When I congratulated Peter after the event, he asked if he could work for me in Havana. I told him that I would be delighted to have him. I liked his spirit and can-do attitude. More important, he said he would be pleased to manage my new outreach program. We decided that Peter’s title would be special assistant, because it would be imprudent to announce that he was in charge of a program that the Cuban government disliked. It was better to be discreet so that, at least for a while, Cuban state security wouldn’t harass him.
All that remained was for the State Department to officially approve funding for the outreach program. The memo went forward not to Secretary Powell, whom I already considered an ally, but to archconservative John Bolton, undersecretary for arms control and international security. Fortunately, Bolton had heard about the project and was an enthusiastic backer. His close ties to Cuban American conservatives meant that he, like them, viewed the outreach program as a way of undermining the Castro regime’s iron grip on the flow of information to the Cuban people.
Once the program had been approved, Peter reached out to leaders within the Cuban American community and convinced them of the value of our outreach program, turning them from skeptics to supporters of the US Interests Section. Historically, many in the community wanted to see the Interests Section closed because they disapproved of relations with the Cuban government. Now, for the first time, they applauded the work of our diplomats rather than accusing us of cozying up to Castro. We had become a willing and useful tool in their long struggle against the revolution. But the conflict between their views and mine simply went underground. The conservative diaspora wanted to believe that the objective of our activities was to incite revolt, while I believed that we were promoting a process that would lead to gradual and peaceful change. I was confident that undermining the regime would not work because Cuban security would sooner or later expose our efforts and jail the dissidents. It was far more effective to operate within the boundaries established by the regime, and equally subversive to give Cubans the tools to take greater control of their lives and, over time, the manner in which they were governed.
To protect the recipients I ensured that the Interest Section’s outreach activities were neither clandestine nor illegal. I wanted to ensure that we did not harm the dissident community by embracing its members too tightly. They had sufficient problems without being accused of being pro-American. Therefore we were prudent in the manner in which we expanded our outreach. We placed computers in the waiting area of the consular section so visa applicants and anyone else, including the dissidents, could access the Internet from the Interests Section. We improved and expanded our assistance to libraries that were managed by civic and religious groups, as well as by dissidents, by providing more books, magazine subscriptions, and shelving. We distributed directly to independent journalists a kit that contained a tape recorder, which delighted them and likely annoyed the Cuban government, but not sufficiently to cause retaliation. We also hosted events for dissidents in our homes, helping the independent librarians and journalists to network with each other. This type of assistance would certainly not inspire any group to resort to violence. Very likely Castro understood this and that was why Cuban state security did not interfere with our efforts. Fidel had become somewhat more tolerant of dissent, but he also allowed no activities that he could not easily extinguish. If our efforts ever became dangerous to regime survival, he would shut us down either by jailing the dissidents or throwing me out of the country—and likely both.
Conservative Cuban American organizations wanted us to provide cash funding directly to the dissidents, but Senator Chris Dodd (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was adamant that we not cross that line. He feared that if we did so the Cuban government would claim that their opponents were being “paid” by our government and accuse them of treason. In addition, critics of our outreach program would claim that such funding would prove that the dissidents were simply our pawns. Prudently, we did not fund the dissidents, but we did fund a few civic projects for religious organizations, which were unlikely to be jeopardized by receiving our money.
The USAID assistance program was equally benign and managed separately from the outreach program. During the years in which I was in charge of the US Interests Section (1999–2002), the USAID program was principally carried out by small, Miami-based nongovernmental organizations that were managed by Cuban Americans. Their main activities were distributing medicines, used clothing, sports equipment, and household items to the Cuban people, many of whom had friends and families in Miami. David Mutchler, a USAID officer, looked after this Cuban American cottage industry that benefited the diaspora as much as it helped the Cuban people. If the Cuban government had considered USAID’s program a threat, Mutchler would have been denied a visa, thus preventing him from visiting Cuba. I believe that the Cuban government tolerated the aid program because it lessened the poverty among recipients without challenging the government’s control. The goods provided by the USAID contractors were brought into Cuba by “mules”—members of the Cuban diaspora who were paid to deliver them. The program had limited impact, and it certainly wasn’t directed toward inciting internal revolt. The Cuban government simply ignored it, and even the dissidents had their complaints. Marta Beatriz Roque, a major dissident, once snapped, “We aren’t beggars, we don’t need your castoffs.”
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Castro unexpectedly reached out to the Bush administration. Cuba offered medical assistance, including blood and health care brigades, as well as intelligence on terrorists. While the Bush administration did not accept these offers of assistance, we appreciated the newly cooperative attitude displayed by the Cubans. Another positive sign was that the Bush administration did not retaliate against Cuba when a senior Defense Intelligence Agency official, Ana Belén Montes, was revealed to have been spying for Cuba. It was likely because they were distracted with much larger issues that followed the September 11 attacks.
The arrest of Belén Montes resolved the mystery dubbed Spidey at the US Interests Section. Every night for several months, US government temporary duty personnel—I called them night watchers—slept in one of the Interests Section’s vault-like offices to ensure that our building was not penetrated by a Cuban spy. In my opinion, this was a pointless exercise. I told the intelligence agencies that it was impossible for anyone to enter the Interests Section due to the marine guards and cameras that monitored the building day and night, as well as the heavy combination safe doors guarding the entrances to rooms where classified materials were kept. When one of the night watchers suffered an emotional breakdown and was discovered curled up in the bathtub of her room at the Hotel Riviera I decided that enough was enough. I told the intelligence agencies that it was ridiculous to imagine that someone might crawl up the glass facade like Spider-Man, pry open a window, and slip into the Interests Section. My suggestion to end the night watcher program was summarily rejected. The intelligence community was clearly worried about some unknown vulnerability at the Interests Section.
Nevertheless, I suggested that the night watchers not be lodged at the Hotel Riviera, where the woman had had her breakdown. I knew from personal experience that the Riviera was heavily penetrated with all manner of Cuban security. On my first visit to Havana, ten years earlier, I had arrived at the Riviera to find state security loitering by the reception desk. It was clear to me, even though I was new to Cuba, that these men in white Guayaberas (the popular Cuban shirt) worked for the Ministry of the Interior and that their assignment was to monitor foreign guests—especially American officials. They stood alone or in pairs, most of them smoking, all keeping an eye on my every move. Matters deteriorated further as I walked off the elevator that had stopped and started at every floor. A man scurried down the darkened hall, and when I stepped into my room it reeked of cigarette smoke. Two shabby pictures were lopsided, and I suspected that behind them were listening devices. Wh
at I disliked most about this experience was the attempt to intimidate me by making it clear that I was being watched.
Ten minutes later I slipped down the back stairway where cement had been gouged out of the walls, perhaps from decay or an attempt to conceal the heavy black wires that drooped over the stairwell. I took a taxi to Old Havana, where I checked in at the newly renovated Hotel Inglaterra, located next to the Gran Teatro de la Habana and a few blocks from the Museo de la Revolución, which featured the cabin cruiser Granma, in which Fidel and his rebels had sailed to Cuba in 1956 to reignite their revolution. Not long after I had settled in, I got a call from a friend who warned me that the hotel had connected and reconnected his call several times. He concluded, “Vicki, I think you are being monitored.” I laughed and told him that Cuban state security had undoubtedly caught up with me.
In the Spidey case it turned out that Cuban state security was not the culprit. There was no Cuban spy who climbed the Interests Section’s walls in the dark of night. Rather, Belén Montes, the senior US intelligence official, was the culprit. I suspect that she betrayed her country for love of Fidel and the revolution, because she did not receive any money for her crimes.
Castro’s offer of assistance and cooperation after the 9/11 tragedy must have impressed Washington because, in response to my urging, the State Department offered Cuba assistance after Hurricane Michelle, the strongest storm in nearly fifty years to strike the island. The hurricane made landfall at the Bay of Pigs on November 3, 2001, and then raged across the breadth of the island, ravaging Pinar del Rio, Havana, and Cayo Coco. Over 590,000 tourists, students, and residents were evacuated, 150,000 of them in and around Havana. The Category 4 storm severely damaged the sugarcane crop, Cuba’s principal export, and destroyed property, but few were killed due to the island’s extraordinary program of emergency response. The most dilapidated buildings along the Malecón came down, but Eusebio Leal Spangler’s restoration saved Habana Vieja. Ultimately, Venezuela’s oil subsidies saved Cuba from bankruptcy. Chávez allowed Castro to postpone payments for Venezuelan petroleum and over time almost doubled Cuba’s subsidized oil from fifty-three thousand barrels to ninety thousand barrels. In return, Castro raised the number of Cuban advisers and experts serving in Venezuela from twenty thousand to forty thousand.
As the New Year approached, it seemed that 2002 might be the moment to grasp the hand that Castro was offering. Over the past year, both countries had benefited from a more positive relationship. There was no longer any chance that hard times would lead Cubans to rebel and neither would our outreach or assistance programs. The country had survived eight years on its own from 1991, when it lost Soviet subsidies, until the advent of Chávez’s largess in 1999. Cuba had ceased supporting revolutions abroad and, as far as I was concerned, was only kept on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism for domestic political reasons as a sop to Cuban Americans. The American people were in favor of normalizing our relationship with Cuba, and it felt like the time had come to further loosen our policy from the captive snares of the Cuban diaspora.
If President Bush continued to allow this less threatening approach, it could lead to more political freedom and space for dissent and civil society on the island. Over time the Cuban government might even become more pragmatic and open to economic, if not political, reform. (I did not imagine that the regime was then or is now in any danger of dissolution.) Thus, an opening with Cuba might be achieved, especially since there was one man in the United States who had the credibility with Castro that could lead to a new more positive relationship. That man was Secretary of State Colin Powell.
CHAPTER 10
HAVANA, MY AFGHAN HOUND
SOME YEARS AFTER I LEFT CUBA, RICARDO ALARCÓN, CASTRO’S point man for all things American, said that except for my Afghan hound and my “little radios,” I had been a good envoy. It struck me as an amazing admission that a hound dog and the hundreds of small AM/FM/shortwave radios that we had distributed to the Cuban people had unsettled Fidel Castro and the Cuban government! It seemed to me proof that had Cuban Americans engaged rather than isolated Castro, they might have helped unravel the revolution. Humor can be a powerful tool in exposing the follies and foibles of a leader to his citizens, just as Hans Christian Andersen’s short tale The Emperor’s New Clothes reveals. The emperor in Andersen’s story walks through the streets naked believing he is resplendent in a magnificent suit until a child exclaims, “He isn’t wearing anything at all.” Like the emperor, Fidel’s advisers refused to criticize him for fear that they might appear stupid or lose their jobs. But I did openly criticize Fidel, becoming one of the few people who ever publicly challenged or poked fun at Cuba’s emperor.
This is the story of how my Afghan hound, Havana, her Afro-Cuban trainer Ana Maria González, and I made Castro look foolish and back down. I named my hound Havana because she was beautiful, like the city for whom she was named. Fidel would later claim that I had insulted Havana, the city, by doing so, but that was just sour grapes. I don’t believe Fidel cared much for either Havana, since he allowed the city to fall into such disrepair during his long reign. In any case, it wasn’t an insult. Fidel would treat both Havanas—the city and the hound—badly and later make amends. He eventually pardoned my hound and belatedly began to restore the city.
Amid the national upheaval that followed the revolution, gangsters and celebrities—like actress Rita Hayworth and her husband Prince Aly Khan, vanished along with Havana’s elites. But dog shows and vintage cars remained, providing proud owners and admirers with reminders of stolen pleasures. Cubans loved their show dogs, almost as much as the old American cars they tenderly coddled through the decades. Everyone who has visited Cuba has either seen or ridden in a beautifully restored or still broken-down 1950s Buick, Chevrolet, or other vintage car, which often serve as taxicabs for foreign visitors. But few have seen Havana’s international dog shows, complete with judges, ribbons, and Afghan hounds. A few show dog owners come from abroad, but most participants are Cubans from Havana and a few from Camaguey and Pinar del Rio. They often proudly show their dogs on a large vacant lot alongside the Malecón, which is only partially hidden by a low wall whose blue and white paint has long-ago worn away.
My hound, thanks to her trainer, Ana Maria, was a star in Havana’s dog shows until I received a letter from Amalia Castro, president of the Cuban Afghan Hound Association. (I never learned whether she was related to Fidel, but I doubt it.) It began “Distinguida Señora Vicky [sic] Huddleston,” and proceeded to tell me that my membership in the Afghan Hound Association had been canceled (my best translation of darle de baja). Amalia claimed that I was unworthy of membership because of my government’s and my hostility and transgressions, which were enumerated as inviting dissidents to my home, the official residence of the chief of the American diplomatic mission in Cuba, and briefing professors and students who had visited Cuba as part of the Semester at Sea program. The letter concluded, “You should understand that your government’s and your actions are incompatible with the morale of the Afghan Hound Association.”
I had been booted out of a dog club for incompatibility with its morale! Only in Cuba could such a bizarre incident occur. It made no sense whatsoever—that is, it made no sense if taken at face value, but politically it made all the sense in the world. Amalia, possibly Fidel, and certainly the security services thought that they could punish me without leaving fingerprints. They knew that I loved my dog and was protective of her Cuban trainer, Ana Maria. But to their dismay, I was neither angry nor intimidated. I thought the letter was hilarious and should be shared with the public. The office of Cuban affairs, contacted Al Kamen who penned the Washington Post’s “In the Loop” column that shares rumors about government officials. He wrote, “The Cuban Regime has gone as low as you can go in communist dogma. Huddleston got a letter yesterday—in the midst of the popular Westminster Kennel Club televised competition, no less—that she and Havana were being expelled from t
he Afghan hound club of Cuba. Guess if they can’t kick Huddleston, they’ll try to kick her dog. Hmmm, wonder if her counterpart here, Fernando Remirez, has a dog?”
This set off a minor international media frenzy riddled with canine metaphors. The Miami Herald reported that Charles Shapiro, the director of Cuban Affairs, told them, “We will not retaliate against the (Chief of the Cuban Interests Section) Remírez’s dog, I’m not going to stoop so low as to sniff around that one.” And the same day, February 13, 2001, Agence France-Presse picked up the scent: “The United States snarled Tuesday at Cuban attempts at doggie diplomacy, branding as ‘Orwellian’ the ouster of Washington’s envoy from a Havana canine club.” The State Department spokesman said, “I guess we would say that it’s unfortunate that the Cuban government would even kick Ambassador Huddleston’s dog.” A smiling senior official—probably Secretary of State Colin Powell—pointed out, “We’ve always known that Castro’s bark is worse than his bite.” We were on a roll. The State Department was enjoying having a chance to pull Cuba’s chain. NPR’s Morning Edition host Renee Montagne wanted to know, “Why are there Afghan hounds in Cuba? I mean, they’re long-haired show dogs. Isn’t the very idea of a show dog rather counterrevolutionary?” I slipped my diplomatic leash, telling her, “Well, I hope so. I would welcome a little counterrevolutionary activity in Cuba.”
Karen DeYoung in an article, Message Sent Via Diplomatic Pooch, captured perfectly my intent to tease Castro, she wrote, “Relations between Cuba and the United States have been frosty for more than forty years, but a new bilateral low is always just around the corner. First there was the Cuban revolution and all the nasty things they said about us. Then the embargo, and those Soviet nuclear missiles. Castro assassination attempts. Cuba shoot-down of civilian aircraft. Elián González. This month’s nadir came when the leadership of the Cuban National Afghan Association—that the longhaired canines, not the turbaned South Asians—kicked the top American diplomat in Havana, an ardent Afghan, lover and owner, out of their club. Yesterday, the Americans retaliated with the weapon most readily at hand—ridicule.
Our Woman in Havana Page 14