of the U.S...

...Mirò, a former professor of law at Havana University who had participated in the underground struggle against the Batista dictatorship...

...policy toward Castro's Cuba to remain uncompromising...

...At this juncture one thing was certain: The CIA had already decided that the only possible strategy for accomplishing its mission was an invasion of Cuba from the outside...

...Mirò left with a bang, yet not nearly so great a bang as he might have caused...

...But soon the vacuum created by CRC inaction was filled by such "action groups" as Alpha 66 and the Second National Front of Escambray...

...While no one ever said so, to people accustomed to fabricating the most elaborate dreams out of the thinnest rumors, the move could only imply imminent invasion...

...second, that he himself enjoyed a special relationship with President Kennedy...

...Thus, there is every reason for U.S...

...To those who doubted either point, Mirò would show a long letter from the President, which he construed both as a promise of decisive U.S...

...Attacks from anti-Miró exile groups on the Right (such as the Batistianos, who put out three weekly newspapers) further discredited the Council...

...What Botsford says of the Brazilian nationalists is true of all the progressive forces of Latin America...

...it dealt the final blow to the Council's strategy of American intervention...

...Miro's loyalty and patience seemed vindicated...

...Five days later, on December 29, President Kennedy spoke to the ransomed prisoners in the Orange Bowl...

...Since January 1961 he has been in exile in New York City...

...This brought an uproar from the exiles in Miami, strongly supported by the Council...