The Age of Eisenhower

by William I Hitchcock

  IV

  To most Americans in the 1950s, Indonesia and Vietnam remained distant, dimly understood places. Cuba, by contrast, occupied a bright and sun-drenched corner of the American imagination. A short plane ride from the United States, Cuba had long been a lucrative target for American business. The island’s sugar plantations, mining enterprises, utilities, and large-scale farms were almost entirely owned by American companies, while the tourist industry, boosted by the advent of cheap commercial flights, opened up Cuba’s gambling casinos, dance halls, and beaches to thousands of Americans searching for a taste of tropical nightlife. The luxurious Hotel Nacional, built in 1930 overlooking Havana Harbor, epitomized the new era of elegant excess and indulgence. All the famous actors and singers of the era flocked there for the sun, the fun, and the gaiety, performing for adoring audiences. And they gambled in casinos that were run by the American crime bosses Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.

  Since 1952 the president of Cuba, a former army sergeant named Fulgencio Batista, gladly abetted the exploitation of his country by American corporate, entertainment, and gambling interests because he got rich in the process. Batista had held power either in a junta or by himself for most of the years since 1933. He aligned himself with wealthy landowners and the military and allowed American companies to squeeze hefty profits out of the sugar industry. To maintain the allure of his vacation paradise for wealthy American tourists, and to generate handsome kickbacks and bribes, he enabled a flourishing underground traffic in drugs and prostitution. The U.S. government supported Batista with military aid and assisted in the expansion of Cuba’s intelligence services and secret police. As a pro-American, anticommunist, moneymaking tropical den of iniquity, Batista’s Cuba found plenty of sympathetic supporters in the corridors of power in Washington.20

  Inside Cuba, however, Batista faced a growing insurrection. On July 26, 1953, a small band of rebels attacked an army barracks in Santiago, signaling the start of the Cuban Revolution. The leadership of the July 26 Movement included a young and dynamic law student named Fidel Castro and his hard-line brother Raúl, sons of a well-to-do plantation owner. For the next five years Castro and his group plotted and fought against Batista, hiding in the forested uplands of the Sierra Maestra region of southeastern Cuba and enduring the ruthless repression, torture, and murder by government forces of many of their brother revolutionaries.

  Because of the well-known barbarism of Batista’s dictatorship, Castro’s revolutionary movement won sympathetic coverage in the American press. Life magazine, published by that noted cold warrior Henry Luce, styled Castro “a kind of Cuban Robin Hood” in one 1957 issue, while denouncing Batista’s “strong-arm rule.” New York Times reporter Herbert L. Matthews scored the scoop of the decade when he interviewed Castro in his mountain hideout in February 1957. Matthews depicted Castro as a youthful idealist fighting for a democratic Cuba: “It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island. Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.” And, Matthews insisted, “there is no communism to speak of in Fidel Castro’s July 26 Movement.” Instead “the best elements in Cuba—the unspoiled youth, the honest businessman, the politician of integrity, the patriotic Army officer,” sympathized with Castro and hated Batista’s thuggish regime.21

  In the spring and summer of 1958 Life reporters who trekked into the jungle to seek out the dynamic Fidel wrote of the charismatic leader as “soft-spoken but confident,” a man more interested in building hospitals than becoming president. His brother raised suspicions, however, for he seemed doctrinaire and brutal in his methods. A rail-thin 27-year-old, Raúl sported “a cowboy hat, mustache and shoulder-length hair” and toted a machine gun everywhere he went. He seemed “partly heroic, partly melodramatic and partly sinister.” Yet both Fidel and Raúl denied any communist affiliation. “If we were Communist dominated,” Raúl asked a journalist, “don’t you think they would supply us with all the arms and ammunition we need to defeat Batista?”22

  In contrast to these admiring reports about the rebels, Batista’s counterinsurgency tactics drew condemnation. His police routinely kidnapped suspects, tortured them to death, and threw their mutilated bodies into the streets to instill fear across the country. They set off bombs in public places and blamed the rebels, hoping to turn public opinion against the uprising. More worrisome for American officials, Batista used the tanks, aircraft, and artillery the United States sold to him against his own people—an embarrassing violation of the terms of the arms sales. Under increasing congressional criticism, the State Department announced the end of arms shipments to Cuba in March 1958, signaling a sharp change in the once-friendly attitude toward Batista. That same month U.S. officials began to consider how to ease Batista out of power.23

  As elites and business owners in Cuba turned against Batista’s rule, the CIA tried and failed to establish contacts with political groups that might take control of the country in the wake of Batista’s removal. This failure frustrated Eisenhower and his top advisers. Discussing Castro, they all agreed that the Cuban rebel represented “extremely radical elements,” as Allen Dulles put it, and that Cuba could soon be in the hands of the communists. But the United States could not continue to prop up Batista. Acting Secretary of State Herter explained that Batista had lost the confidence of his people, suppressed basic democratic freedoms, and alienated “some 80 percent of the Cuban people,” as well as public opinion across Latin America and in the U.S. Congress. Batista had created “a very difficult public relations problem” and had to go. Despite their grave worries about Castro, the Americans now pressured Batista to resign. On the last day of December 1958 he flew out of Cuba and into exile in the Dominican Republic.24

  A week later, on January 8, 1959, to the roar of enormous crowds, Fidel Castro and his victorious rebel army swept into the capital city and took power. Life reported that the crowds in Havana “screamed Viva!, thundered applause and flung torrents of flowers when Castro and his barbudos (bearded ones) appeared.” The crowds greeted Fidel “not as a dutifully honored conqueror but as a man ecstatically acclaimed by the people he had liberated.” American reporters flocked to Havana to cover the rebel leader. Ed Sullivan, the host of one of America’s most-watched television programs, conducted a hasty and admiring interview with Castro at 2:00 a.m. on January 11 from a television studio jammed with armed guards; later that day CBS News conducted an improvised episode of Face the Nation with Castro from Havana, giving Cuba’s new leader an unprecedented chance to explain his revolutionary movement to the American public.

  Not only the press treated him gingerly; even Foster Dulles, mortally ill and nearing the end of his long service to Eisenhower, proposed to the president that the United States officially recognize the new regime. It is ironic that the era’s greatest anticommunist crusader should have advised Eisenhower to reach out to Castro, yet there was reason to be cautiously optimistic. Castro had named a moderate lawyer, Manuel Urrutia, as the provisional head of state, and despite Castro’s fulminations against America, his movement appeared “free from Communist taint,” Dulles claimed. Dulles probably did not really believe that. He simply knew that the United States had lost an ally in Batista and now had no choice but to try to work with, and guide, the youthful rebel. Tacitly admitting failure, the United States recognized Castro’s new government and proffered a cautious hand of friendship.25

  V

  Very quickly that caution changed to alarm. Just days after Castro’s triumphant arrival into Havana, Eisenhower received a report that Castro had ties to “Communist-front groups.” While there was “no present firm indication that Castro is a Communist-sympathizer,” the new Cuban leader did seem “nationalistic and somewhat socialistic.” Castro appointed a number of well-known moderates to the new government and remained undeniably popular across the country, but he also allowed a period of bloodl
etting and vulgar show trials of former Batista officials. Life, which had so recently published flattering essays about the rebel leader, now reported “an ugly tide of blood vengeance” across Cuba. Lurid photos showed the execution of alleged “war criminals” following summary trials. “After seven years of rage, Cubans are now going to make the sadists pay,” one article breathlessly concluded, and indeed several hundred former regime supporters were executed. Castro, once styled a cheery Robin Hood in the American press, now earned a more sinister nickname: “the whiskery messiah of Sierra Maestra.”26

  U.S. officials, perhaps reluctant to admit that a communist revolution had just taken power in a country only 90 miles from American shores, told themselves that Castro could be controlled with the proper tutelage. In their conversations officials portrayed Castro as a wayward child, a headstrong youngster who needed some discipline. Foster Dulles established this paternalist framework in remarks he made in mid-1958 to his colleagues. “Throughout much of the world and certainly in Latin America,” he opined, “there had been in recent years a tremendous surge in the direction of popular government by peoples who have practically no capacity for self-government and indeed are like children in facing this problem.” Allen Dulles used similar terms: Cuban officials “really had to be treated more or less like children,” he believed. “They had to be led rather than rebuffed. If they were rebuffed, like children, they were capable of doing almost anything.” The U.S. Embassy in Cuba urged Washington to show “patience, goodwill, and cooperation toward Cuba,” while tolerating the unruly behavior of these Caribbean toddlers.27

  Yet a creeping unease began to settle on Washington as Castro and his revolution took hold. One of Castro’s first acts was to legalize the Popular Socialist Party, Cuba’s communist party that had been banned since 1952. The State Department worried about reports that Castro’s fellow revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara had outlined a plan to export Cuba’s revolution to Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Paraguay. Che was labeled “an extreme leftist” who had been “acting like a Communist since the fall of the Batista regime.” Raúl Castro was thought to be even more radical. In late March 1959 Allen Dulles reported to the president that he was “disturbed” by Raúl’s “demagoguery” and his “wild statements.” Though the regime was not “Communist-dominated,” Dulles stated, it was clear that “Communists were now operating openly and legally in Cuba” and that Fidel “was moving toward a dictatorship.” Far from a Cuban George Washington, Fidel Castro began to look to Americans like “a Nasser of the Caribbean.”28

  Hoping to dispel the darkening clouds that had formed over Cuban-American relations, Castro seized upon an invitation from the American Society of Newspaper Editors to address their annual convention in mid-April in Washington, D.C. The trip was unofficial, and Eisenhower chose not to meet Castro, hastening to Augusta to avoid him. But the State Department arranged for a packed 11-day tour that included a meeting with Vice President Nixon, Secretary of State Herter, and congressional leaders, as well as a trip to New York and Boston. Castro arrived at National Airport on April 15, 1959, to the hearty cheers of some 1,500 onlookers and a crowd of reporters who were amazed to find him still wearing his trademark green battle fatigues. After meeting with the Cuban leader the next day, Secretary Herter reported to Eisenhower that he found Castro “a most interesting individual, very much like a child in many ways, quite immature regarding the practical problems of government.” Castro tended to become “voluble, excited, and somewhat ‘wild,’ ” but Herter thought he was sincere in his desire to work with the United States.29

  In his April 17 speech to the newspaper editors at the Statler Hotel, Castro launched a full-scale charm offensive. Speaking in English for over two hours in a packed ballroom under the glare of a thousand flashbulbs, he insisted that his revolution was not communist, that Cuba wanted good relations with America, that investors were welcome to do business in Cuba, and that the United States naval base at Guantanamo would remain untouched. “Our revolution is a humanistic one,” he assured his hosts. At the end of his performance, the hard-bitten newspapermen gave him a prolonged ovation.30

  Nixon, however, painted a darker picture after his encounter with Castro. In a private meeting in the vice president’s office in the Capitol on Sunday evening, April 19, the two men talked for almost three hours. Nixon adopted the paternalist tone so popular with the Dulles brothers and tried to coach Castro on how to soften his revolution and open Cuba up to democratic reforms and private American investment. In Nixon’s account of the discussion, Castro defended his decision to postpone national elections in Cuba for a period of four years. “The people did not want elections,” Castro said, “because elections in the past had produced bad government.” Nixon described this as “slavish subservience to . . . the voice of the mob” and found the Cuban “incredibly naïve with regard to the Communist threat.” Castro “sounded almost exactly like Sukarno” in his assertion that the communists would never be able to infiltrate his government. Nixon ended his report by saying that Castro “has those indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men. . . . He is either incredibly naïve about Communism or under Communist discipline—my guess is the former.” Yet because of Castro’s popularity, the United States could not oppose him directly. “We have no choice,” Nixon felt, “but at least to try to orient him in the right direction.”31

  Castro’s visit electrified the American public. After leaving Washington he traveled to Princeton University and then to New York City, where enormous crowds greeted him amid cries of “Viva Fidel!” and “Viva el Liberador!” The tall, bearded rebel in his olive-drab fatigues repeatedly broke free of his bodyguards to plunge into the crowds and shake hands. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, he addressed a crowd of 10,000 admirers outside Dillon Field House on the Harvard campus. Still, some reporters had their doubts. Roscoe Drummond of the Washington Post admitted that Castro possessed a friendly, outgoing, “almost mesmeric personality,” but his hostility to elections hinted at a future tyranny. The Wall Street Journal editorial page likewise worried about Castro’s lack of “maturity” and his emphasis on melodrama rather than substance. The Cuban government looked like “a band of very young men who, having fought hard, were a little intoxicated by their sudden success.”32

  Inside the State Department, Herter’s staff tried to assess the new Cuban strongman. Castro’s power to sway world opinion, they thought, was not charming but dangerous. His personal magnetism might blind the public to the true radicalism of his regime. Far from being a child or ingénue, Castro was “a strong personality and a born leader of great personal courage and conviction.” With such enormous political gifts, Castro spelled trouble. “It would be a serious mistake to underestimate this man.”33

  VI

  Few did. Yet the attention of the administration in the summer of 1959 was drawn elsewhere. The Berlin crisis, Nixon’s trip to the USSR in July, followed by Khrushchev’s passage across the country in September and Eisenhower’s personal hopes for a thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations—these issues preoccupied the White House. Eisenhower pushed Cuba to the back burner.

  Even so, the temperature continued to climb. Reports out of Cuba painted an alarming picture of Castro’s postrevolution purges. “Civil Prisoners Jam Cuban Jails,” was a headline in the New York Times in February 1959; “Reds’ Alleged Role in Castro’s Regime Alarming Havana,” blared another in April. Castro’s constant public criticism of the United States and the “whipping up of extreme nationalist spirit” had left the middle classes “uneasy,” the papers reported.34

  In May the Castro government announced an ambitious program of land reform, proposing to nationalize utilities (many owned by American companies) and seize the large agricultural estates that produced Cuba’s lucrative sugar crop. The government promised compensation, but American landowners and industrialists sent outraged envoys to Washington, demanding Eisenhower suspend the purchase of Cuban sugar as retaliatio
n. Secretary Herter now considered Cuba a danger to all of Latin America and told the National Security Council “the fire would spread very fast” if they did not act. In June, Che Guevara launched a heavily publicized world tour to curry favor with nonaligned nations from Yugoslavia to Egypt, India, and Indonesia. Meanwhile the U.S. Embassy in Havana, which initially had adopted a friendly and tolerant view of Castro, acknowledged that though not a communist himself, Castro had allowed the Communist Party to flourish. His government was following “a course which we believe favors Communist objectives.”35

  Domestic politics also played a role in keeping pressure on Eisenhower. In the summer of 1959 Senator Eastland, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, opened hearings on what he called “the communist threat to the United States through the Caribbean.” Designed to embarrass the administration for its lax attitude to communism in the region, Eastland’s committee gave a platform to various exiles and disgruntled anti-Castro figures. One hearing featured the testimony of Maj. Pedro Luis Díaz Lanz, the former head of the Cuban Air Force. Having fled Cuba two weeks earlier under threat of arrest, Díaz Lanz vividly described the grip of communism upon Castro’s government and especially on Raúl Castro and Che Guevara. He pointed to the penetration of communists into all facets of Cuban politics and society. His testimony was made even more dramatic because it was interrupted by a bomb scare, forcing Eastland to clear the room.

  These revelations by a former Cuban insider embarrassed the administration, and Eisenhower tried to deflect the matter at his July 15 news conference. As to accusations that Castro’s regime was communist, Ike said, “the United States has made no such charges.” Eisenhower’s political rivals took note of his slowness to ring the alarm. Just three days later Eastland invited Spruille Braden to testify before his committee. Braden, a former U.S. ambassador to Cuba, Colombia, and Argentina and a man who nourished McCarthy-like conspiracy theories about communists in the State Department, announced that “unless eradicated,” Castro’s regime “will convert the Caribbean into a Red lake.” By midsummer Eisenhower was starting to feel the political heat from Cuba.36