Fidel Castro
Page 13
This became apparent during Castro’s early trips abroad: to Venezuela in January 1959, the United States and Canada in April, and from there directly to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. His first stay in New York in the uniform of a victorious revolutionary, three and a half years after his fundraising tour in a doublebreasted suit, had the air of a triumphal march through an enemy country. Traveling with a 70-strong delegation, he was greeted with a mixture of sympathy, curiosity, and enthusiasm by enlightened middle-class opinion; more than 30,000 flocked to hear his opening speech in New York’s Central Park. Only official Washington gave him the cold shoulder, Eisenhower preferring to dally in the country playing golf and to leave his vice-president, Richard Nixon, to meet the Cuban leader. For more than a month already, serious thought had been given at the highest levels to the possibility of eliminating him.10 A little later, at the end of the year, Castro made his first contact with the Soviet Union, when Tass news agency correspondent Aleksandr Alekseiev appeared for an audition bearing a bottle of vodka, several tins of caviar, and cordial greetings from the Soviet government. In February 1960, a Soviet trade fair that had previously been in Mexico and New York moved to Havana, and Soviet deputy premier Anastas Mikoyan visited the island for the opening ceremony. On February 13 he and Fidel Castro signed the first trade agreement between the two countries, whereby the Soviet Union undertook to buy 1 million tons of Cuban sugar per annum over the next five years. In return, Cuba would purchase crude oil and derivatives, steel, paper, grain, fertilizer, and machinery, on the basis of a 12-year loan of 100 million at a rate of interest of 2.5 percent. Diplomatic relations, which were broken off during the Batista dictatorship, were finally restored in May 1960.
Meanwhile, the United States blocked a 100 million dollar loan by a consortium of European banks, and intervened on the international market to prevent the sale of Western arms to Cuba. When Belgium tried to press ahead regardless, the French freighter Coubre and its consignment of Belgian weapons blew up in Havana Harbor, on March 4, 1960, killing 81 and injuring more than 300. A Belgian expert said that sabotage was the most likely cause,11 and at the funeral for the victims Castro held the United States responsible. For the first time he ended his speech with the battle-cry that he would subsequently use to close all his public appearances: “Patria o muerte, venceremos!” – “Fatherland or death, we shall prevail!”
In July 1960, Raúl Castro traveled to the Soviet Union and agreed with Khrushchev an extensive program of military aid. An increase in Florida-based acts of sabotage, together with rumors of an imminent American ground operation, led Khrushchev to warn the United States on July 9: “The Soviet Union … is extending a helpful hand to the people of Cuba.… If it became necessary, the Soviet military can support the Cuban people with rocket weapons.”12
At the same time, the land reform dispute was escalating into a major crisis, as the powerful United Fruit Company – for which CIA boss Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles (the foreign minister who died in 1959) had both once worked – refused to give up 15 percent of its land and found itself expropriated on April 4, 1960. At Washington’s request, Texaco, Esso, Shell, and Standard Oil refineries then refused to comply with the Cuban government’s order to process oil imports from the Soviet Union – whereupon their branches in Cuba as well as other US companies on the island (a total of 36) were likewise placed under Cuban government control.
On July 5, President Eisenhower moved to inflict a sharp blow on Cuba’s sugar-dependent economy, cutting 700,000 tons from the US purchase commitment for the year 1960. This reduced the share of US imports in Cuba’s total sugar output to 35 percent, down from 59 percent (2.4 million tons) in 1959. US ambassador Bonsal later remarked: “The suspension of the sugar quota was a major element in the program for the overthrow of Castro.”13 Two weeks previously, in a televized speech, Castro had spoken of an impending American “Dagger Law” that would stab the revolution in the back, and warned that “if we lose our entire sugar quota, they could lose all their investments in Cuba.”14 A month later, the Cuban government went a further step down that road by countering the Dagger Law with a “Machete Law” of its own, which did not actually expropriate all American companies in Cuba but placed them under Cuban guardianship and set a limit on their repatriation of profits. At the same time, the Soviet Union demonstratively helped Castro out by declaring its readiness to add the US sugar quota to its own for 1960.
It took a fortnight for the other major Communist power, the People’s Republic of China, to enter the arena with an undertaking to buy 500,000 tons of Cuban sugar per annum over a five-year period at world-market prices. Under US pressure, the Organization of American States (OAS) now issued the “San José Declaration” condemning “the attempt of the Chinese-Soviet powers” to take advantage of the political, economic, or social situation in the Americas. Washington did not, however, manage to push through a condemnation of Cuba.
Castro’s response came in August 1960, with the nationalization of US-owned industrial and agricultural firms on the island, followed by the banks in September, immediately before his departure to attend the UN General Assembly in New York. Upon his return, the axe fell on the 550 or so large industrial and commercial businesses still in private foreign or Cuban hands, as well as the remainder of the banks (except for the Canadian). On October 15, he announced on television that the revolutionary program set out in his “History Will Absolve Me” speech from the dock after Moncada had been accomplished. Apart from small private businesses – and even their turn would come a few years later – capitalism had been virtually eradicated in Cuba by the second anniversary of the revolution. Household names such as Esso, Standard Oil, Texaco, Swift, Goodyear, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Sears, Ford, Chase Manhattan, and First National Bank, as well as other firms and consortia, lost a billion dollars in investments. The American Mafia alone had to write off 100 million dollars in the tourist industry, according to Santos Trafficante, one of its chieftains in Cuba.15
Although Castro knew that he had most of the population behind him, his egalitarian program had devastating consequences for the middle classes. Self-employed professionals, doctors, engineers, technicians, scientists, economists, and other experts left the island in ever increasing numbers – a total of 200,000 highly qualified citizens between 1960 and 1962.16 They mostly settled in Florida, where many of them – scorned by Castro as gusanos, or worms – joined one of the groups opposed to the regime in Havana.
When Castro went to New York in September 1960, official America greeted him with icy hostility through to sheer hatred. Apart from Nikita Khrushchev, whose arrival on the Baltika in New York Harbor had been made “humiliatingly unpleasant” by the US authorities, Castro seemed to attract “concentrated official wrath” on himself alone – to quote a report written at the time by the chief correspondent of the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung, Hans Ulrich Kempski.
Attributes such as murderer, hangman or butcher, applied to Khrushchev on placards and press articles, sounded well-nigh respectable in comparison with the outpourings of hate that any public mention of Castro’s name provoked. Whereas, the previous year, he had been wildly cheered for five whole days in New York, he was now reviled as a hairy rat, a hobo and a ravisher of young girls, whose greatest pleasure was to hold a knife to any American’s bare throat.17
While the 8,000 or so Cuban exiles living in New York waved little welcoming flags on the streets, the tabloids printed “reports and pictures of anti-Castro demonstrations – not explaining, of course, that it was always a question of the same little handful who had turned out days earlier in front of the UN building to march with placards and bowed heads around a flower-bed. At no time had more than twenty-five people been involved, sometimes there had been only three.”18
Although Cuba was (and is) a member of the United Nations, its 85-person delegation were not at first able to track down any suitable hotel in New York that was prepared to take
them. With great difficulty they eventually checked in to the Hotel Shelburn, but its astronomical prices soon forced them to look elsewhere. In a show that gained a lot of media attention, Castro and his horn-tooting column then drove through Manhattan to the headquarters of the UN and demanded emergency accommodation from its general secretary, Dag Hammarskjøld, warning that they would otherwise camp out in Central Park. In the end, the delegation found the ideal place to stay, in terms of provoking “straight” America, and raised the Cuban flag over the Hotel Theresa on 125th Street, right in the middle of Harlem. “The Theresa has for thirty years been the nerve center of negro politics in the North,” wrote Kempski in another article. “No white man can normally get a room here. The fact that Castro, the propagandist of racial integration, can take the risk and manage it must operate as a signal to black people and a dangerous affront to White America.”19
The American media tried to fool the public into believing that the Cubans had wound up in a brothel, and were holding orgies or killing chickens in their rooms. Meanwhile, however, Castro effectively set up court there. Besieged by reporters like no other president or government leader, cheered by thousands of black and latino supporters in the local streets, he received the radical black leader Malcolm X, Indian premier Jawaharlal Nehru, Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser, and the leader of the other world power, Nikita Khrushchev.
Kempski’s reports from New York in September 1960 are worth quoting at greater length, because they draw an early picture of Castro’s personality as it would impress itself on the public mind in subsequent years. The revolutionary already knew how to present himself as a talented political leader, determined to use a novel style in drawing attention to the demands of the Third World, and it soon became clear to friends and enemies alike that the new arrival on the world stage was a shrewd and intelligent man at once tactically astute and uncompromising. By now 34 years old, aware of the impact of his external image and resolute charm, Castro knew how to use the media and his own public appearances in taboo-breaking ways that would win support for his revolution, especially from up-and-coming generations.
He was also aware of the deeper symbolism and public effect of his decision, alone among those at the General Assembly, to continue wearing his uniform for the occasion. Kempski noted:
What he wears is not some smart parade-ground gear, but crumpled olive-green battledress. His shirt is open at the collar.… His whole get-up looks as if the titan from the islands has just completed a stand-up fight. His face is a little bloated, but has a healthy colour. His shaggy, matted beard makes the long dark-brown cigars almost disappear between his bulging lips. He has a way of lazily eyeing his surroundings which expresses complete selfconfidence, and whose hypnotic power you are unable to escape, at least in the first moment. Castro’s deep voice is husky, but also cracked – which may be precisely why it captivates many of those who hear it. Given the youthful vigor that conjures up a picture-book ideal of a victorious warrior, his voice suggests that this colossus of a man smokes and drinks and roars in prodigious measure.20
Castro and Khrushchev, who had not met before, both knew how to ridicule the role of villains in which the American media had cast them, by putting on a highly public display of mutual affection at a plenary session of the UN General Assembly. “When Khrushchev went up to Castro … , the American journalists swore out loud. For them and the American public, it felt like the worst of nightmares that New York, of all places, should be where the unequal pair were first able to embrace and cover each other with kisses.” And it was also on the occasion of the UN summit that the world was first able to enjoy one of Castro’s marathon speeches, which would become another of his famous (or infamous) trademarks. During this appearance, the Cuban leader already gave us a glimpse of his ambition not only to revolutionize Cuba, but to carry his model to the rest of the Third World.
Kempski has left an impressive description of that historic debut:
His pocket is the size of a suitcase, and looks quite heavy as well. Fidel Castro carries it in front of him as he comes to the rostrum. Those assembled in the UN’s domed hall are suddenly prey to the terrible thought that the pocket holds Castro’s manuscript; they give expression to their feelings with a noise like the steam escaping from a weary locomotive.… A rumor is going around that Fidel Castro will speak for six hours – a suspicion strengthened when he opens his pocket. But he has no manuscript, only a huge thermos flask.… Castro has already been eight days in the city.… He engages the people’s nervous curiosity all the more, as many Americans unhappy about their country’s previous Cuba policy cherish the hope that in the end he will prove to be a politician who is not on the side of the Communists.… Finally he is there, before the General Assembly of the United Nations. He is wearing his usual battle fatigues, freshly washed and even ironed.… He is the only speaker not to make use of any aids. His sentences are carefully chosen, and are delivered as slowly as if he wanted to impress each individual word for ever on his listeners. He never slips up, never repeats himself. His expression is controlled, his gestures sparing. He speaks Spanish in a melodiously rising intonation, with a touch of sadness.
Fascinated is the only word for the attention with which the Assembly listened to him. Mostly looking straight up, Castro sounded “like the hero of a tragedy,” or like a man alone at the Wailing Wall voicing the torment of his people.
It took him four and a half hours. He by no means slammed shut the door leading to the United States, nor did he behave at all like a Communist. Rather, he gave the impression of being a reluctant ally of world communism, who saw a Cuban-style popular front as the only way out. He wanted people to believe that this was because Washington had tried, through constant acts of aggression, to keep the island in a semi-colonial status. His evidence may be demagogically distorted, but it is not pure lies.… Castro gave much food for thought in the audience he left behind.… This positive impact, exceeding all expectations, was nevertheless weakened by the noisy support from Khrushchev and his entourage … , like that of a fan at a football match who has lost all restraint.21
Khrushchev’s message could no longer be disregarded: Cuba, like it or not, had a new and powerful friend. Very soon it would come in useful, when private American creditors hit by the expropriations persuaded the US authorities to confiscate Castro’s turboprop aircraft. In the end, Khrushchev had to lend him the means to fly back to Havana.
The CIA, the Mafia, and the Bay of Pigs
On January 7, 1959, one day before his triumphant entry into Havana, Castro received news that the United States had officially recognized his Urrutia government. On January 10 US Ambassador Smith, a friend of Batista’s within the State Department, had to hand in his resignation, and on February 19 Philip W. Bonsal arrived in the Cuban capital to take his place. For the first time in many years the post was now occupied by a career diplomat, who, unlike his predecessors, had a command of the Spanish language as well as ample diplomatic experience in Latin America (most recently, as US ambassador in Bolivia). On March 6 he had his first interview with Fidel Castro, at the latter’s villa in Cojímar. “Friendly, cordial and knowledgeable about Cuba – a good Ambassador” was Castro’s verdict, as reported in Time magazine.22
Yet, by March 10, high-ranking members of the US administration were beginning to think of Castro as a dead man walking; that was the day when his assassination featured on the secret agenda of a National Security Council meeting in Washington.23 “It remains a mystery,” writes Szulc, “why the National Security Council discussed Castro’s liquidation within five days of his first encounter with the American ambassador.” Possibly it had something to do with fears that the United States might lose more than just Cuba. Castro’s first trip in January, to Venezuela, had already set the alarm bells ringing. As Jacob Esterline, then CIA station chief in Caracas, later put it: “It seemed to me that something like a chain reaction was occurring all over Latin America after Castro came to power. I
saw … that a new and powerful force was at work in the hemisphere.”24
As the year wore on, the State Department and CIA increasingly concluded that the Castro regime should, like the Arbenz government in Guatemala, be removed through an invasion supported by local opposition forces. On December 11 Colonel J. C. King, head of the CIA’s Western hemisphere division, wrote a memorandum to CIA boss Allen Dulles and his colleague Richard Bissell (who, as deputy director for covert operations, had already had responsibility for the removal of Arbenz in 1954), in which he recommended getting tough with Castro: that is, proceeding to eliminate him. “Many informed people,” he wrote, “believe that the disappearance of Fidel would greatly accelerate the fall of the present government.”25
Already in late October President Eisenhower, evidently reeling from the Matos affair, had ordered the CIA to fund the anti-Castro groups linking Florida with the clandestine opposition inside the country. At one point, Castro later revealed, there were approximately 300 “counter-revolutionary organizations;” but since many gusanos were actually secret servicemen “we knew more about what they did than they knew themselves.”26
In March 1960, at a meeting of the CIA landing task force, Colonel King intimated to his superiors that “unless Fidel and Raúl Castro and Che Guevara could be eliminated in one package, … this operation [would] be a long drawn out affair.”27 And on March 17, under pressure from Vice-President Nixon, Eisenhower finally gave the green light for an invasion and instructed CIA boss Allen Dulles to train up a force of Cuban exiles. In a parallel process, the opposition inside Cuba was supposed to fan the flames of unrest and to undermine the system through selective attacks. According to a secret CIA memorandum written on May 5, 1961, after the Bay of Pigs adventure,28 800 sabotage operations destroyed 300,000 tons of sugarcane in the period prior to the invasion; another 150 arson attacks devastated 42 tobacco warehouses, two paper factories, a number of shops and “twenty-one apartments belonging to Communists;” and bombs were set off at a power station and the railway station. Eisenhower gave strict orders that the United States should officially appear to have had nothing to do with all this.