Senator Fulbright's Cuban Options
DRAPER, THEODORE
THINKING ALOUD Senator Fulbright's Cuban Options By Theodore Draper The key to Senator J. William Fulbright's views on Cuba is contained in the "options" which he thinks are open to the...
...Thus, for two years, and ultimately to the disillusionment of both sides, U.S...
...Yet they have been largely ignored...
...It rather resembles a hill that stands out so sharply because the plain in front and behind it is so flat...
...The greatest Cuban of modern times, José Marti, was an exile most of his life...
...That is still true...
...The latter is by its very nature a limited measure with a limited objective, a faute de mieux type of policy...
...I am not trying to suggest that Castro's regime may not survive without our help...
...For two more years, the chosen instrument of U.S...
...He really has only two major options, invasion and "acceptance," and one minor option, boycott...
...Shortly after the missiles crisis, 1 was asked to write a memorandum for a high official of the U.S...
...I am simply pointing out that our help, especially at this time, will ensure its survival...
...I do not wish here to refight the battle of the Bay of Pigs...
...According to the distinguished Cuban exile, Dr...
...It is difficult, in truth, for the United States to influence the internal Cuban struggle directly...
...Its only real source of power was its line to Washington...
...It was one of the chief contributing factors to the Bay of Pigs disaster, which has been criticized mainly for military reasons, such as the lack of air cover...
...I do not mean that U.S...
...Miró Cardona resigned as president of the Council with a long statement implying that the U.S...
...It is a matter of record that I undertook this task, on the basis of the testimony of Lopez Fresquet and Pazos, in a letter to The New Leader of October 2, 1961, another letter to the Times of November 16, 1962, and in my book, Castro's Revolution: Myths and Realities, pp...
...Historically, however, they came into existence as complementary rather than as alternative policies...
...He referred to the conversation I had with Castro and told me that after due deliberations they had decided not to accept the American offer...
...policy...
...In order to hold on to its desperate constituency, however, the Council had to maintain a permanent state of tense expectancy...
...In each case, the Cuban people found within itself the resources of heroism and sacrifice to start the struggle, to carry on largely by itself in the darkest hours, to produce new leaders...
...The real issue is not whether we should accept the reality of Castro's continued existence or the unfeasibility of the boycott, but whether we should give him what he wants and needs through the medium of trade and all that it implies...
...backed intervention could not "liberate" Cuba, how could a recently disrupted internal resistance succeed...
...The same day, March 17th, 1960, I resigned my post as Minister of the Treasury...
...I talked to Castro, March 14th or 15th, at a reception at the Embassy of the United Arab Republic...
...First, however, a comment on the Rubottom incident...
...Yet this has been the frame of reference in the United States for the past five years...
...version now is that the invasion force was not expected to do the job by itself and that any commitments of U.S...
...The late C. Wright Mills, whose book was one of the great propaganda triumphs of the decade, confidently quoted his Cuban source...
...armed support...
...Ambassador, Philip Bonsai, "if the vicious campaigning against the United States were terminated and negotiations begun to settle all differences...
...action.' The high point of this intelligence came, of course, during the missiles crisis in October 1962...
...In any event, by the summer of 1960, the split in Castro's own 26th of July Movement on the issue of Communism was wide open...
...Cubans in Cuba would not have been discouraged from risking their lives unnecessarily because they were told that the exiles or the Marines were soon coming to the rescue...
...Another "clarification" seems to be in order...
...A few months later, in preparing this article for book publication, I added: "The true liberation of Cuba could not be achieved behind the backs of, and without the active participation of, the Cuban people in Cuba, and their participation could not be artificially manufactured or arbitrarily delegated...
...Amoedo which, in at least one important respect, may have left a false impression...
...The strategists of the reorganized Council, still headed by Dr...
...They are also the key to the views of those who, on the surface, seem farthest from him and to the entire U.S...
...The recent trial of the former Communist informer, Marcos Rodriguez Alfonso, revealed that the Communists were strong enough behind the scenes to manipulate some important strings of power in the early months of 1959...
...I trust that the State Department will not rush into print with another exercise in semantic denial...
...The U.S...
...But if we are going to give it up, let us call things by their right names and truly think "unthinkable thoughts...
...Instead, the plan merely expected the force to gain a beachhead on which to establish a "de facto anti-Castro government" that the U.S...
...invasion would not have received for so many more months such unguarded and unconditional backing...
...In any case, the shorthand explanation given to me signified "aid and cooperation," and I used this phrase instead of some diplomatic circumlocution...
...policy...
...Before the missiles crisis, in an interview which appeared in the July 8, 1962, Cuban exile magazine, Bohemia Libre, I made an effort to speak to the Cuban exiles with candor and concern...
...I think the State Department would have been better advised to deny less and explain more...
...Castro, ironically, was warned of the approaching blow by the air attack 48 hours earlier...
...But such logic would do far more, I dare say, to relieve some U.S...
...Acceptance," in Fulbright's sense, does not merely mean recognizing the Castro regime's existence...
...What actually happened was, of course, something else...
...before making any announcement...
...It is noteworthy, however, that the confrontation was wholly military...
...That gesture would have meant an end to the quarrelling between the two countries and an opening for mutually advantageous negotiations on every subject...
...Exiles have always played an outstanding role in Cuban struggles...
...Yet all the planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion discounted the internal resistance...
...He agreed...
...They do not even have a means, an 'organ,' to express themselves, though the Batista crowd in this country is able to put out an expensive, slick-paper publication...
...and the key members alerted their friends and associates, until every Cuban exile seemed to be packing, or thinking of packing, for the short journey home...
...The only Cuban exile leader regularly received by the President of the United States was the President of the Cuban Revolutionary Council...
...President Kennedy, after all, did not simply demand the removal of the missiles and a return to the status quo ante...
...Council leaders alerted key members of the Cuban exile community that an invasion was only hours away...
...This organization had been formed as a united front of various Cuban exile groups in March 1961, as the basis for the de facto government the CIA intended to set up the following month...
...Senator Fulbright rightly rejects invasion, so he flirts with a euphemism for capitulation...
...And U.S...
...Any quick, cheap and easy solution of the Cuban problem is suspect...
...The Cuban people were thus supposed to finish what the invasion had started...
...We should have profited from the expensive lesson of ignoring the Cuban people...
...The existing anti-Castro underground was permitted to await events passively in utter ignorance and confusion...
...The idea that any exile force, without direct and massive U.S...
...I merely wish, for my present purpose, to point out that the plan could make sense only if the landing were followed up either with direct U.S...
...The exiles have invariably failed, however, whenever they have been obsessed with their own conspiracies and have lost touch with or faith in the mass of people at home...
...The opposition rejected this position but did not have the means to pursue a meaningful internal Cuban strategy...
...In none of them is there the slightest allusion to, or place for, the Cuban people...
...Embassy in Havana asked the Ambassador of a large South American country to act as go-between...
...participation, could overthrow Castro's regime today is almost not worth discussing seriously...
...In December 1960, Castro and other leaders made worried speeches about the state of mind in Havana and elsewhere...
...According to him, the first two, invasion and boycott, are merely different methods of achieving the same end: Castro's overthrow...
...While there, he wrote, the Argentine Ambassador, Julio A. Amoedo, told him that he had once offered the Castro government $300 million on behalf of the U.S...
...Keeping it or giving it up may hurt or help Castro, but it was never capable of deciding his fate...
...side, calculated on "pockets of resistance" to spring up throughout Cuba in support of the beachhead...
...help or encouragement...
...More and more Cuban exiles, however, have come to recognize that the Cuban people, not the exiles, not the United States, represent the principal factor in the present struggle...
...To put it rather crudely: A dollar spent to help the Cubans in the underground in any way is worth more than $100 spent to help exile politicians...
...Despite the changed composition of the exile community, which might have offered political opportunities for a new orientation, the Council continued to embody the deepest yearning of the exiles because nothing else seemed to offer the slightest practical prospect of homecoming...
...policies...
...who put the internal struggle in Cuba in the forefront of their plans and activities...
...policy...
...Nevertheless, he said that my word of Castro's acceptance would be sufficient for the U.S...
...A proCastro writer, Maurice Zeitlin, then wrote to the Times on November 27, 1962, questioning my information because Acting Secretary of State Christian Herter had discussed the problem of Cuban aid in August 1960 without mentioning that "our own Government had at any time offered aid to the Cuban Government...
...In retrospect, the crucial moves toward a Communist understanding with Castro himself may have been made in the period, June-November 1959...
...would recognize...
...or if, as the Cuban members of the force believed, they could count on U.S...
...Miami, New York and Washington can and should help substantially, of course, but they cannot take the place of the struggle inside Cuba or decide by themselves alone the destiny of Cuba...
...His instincts in this respect were right then, and they would be right many times over now...
...In any case, Dr...
...If it was proper for Rubottom to suggest possible aid to Cuba in April 1959, what was so reprehensible about doing the same thing in January 1960...
...What then...
...they need all the help they can get from the exiles, from the United States and from everyone else...
...Though former President Kennedy was in his last months obviously rethinking the whole Cuban problem, he died apparently before he had come to any firm decision or at least could put any other policy into effect...
...A high official of the U.S...
...The President told me: 'We don't trust the U.S...
...It is the duty of a free press to cast some light on this issue, so zealously exploited by pro-Castro propaganda...
...If we had done nothing more than avoid these gross miscalculations, we would be far better off today...
...Lazo and I would be the middlemen in the negotiation...
...Certainly not those who live only for the day of U.S...
...The boycott surely is not sacrosanct...
...There would be no direct contact between the two governments...
...The fusion of Castro and Communism took place by such gradual stages that the full realization of what was happening usually lagged behind events...
...military intentions...
...Meanwhile, I have received a letter, in English, from the former Cuban Treasury (or Finance) Minister Rufo Lopez Fresquet...
...But is it not advisable to broaden the base of our support and sympathy...
...In October 1960, the boycott was started...
...By choosing to back the former in the period between the Bay of Pigs and the missiles crisis, U.S...
...Is there, at this late date, an alternative...
...policy and Cuba...
...who seek aid wherever there is any hope of getting it, including the United States, but not as the subordinate instruments of U.S...
...In April 1963, on the eve of the second anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, Dr...
...There is no way of determining who is right, but that is exactly what is wrong with the Fulbright view...
...Within days of an invasion, the casualties would bring on curses against U.S...
...But we should be indebted to them for telling us what they know...
...That word was "aid...
...if we do not repeat them, we will be far better off tomorrow...
...The most significant and striking thing about Senator Fulbright's options, however, is what they leave out...
...The split reflected the growing dilemma which plagued the exiles: If an external U.S...
...to go ahead...
...divisions would be required to invade and occupy Cuba...
...Only its officials and staff received checks regularly from a mysterious source known to everyone...
...I do not wish to gainsay that the missiles crisis was handled, in its essential, in an admirably controlled and discriminating fashion (though, on this occasion, it is said, Senator Fulbright came out for immediate invasion...
...lives, it would be necessary to take more Cuban lives...
...second, an effort to weaken and ultimately bring down the regime by a policy of political and economic boycott...
...When I tried to check on this, I found that three highly placed Cuban officials, Treasury Minister Rufo López Fresquet, Economics Minister Regino Botí and President of the National Bank of Cuba Felipe Pazos, had been present at the meeting with Assistant Secretary Rubottom...
...policy continued to be the Cuban Revolutionary Council...
...From top to bottom, Castro's regime has become less rather than more stable...
...Sergio Rojas Santamarina, the former Cuban Ambassador in London, in which he related that he had taken political asylum in the Argentine Embassy in Havana in June 1960...
...they insist on separating the political and social components of a healthy democracy...
...The EisenhowerKennedy policy of 1960-61 opted for invasion...
...President Kennedy ruled out the first choice, and nothing was done to help bring about the second...
...military action in Cuba can be ruled out under all circumstances...
...One wing was secretly organizing against the perversion of the revolution...
...This is not the first time that I have tried to express some of these thoughts...
...I am convinced that in this respect he is profoundly wrong...
...To avoid misunderstanding, it is best to give them in his own words: "First, the removal of the Castro regime by invading and occupying the island...
...This peculiar succession of statement, clarification and confirmation has undoubtedly puzzled and confused a great many people...
...This simple proposition may seem fairly modest in its potentialities...
...It is still the starting-point for any consideration of a Cuban policy that seeks to avoid the complementary follies of invasion and capitulation...
...government...
...He could not know the whole story, any more than Amoedo could know the whole story...
...On April 14, the State Department issued another statement, "clarifying" the earlier one, to the effect that the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Roy Rubottom, had made an effort to offer Cuba economic assistance in April, 1959, during Castro's visit to Washington...
...But there are those—and their numbers have been increasing—who recognize the futility of waiting for the United States to overthrow Castro by force...
...charge d'affaires Daniel M. Braddock's instructions declared that "the U.S...
...I think there is, but there is no miracle in the offing and no button to push...
...Senator Barry Goldwater has had nothing more original to offer than a rewarmed version of the Bay of Pigs debacle—a U.S.-backed exile operation to "recapture" Cuba...
...Moreover, the political bond that has held together the diverse elements in Castro's regime is hostility toward the United States...
...that it was deliberately limited to Soviet Russia and the United States...
...Breathless rumors, winged gossip, inside information for the outside, emanated regularly from Miami, always bearing the same glad tidings— the imminence of U.S...
...quarantine" of shipments of offensive weapons to Cuba, the Cuban recruits at Fort Knox were alerted...
...He gave me the following message: "He had the power to offer Castro the help of the U.S...
...THINKING ALOUD Senator Fulbright's Cuban Options By Theodore Draper The key to Senator J. William Fulbright's views on Cuba is contained in the "options" which he thinks are open to the United States...
...This extraordinary oversight was also characteristic of the Eisenhower-Kennedy policy of 1960-61...
...had let him down by failing to use force to overthrow Castro...
...they cannot conceivably inspire a popular movement inside Cuba...
...But the "authoritative" U.S...
...In March 1960, former President Eisenhower took the first step toward an invasion by authorizing the training of a small standby force of Cuban exiles...
...It could not be given up without helping Castro, and this alone gave it, and still gives it, a raison d'être...
...Those who claim our support, and are able to produce the most impressive visible evidence in support of their claims, can do least for us to implement any effective policy not based on full-scale military invasion...
...López Fresquet and Pazos, now in exile, soon told just the opposite story: Rubottom had invited them to state Cuba's needs and wants, but Castro had forbidden them to discuss economic matters, such as aid...
...As the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee sees it, "there are and have been three options open to the United States with respect to Cuba...
...The Council was made up of professional and amateur politicians, mainly of an older generation, who, by themselves, would not have attracted a much bigger following than their immediate families and intimate friends...
...it is a thunderously positive act...
...armed support were unauthorized...
...It authorizes the United States to decide the fate of the Cuban people just as much as the United States might decide it by means of a devastating invasion...
...The dangerous and painstaking work of months was undone in hours...
...But, instead of trying to think "unthinkable thoughts," it might be well to start thinking some quite "thinkable thoughts" about that struggle, the exiles, and U.S...
...I pressed him for a quick answer, and he agreed to talk again with me in 48 hours...
...The resistance to dictator Gerardo Machado started soon after he took office in 1925, flared up in 1927, rose in 1930, broke loose again in 1931, and brought him down two years later...
...For a long time, pro-Castro propaganda in this country and elsewhere insisted that Castro had thrown in his lot with Soviet Russia because the United States had rebuffed his appeal for help in April 1959...
...Mario Lazo...
...Castro at first seemed to encourage the overture but, apparently after consulting Guevara and others, brusquely rebuffed the offer and went ahead with Mikoyan...
...The letter also told of other Western offers of aid later that year...
...Even then, these alternatives were theoretically fundamental to the operation...
...It is not that the Cuban people can win by themselves...
...As for the Amoedo incident, the sticking point is obviously the seemingly dangerous word "aid...
...Others were not convinced until the following spring...
...The fight for independence against Spain is often called the Thirty Years' War...
...He was curious...
...encouragement, to a considerable part of the present exiles...
...Cuban policy of the past four or five years...
...It sponsored and subsidized a Cuban exile leadership which had its base of power not in Cuba, not even among the exiles, but in Washington...
...He was also legal adviser to the U.S...
...In order to save U.S...
...it has been the failure to gain the full benefit of those struggles, partly as a result of inner Cuban weaknesses and partly as a result of U.S...
...Since, in reality, we are not likely to capitulate or to invade, this kind of debate is little more than shadow-boxing...
...Indeed, some time before Senator Fulbright, in The New Leader of June 5, 1961, I wrote in connection with the Bay of Pigs: "An invasion force which succeeded in overthrowing Castro without a demonstrative show of popular support could only have ruled Cuba in a state of perpetual civil war or as a thinly disguised American occupation...
...A Postscript In my previous article I mentioned, rather incidentally, that the United States had made an effort just before the first Soviet-Cuban economic agreement was signed on February 13, 1960, "to offer Fidel Castro's regime aid and cooperation...
...Senator Goldwater rightly rejects capitulation, so he edges toward a thinly disguised form of invasion...
...I seized the opportunity to say: "The great majority of Cubans, especially those in exile, have to base their struggle fundamentally on the principle that Cuba will be liberated in Cuba, not in Miami, New York or Washington...
...It might be argued, of course' that Castro had invited the invasion and should be held responsible for it...
...would publicly apologize for not being able to stop them due to the many isolated airports in Florida and their low flights being undetectable by radar...
...That seemingly innocent, disarming word does not begin to convey the hard reality which he repeatedly tells us to face...
...On April 15, the Times published a letter from Dr...
...Later that day, the State Department issued a statement denying any offer of "aid," but affirming that the United States had repeatedly tried to open discussions with Castro's regime on "outstanding differences" in 1959 and early 1960...
...Armed Forces only as an earnest of U.S...
...This short paragraph was featured in a story on the article by Max Frankel in the New York Times of Monday, April 13, the day the last issue of The New Leader appeared...
...An anti-Castro guerrilla operation in the Escambray mountains was attempted and abandoned for lack of arms in the fall of 1960...
...Senator Fulbright clearly sees the wrong of invasion...
...I dare say it would be strange if this word had not come up in Braddock's explanation to Amoedo of what the U.S...
...They have gone a long way from some of their earlier preconceptions of 'American imperialism.' It cannot be emphasized too strongly that they—and only they__ can be a bridge to the internal struggle inside Cuba because those who will break with Castro tomorrow must go through the same process they went through yesterday...
...As a result, the entire underground was smashed—in Camagüey, on the verge of staging a rising—by the mass round-up of thousands of real and suspected oppositionists on the morning of the invasion...
...The Cuban leaders understood the recruitment of exiles into the U.S...
...But the struggle cannot be won without them or against them...
...Yet no effort was made by the State Department to deny the pro-Castro version spread by Mills and others...
...The decisive struggle will take place inside Cuba itself, and the exiles will influence it only to the extent that they help, encourage and inspire those who are risking their lives in Cuba...
...Only the Council could afford an annual expenditure in six figures...
...At that point, U.S...
...In Cuban history, as it happens, the struggles for freedom have been long ones, with many ups and downs, repeated setbacks and ultimate victories...
...López Fresquet's letter follows: "At the beginning of March 1960, I was approached by Mr...
...He was an American, partner of the law firm, Lazo and Cubas, one of the top in Cuba, having as clients the biggest American firms there...
...Lazo, of course, recognized the fact that Castro would not commit himself only on his [Lazo's] word, but would wait for the U.S...
...Unmourned, unacknowledged, unransomed, it was the hapless victim of U.S...
...After the Bay of Pigs failure in April 1961, the boycott willy-nilly continued, as the Kennedy Administration futilely sought other means of action...
...The anti-Castro resistance inside Cuba never recovered from this misfortune, which was not of its own making...
...If I may offer some free and unsolicited advice, it is this: Many more Americans would be pleased rather than scandalized to know that the United States made every effort, direct and indirect, to find out whether it was possible to stave off Castro's tieup with Soviet Russia...
...If the State Department had confirmed the Rubottom initiative in 1960, 1961 or 1962, it might have done some good...
...On October 22, when President Kennedy ordered the U.S...
...Again I tried to use the occasion to get across a warning on the policy then pursued with respect to the Cuban exiles...
...This has happened, with U.S...
...In fact, therefore, Fulbright's three options are not all of the same kind...
...bombs' not Communist bombs...
...Amoedo now tells us unequivocally that the third point in U.S...
...It raises the question of another hitherto undisclosed United States proposal in March 1960, after the exhaustion of Amoedo's efforts the previous month...
...And then it would offer Castro, so that he could protect himself, the newest military planes and the technical assistance to operate them...
...government was disposed to assist the Castro regime in the financing of the agrarian reform, as well as other economic and social matters...
...Castro himself recently told Herbert L. Matthews that it could well have been "mid-1960" that he moved into a "Marxist-Leninist position...
...It has been professionally estimated that a minimum of three to six U.S...
...Instead of reacting with alarm to the word "aid," which after all is rather indeterminate in its connotations, it might have seized the opportunity to say, in effect: Yes, we wanted to aid Cuba, and we tried to enter into negotiations which would enable us to aid Cuba, but Fidel Castro preferred to make a deal with the Soviet Union...
...The political neglect of the internal Cuban resistance in the operation is worth at least as much attention...
...The hard reality is that giving up the boycott means giving Castro the supplies, the equipment, the spare parts, and all the rest, that the Soviet bloc has not been able to provide adequately...
...In a sense, among Cubans today (and not only Cubans), only the young can speak to the young, only the disillusioned to the disillusioned, only the 'revolutionary' to the 'revolutionary.' We have, if appearances do not deceive me, given little or no aid and comfort to the young, the disillusioned, the 'revolutionary' in the anti-Castro struggle...
...the disintegrating force has always been Communism...
...In the following period the boycott obviously was intended to operate side by side with the proposed invasion, not apart from it...
...support of the Council artificially distorted the internal development of Cuban exile politics...
...we think that what they want us to do is to contradict ourselves...
...Amoedo's own account in this issue of The New Leader [see page 10] has fully sustained my use of the term "aid and cooperation" and, in fact, has spelled it out in detail...
...One wonders whether the State Department is going to be as hasty in denying his statement as it was in denying mine...
...Embassy and was thought to be very close to the Eisenhower Administration...
...Andrés Valdespino, asked me what role I thought the Cubans themselves should play in the overthrow of Castro...
...policy might have made a fresh start...
...In the spring of 1961, the Cuban underground would not have been totally ignored and uselessly sacrificed in favor of a U.S.-controlled invasion force...
...Yet, to an outsider like myself, this appears to be the peculiar contradiction in our present policy vis-à-vis the exiles...
...it broke out in 1868, raged openly for 10 years, flickered intermittently for the next 17 years, and entered its final stage in 1895...
...The question might be put in a practical fashion: If we wish to help and encourage the still largely passive resistance in Cuba to become active, and to widen the cracks and splits in Castro's regime, what exiles are likely to contribute most to the accomplishment of these ends...
...I told him that the only reason I had to remain at that time in the government was to try to bridge the differences between the Cuban and American governments, and if no reconciliation was thought by Castro to be possible, I was anxious to retire...
...policy caused one invasion fiasco to be followed by another—different in kind and far less spectacular, but no less demoralizing and avoidable...
...In effect, Washington had been faced with a choice of backing those exile leaders who looked primarily to the United States for a solution or those who wanted to make the Cuban people the principal factor in their own salvation, without refusing help from any source, including the United States...
...In that memorandum, dated November 13, 1962, I wrote in part: "The time may also have come, if it is not long overdue, to re-examine the relationship to the various tendencies and groups among the Cuban exiles...
...In the circumstances of late January 1960, with Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan's arrival in Havana a few days off, a U.S...
...It is not merely a negative act...
...A great deal can be gained simply by letting Castro make more mistakes and by making fewer ourselves...
...The bombs would not distinguish between Castro's troops and the Cuban people as a whole...
...The morning of the 17th, I was summoned to the Palace by President Dorticós...
...Government to fight the incursions on Cuban territory of the light planes coming from Florida...
...If ever, then, the internal situation in Cuba begged for attention, it was in the spring of 1961...
...Finally, on April 19 the Times published an interview with Dr...
...It should be clear that I do not reject Senator Fulbright's option of "acceptance of the Communist regime" in order to embrace the option of "invading and occupying the island...
...In that way, if the deal fell through, Lazo and I would be the only ones committed...
...Senator Fulbright seems to have been persuaded that the die has already been cast in Castro's favor...
...At one point the interviewer, Dr...
...Conceivably, an extreme international situation might require extreme measures in Cuba...
...How we treat them now will be a test for those like them still in Castro's camp.' I was not successful...
...he offered to give Nikita Khrushchev "assurances against an invasion of Cuba," which had never been broached before...
...policy necessarily expressed itself mainly through one or the other of these exile tendencies...
...But, by and large, nothing of the sort happened...
...But the Department waited until 1964, and then only because it had made a faux pas in issuing what seemed like a blanket denial in another case...
...military intervention...
...Some, both inside and outside Cuba, did not make up their minds until that fall...
...I think it is safe to say that future historians will not regard the resolution of the missiles crisis as the perfect, grandiose triumph that has sometimes been claimed for it...
...After the military setback, however, the more independent members of the Council, who felt that they had been humiliated and misled, resigned...
...The exile leaders may have much to answer for, but they did not make their mistakes alone...
...Yet the course of the past five years would have been very different if it had been taken seriously...
...Thus, while I may disagree with Senator Fulbright on whether Castro's regime is a "danger," I still think that it is necessary to ask whether the present clanger justifies such extreme measures...
...The equilibrium in Cuba is so unsteady that it is not yet possible to say how "transitory" Cuban Communism is...
...As a study by Richard R. Fagen and Richard A. Brody of Stanford University has shown, "by 1962 a considerable proportion of the refugees were neither rich, well-educated, occupationally advantaged, nor in any sense members of the pre-Castro 'establishment.'" Nevertheless, most of these refugees were so desperately anxious to go home that they were more interested in getting there than in how they would do so...
...It is not necessary, and it would be unwise, at this late date, to upset the whole apple-cart of Cuban exile politics...
...This would have made more sense if the planners had expected the small invasion force to bring down Fidel Castro's regime as if it were a house of cards...
...I reject the choice between political bankruptcy and military adventurism...
...It took almost seven years to overthrow Batista at the end of 1958...
...The peaceful deflation of the crisis was actually the Council's deathblow...
...This suggests that something is also wrong with Fulbright's third option—"acceptance...
...The State Department remained silent and permitted these imputations to stand...
...None of these antiCastro manifestations owed much to U.S...
...Justo Carrillo Hernández, in a dawn meeting with him and other members of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, President Kennedy explained his opposition to U.S...
...In the end, the anti-invasion pledge, despite the conditional form which it took, gave Khrushchev the out that he was looking for and enabled him to agree to the withdrawal of the missiles in an equally conditional form...
...he does not see that the fatalistic long-term "acceptance" of Fidel Castro is but the other side of the same coin...
...What in the world do we have to gain by appearing to deny what we should have done and, in some fashion, did?-Theodore Draper Theodore Draper, a regular contributor, here presents the second of two articles on U.S...
...Even his request for quite minor financial consideration was turned down flat...
...158-59...
...and, finally, acceptance of the Communist regime as a disagreeable reality and annoyance but one which is not likely to be removed in the near future because of the unavailability of acceptable means of removing it...
...They are men of an older generation who represent the pre-Batista past...
...There is, rather, an already extended historical process which must be envisaged as a whole...
...There is no comparable group in all Latin America...
...The "unthinkable thought" in this case is nothing less than the shift from an anti-Castro trade policy to a pro-Castro trade policy...
...proposal might entail, if negotiations were seriously engaged in, or in the four-hour Amoedo-Castro session...
...He told me: 'What an interesting thing this international chess game is,' and he asked me for some time to think it over...
...At the same time, a far more widespread and promising anti-Communist movement took shape inside the Rebel Army, especially in Camagüey Province...
...And, consequently, we are still paying for the Bay of Pigs...
...Whereas the Times story said that "there was no specific discussion of financial claims, needs or offers," which may be accurate if the accent is placed on the word "specific," Dr...
...proposal to negotiate "outstanding differences" without including "aid" would have been fatuous...
...López Fresquet's account is obviously a partial one...
...and that this time, all of Cuba, from Fidel Castro to José Miró Cardona, were, for better or worse, left out completely...
...The tragedy of Cuban history has not been the lack of will to struggle against the greatest odds...
...The question arises whether Senator Fulbright has presented his options accurately...
...Landings would have to be prepared and followed up by the heaviest bombardments...
...Our Prime Minister went to Washington, right away after the insurrection, but he was just given the cold shoulder, and certainly no help...
...participation in the Bay of Pigs by exclaiming: "Americans shooting Cubans: No...
...However, the U.S...
...From Miró's own story, it is not clear that President Kennedy ever gave him any real commitment, but it is clear that Miró interpreted the President's reiterated support as an implied confirmation of his well-known hopes and expectations...
...invasion could overthrow Castro...
...Unfortunately, the State Department statement went around the world as a "denial," though a careful reader might have noticed that only one word in my original paragraph had been denied...
...wanted to be sure Castro would accept before the offer was made, so as not to be ridiculed...
...By 1962, the exile community was not at all what it had been in the first months of 1959...
...intervention or with popular Cuban resistance...
...consciences than to console the Cuban dead and wounded...
...Once we admit publicly that they are on the level and that they are friendly to us, they will not give Cuba anything.' "By the way, after that I told the President that I felt like resigning...
...Exile leaders committed to an even larger scale U.S...
...The answer is that the planners, at least on the U.S...
...Carrillo soon resigned from the Council...
...it means actively, materially, unceasingly, helping that regime to survive...
...José Miró Cardona, believed more fervently than ever before that only a U.S...
...We have precious political capital in these young Cubans who have gone through the fire of Fidelismo, who have in the past few years undergone an incredible range and depth of political experience, who have ventured up to the edge of Communism and turned back in revulsion...
Vol. 47 • April 1964 • No. 9
