INSIGHTS ON CUBA
Alexander, Robert J.
Insights on Cuba Castro's Revolution: myths and realities, by Theodore Draper. Frederick A. Praeger, 211 pp. $4.50. The Cuban Invasion, a chronicle of a disaster, by Karl E. Meyer and Tad Szulc....
...Instead of eliminating Castro, it strengthened his hold on his people and inflated his prestige in the world...
...ROBERT J. ALEXANDER is a professor of economics at Rutgers who has specialized in Latin American affairs...
...During the struggle against Batista, he had promised a quick return to constitutional government as well as extensive social and economic reforms...
...tionary dictatorship, in alliance with the Cuban Communists and in alignment with the Soviet Union internationally...
...Over a period of about a year, Draper wrote three long articles which were published abroad and reprinted in this country as supplements to The New Leader...
...Castro's Revolution is more concerned with the evolution of the politics of the regime in Cuba...
...The Draper thesis is that Castro came to power with quite unexpected rapidity, without a real ideology to guide him, a real party to organize his support, or even a real army...
...The immorality, in our view, did not lie in assisting the genuine democrats who opposed the perversion of the Cuban revolution...
...Rather, it lay in the way the assistance was rendered, leaving this country with only a few shreds of defense against the charge of violating national, hemisphere, and international laws...
...One faction among his followers wanted to carry out the promises which had been made in the mountains...
...Essentially, the authors of these two books agree on the direction which the Castro regime took and the reasons why...
...another faction, led by Che Guevara and Raul Castro, wanted to install a revoluTHE REVIEWERS ELMO ROPER is the well-known marketing consultant and public opinion research expert...
...Meyer and Szulc sum up their assessment of the invasion this way: "Thus the invasion accomplished just the reverse of its objectives...
...His books include "Prophets of the Revolution" and, with Charles O. Porter, "The Struggle for Democracy in Latin America...
...Among the spate of books about the Castro regime since its advent in 1959, the reader has a choice of volumes of virtually every political color and point of view...
...DONALD EMERSON is a professor of English literature at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee...
...Meyer and Szulc describe this attack on Cuba almost like a Greek tragedy, in which every move made presages the ones to follow, and the ultimate catastrophe...
...The Cuban Invasion centers its attention on the activities of the exiles and upon the reaction of the United States toward the whole Cuban problem...
...he wrote "Midwestern Progressive Politics," "A Baker's Dozen," and "Fettered Freedom...
...But those who engineered the armed assault on Cuba refused until the penultimate moment to have anything to do with the only groups that had an organized underground and some guerrillas fighting in the hills—those who had fought with Castro against Batista, and then had turned against Castro because of his dictatorial and pro-Communist turn...
...These two volumes do not take either of these extreme positions...
...Draper sees the turning point in Castro's thinking and action in the arrest and conviction of Major Hubert Matos, because of his resignation in protest against Communist infiltration in the regime...
...RUSSEL B. NYE is a professor of English at Michigan State University...
...These range from those at one extreme who "knew all along" that Fidel Castro was a Communist and see his coming to power as part of a great Kremlin plot, to those at the other end who are apologists for the Castro regime and can see little wrong in anything it has done...
...And in place of dramatizing the aggressive intent of Castroite Communism, it seemed to dramatize the bullying tactics of the United States...
...They argue that it was inconceivable that 1,300 armed men, even if they had had the much debated "air cover" which was missing, could have overthrown the Castro regime, armed as it was by large quantities of both United States and Soviet weapons...
...Its authors are particularly qualified to deal with the ill-fated invasion of April, 1961, because they did some of the ablest and most intensive investigating of and reporting on the invasion before, during, and after it took place...
...3.95...
...They are convinced that the invasion as conceived was doomed to failure...
...His picture of the evolution of the island republic since January 1, 1959, seems to make eminently good sense, and to avoid the emotional hysteria which tends to characterize both the plot-oriented critics of, and the apologists for, the Castro regime...
...It was a failure of mechanics and imagination—and it was also a moral failure...
...Of all those who are writing about Castro these days, in my opinion Theodore Draper is the closest to the truth...
...Yet, in fact, the United States was not willing to go the limit, so that America earned the opprobrium for transgressing without winning any of the benefits...
...Instead of isolating Castroism, it ended up by momentarily isolating the United States...
...These articles, plus some other scattered material, make up the present book...
...Reviewed by Robert J. Alexander The old saw has it that "it's an ill wind that blows no one good...
...The advent of the dictatorship of Fidel Castro is a case in point...
...160 pp...
...The Cuban Invasion by Karl E. Meyer and Tad Szulc is somewhat more limited in scope than Draper's book...
...Rather, they seek seriously and thoughtfully to analyze the Castro regime, to find out why it went the way it did, and to find what role, if any, the United States had in making the Cuban Revolution take the Communist road...
...LUCY JOHNSON is a free lance reviewer...
...According to Draper, all further moves by Castro, including the expulsion of all democratic elements from the regime, the suppression of freedoms of the press, speech, and assembly, the almost complete nationalization of the economy, and the following of the Communist pattern in land reform stemmed from Castro's October, 1959, decision definitely to follow the line of the pro-Communist group among his supporters...
...This was followed quickly by forceful seizure of the labor movement by pro-Communist elements with Castro's help, the adoption of an intransigent attitude of hostility towards the United States, and the beginning of relations with the Eastern bloc...
...For most of 1959, Castro was not clear as to what direction he wanted the revolution to take...
...The books complement one another...
...He wrote "You and Your Leaders...
...If it has done nothing else, it has aroused in this country a wave of interest in Latin America and our relations with it as never before...
...The only hope of success would have been if this invasion had been the prelude to a massive uprising within...
...In spite of having been written a considerable distance apart, the three major sections of the book have complete internal consistency and form a logical whole...
...They are by all odds two of the best books which have been published about the whole problem...
...A reader of both books will get about as clear a picture of what has transpired in the famous island "only ninety miles off the coast of Florida" since 1959 as it is possible to acquire at the present time...
...They seek to interpret the Castro regime at various periods in its history, and to develop some tentative conclusions about it...
Vol. 26 • August 1962 • No. 8
