Our Woman in Havana

by Vicki Huddleston

  Again, I won the argument, but once again, only temporarily. To avoid a public showdown with me, Reich waited a few months until I left Cuba and then proceeded with his plan. Castro, as I anticipated, responded by confining American diplomats to Havana. The result was that President Bush and the State Department were informed more by rumor and wishful thinking than by solid, fact-based reporting. In retrospect, blinding the US Interests Section may have been exactly what Reich and conservatives had desired for years. If they couldn’t close the building, they could at least avoid dealing with the facts as America’s diplomats saw them. Instead, they could listen to their friends within the diaspora and interpret the “facts” as they wished. Perhaps this was an early harbinger of the “alternative facts” promoted by the administration of president Donald Trump?

  Fidel Castro waited until June 1 to respond to President Bush’s May 20 speech. In the eastern town of Holguin (not far from Birán, his birthplace), Castro warned, “Don’t be foolish, Mr. W; respect the intelligence of people capable of thinking. Don’t insult Martí! Show respect.” Castro might have been even more caustic had he known that as he was speaking Bush was giving a speech at the West Point Military Academy outlining his new doctrine of preemptive strikes. Certainly, Castro would have been worried that Bush might have Cuba in mind.

  By July 26 Castro’s tone had grown as harsh as Bush’s. In the small town of Ciego de Avila where he was celebrating the forty-ninth anniversary of the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks—the Cuban Revolution’s most important date—Castro claimed, “The smallest municipality in Cuba is stronger than all the scum that met Bush in the James L. Knight Center in Miami.” Still, he left open a small window, promising, “On this historical date for Cubans, I can assure you that we wish for a sincere, respectful, and fraternal friendship between the people of Cuba and the United States. Viva socialismo! Patria o muerte! Vencermos!” (Long live socialism! Country or death! We will be victorious!).

  I disliked Bush’s Big Bang policy. I was convinced that no matter how tough the rhetoric and how tight the embargo, it would not succeed in overturning the regime. I had little doubt that as relations deteriorated Castro would respond by curtailing the greater freedoms dissidents had gained during the past several years—most notably during the first eighteen months of Bush’s presidency. Inevitably, Castro would retaliate by cracking down on the dissidents and destroying the Cuban Spring. Everything my team and I had done to empower the Cuban people would be wrecked, and Cubans would again have to await another opportunity for change, which might not arise for decades.

  I decided to try one final time to convince Reich and my colleagues working on Cuba that a hostile approach would not succeed. I met with them in a conference room on the sixth floor of the State Department. They listened quietly as I reminded them that the dissidents were now stronger and more influential within Cuba than ever before, but that would undoubtedly end if we adopted a hostile policy. Project Varela had flourished because Castro believed the United States would continue its more liberal travel policy. But if the administration adopted a punitive policy, Castro would retaliate. He had already threatened to throw me out of the country, close down the US Interests Section, and end cooperation on migration if we didn’t stop distributing the AM/FM/shortwave radios. In response, I had modulated the distribution because—like it or not—Cuban state security could shut down our activities in a heartbeat if Fidel was willing to pay the price. The more hostile approach that we were taking would risk the outreach program and reduce the limited newfound freedoms available to ordinary Cubans. There was little discussion. Reich had won the policy battle, and it was time for me to admit defeat and leave the field. At the end of the meeting, a smiling Reich wished me good luck in my new assignment—as US ambassador to Mali. I was discouraged because I knew Reich was delighted that I would soon leave both Cuba and Latin America. My scheduled departure in September would remove a major obstacle in his fruitless campaign to squeeze Cuba to the point of internal collapse.

  Fortunes change rapidly when dealing with Cuba. Although Secretary Martinez had earlier asked me to stay in Cuba for another year, the domestic political winds had shifted. I would either be locked in a continuous battle with Reich and my peers, or I would have to acquiesce to the new hardline policy. I did not enjoy being continually at odds with the Bush administration, which had become the norm over the last few months, nor could I could carry out a policy with which I so deeply disagreed. I would leave Havana in September when I had completed my three-year tour. Now, my choice was either to accept the assignment to Mali or resign from the Foreign Service. Fortunately, I had always loved Africa, where I hoped I would avoid any major policy disputes.

  But policy differences were impossible to escape. In Africa and the Middle East, the Bush administration was engaged in its War on Terror, the rules of which had not yet been well defined. All too soon I had serious differences with Chuck Wald, the four-star general responsible for Africa, over how to confront terrorists operating in the Sahara. While we both wanted to defeat them, he preferred unilateral, long-range bombing attacks on the terrorists and insurgents in the region. I believed that the best way to defeat them was to coordinate US military operations with the Malian and regional armed forces. Blocked from bombing the terrorists, Wald focused on providing training and intelligence to regional allies, enabling them to carry out a military campaign, which destroyed the first Al-Qaeda group in the Sahara, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. Unfortunately, similar groups would emerge and terrorism would spread throughout the region. Much more on this subject can be found in Joshua Hammer’s excellent book The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.

  My daughter Alexandra, who had been staying with us in Cuba for the summer, was the first to leave. She had just completed a project consisting of ten photographs and ten paintings for Stanford University, where she was an undergraduate. Prior to leaving the island with her artwork, she took the precaution of obtaining permission from the Cuban authorities, who require that all art created or acquired in Cuba be approved for export. At the airport, Alexandra and I encountered an unpleasant customs official. She slowly unrolled each of the ten canvases, studied them, then silently rolled them back up and laid them on the table. Finally, she announced solemnly that she was confiscating a large painting of Fidel Castro and his rebels. It was Alexandra’s version of the iconic photograph, which appears on the banner of Granma, the Cuban government’s official daily newspaper, and is known to every Cuban. She had painted the figures of Fidel and his rebels holding aloft their guns in a victory salute in gray and black on a yellow background. Around the edge of her three-by-four-foot canvas, the word “Allure” was repeated as a border motif and, in the center of the canvas were the words, “Warning: Keep Out of Reach of Children. For Adult Use Only.”

  I quickly gathered up the paintings and walked away. I could imagine Fidel telling a visitor that the painting, which perhaps he would mount behind his desk, was made by the American ambassador’s daughter. Placing the paintings on a chair some distance away, I walked back to the official and announced, “Either these paintings will go with my daughter to California or remain with me in Cuba.” I wasn’t about to give in. After about an hour appealing to higher authorities, Alexandra departed with all her paintings.

  I received a farewell letter, “Bon Voyage, Mrs. Huddleston,” which was published on the front page of Granma. Fidel certainly approved the missive and he might even have written it. The author, Jean-Guy Allard, could have been a pseudonym for Fidel. The article was illustrated with a photo of me on the fifth-floor balcony of the US Interests Section. It began, “She is accompanied by a purebred Afghan hound, which she named Havana, and a cat, very disrespectfully called Martí, in great irreverence toward the nation in which she represented her country for three years.” I thought that Fidel had a sense of humor, but apparently not when it came to my pets. It seemed he was still annoyed that my prize hound Havana and I had em
barrassed him. The Granma article continued, “She came in September 1999, the first year of her presence was marked by the kidnapping of Elián González in Florida, she was seen observing mass demonstrations through her binoculars from the Interests Section balcony.” But when Bush came to power, according to Fidel (or Allard), “Vicky Huddleston the career diplomat suddenly abandoned all protocol to devote herself to the recruitment of agents from among the assiduous and remunerated dissidents and candidates for emigration.” In other words, I had been a good diplomat when I was carrying out Clinton’s instruction to manage the return of Elián, and a bad one when I supported Cuba’s dissidents, in accordance with Bush’s Cuba policy.

  An even worse offense was that I “handed out hundreds of small radios for the purpose of listening to the sermons of Radio Martí, the official US anti-Cuban radio station.” Fidel never seemed to understand that I didn’t care what Cubans listened to; what I cared about was giving them access to information. And then a final dig: “Mrs. Huddleston will be taking a break before embarking on her next adventure. The State Department has assigned the outgoing head [of the Interests Section] to the US Embassy in Mali, in faraway Africa. Far away from Otto Reich and her obsession with Cuba that in itself constitutes a recompense. Bon Voyage, Mrs. Huddleston.” My staff, knowing how much I would miss Cuba, if not Castro, signed the article, had it framed, and presented it to me as a farewell gift.

  My best gift was a letter from Secretary of State Colin Powell, which read in part, “In particular, I would like to commend you for your actions in helping the Cuban opposition move forward. Your realization that they had reached a new stage in their development and the help you gave them was an important early step in Cuba’s inevitable transition to democracy. Your radio giveaway program was particularly helpful; I believe it highlighted the importance of freedom of information. Your observation that we need to look past Fidel Castro and towards a transition was right on the mark, as were your thoughts on support for the opposition and civil society.”

  Thank you very much, Secretary Powell. Alas, President Bush’s decision to reject the moderate policies of his first years and return to a punitive policy meant that the greater freedoms that dissidents and civil society had enjoyed during the Cuban Spring of 2002 would not return until under another American president a decade later would reach out to the island.

  PART IV

  2002 AND BEYOND

  CHAPTER 16

  MYTHS, CONTRADICTIONS, AND LIES: BUSH, OBAMA, AND TRUMP

  ON JULY 4, 2002, I HOSTED AN INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBRATION at the American residence in Havana, which had been my home for the last three years. The celebration appropriately doubled as my going-away party. Sadly, it was already clear that US policy toward Cuba was changing from engagement to hostility and isolation. Still, it was a glorious summer afternoon, and I was dressed in a long, sleeveless, white linen dress. My husband Bob and I welcomed five hundred musicians, artists, diplomats, and dissidents. Cuban officials would not attend because I had included the dissidents. A long line of guests snaked from outside the main gates, across the front lawn to the wide-open double doors of my residence. Notwithstanding warnings by the Cuban government not to attend, and video cameras recording everyone who showed up, no one was going to miss this party.

  The musicians were the first to arrive and the first to leave. They couldn’t stay because they were expected to perform at Fidel Castro’s own Fourth of July party! To everyone’s surprise, Fidel had recently announced that he, too, intended to celebrate our Independence Day, and had invited Havana’s best musicians to play at the Karl Marx Theater with the world-famous Buena Vista Social Club. Still, we had a few attractions of our own. The great Cuban trumpeter José “El Greco” Crego played a few pieces before he joined the musicians’ exodus to Fidel’s party; the US Marine Corps detachment, elegant in their dress uniforms, presented the colors; and the “Star-Spangled Banner” was performed by John Easton, a popular American pianist. I kept my remarks brief, citing Cuba’s favorite American president, Abraham Lincoln, and my own, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During the party a reporter asked if I was upset that Fidel Castro was hosting a Fourth of July party to compete with my own. I replied that I thought it was a good sign that Fidel was celebrating our Independence Day.

  With the formalities over, the men in coats and ties or Guayaberas (the traditional Cuban dress shirts) and the women in cocktail dresses circulated throughout the gardens, taking photographs beneath the great bronze eagle that once nested atop the USS Maine Monument. Our chef had prepared pizza, pigs in blankets, grilled shrimp, and chicken on skewers. Cold beer and rum for the mojitos—for which the American residence was rightly famous—were provided courtesy of the Bacardi rum company. It was both a grand party and a poignant farewell as my time in Havana drew to a close. Even the New York Times covered the event in their July 4 issue, under the headline “Lighting Matches on the Fourth of July.”

  As the last guests departed I was feeling nostalgic. I had spent three great years in this wonderful house. On the walls, the paintings I had exhibited by Cuban exile artists were still hanging. I smiled as I remembered how Cuban officials had angrily claimed that my exhibit was an act of defiance designed to ruin Havana’s Biennial Art Festival. In a few days, the State Department would have the works carefully packed and returned to galleries in the United States and Mexico. As I walked around the gardens, I knew that I would miss it all—especially the job. Representing the United States in Cuba was both a unique and uniquely challenging assignment. While I looked forward to the future, I also knew that I would never again find myself in similar circumstances. I wondered how long it would be before we would have normal relations with Cuba. I would not have been shocked by the idea that it might take another twelve years before a US president would open relations with Cuba, but I never would have guessed that his successor would return to the old failed policies of the past.

  In the Granma article wishing me good riddance, Fidel Castro had claimed, “The representative of the Miami camarilla—the female general of those on the CIA payroll … chose the date of her country’s national holiday to end her diplomatic activities.” I still had two months left in Havana, but Fidel couldn’t wait for me to leave. Pretty soon he would wish me back. Even though I sometimes bested Castro in our diplomatic battles, I was always reasonable and respectful. A few years later, Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, confirmed this while attending a conference in Canada. He told the media that, except for my little radios and Havana the hound, I had been very professional.

  What Castro didn’t anticipate was that my replacement, Jim Cason, would make me look good by comparison. Cason was considerably more aggressive than I had ever been, mocking the regime and publicly criticizing Fidel Castro. In the view of his Cuban interlocutors, Cason was blatantly disrespectful—the one thing Castro and the Cuban government are unwilling to abide. Cuban officials uniformly refused to meet with Cason, who consequently lost any influence he might have had with the government. Neither could he meet with dissidents who lived outside Havana. After Otto Reich restricted the travel of Cuban diplomats to Washington, DC, Fidel Castro reciprocated by confining American diplomats within the city limits of Havana. Although President Bush did not renew Reich’s interim appointment as assistant secretary, the damage was done. Once the Cuban government realized that American diplomats were much more disadvantaged than their Cuban counterparts in Washington—who had open access to the US Congress, several trade and foreign policy interest groups, and a vibrant US media—the Cuban government refused to rescind the restrictive travel rules.

  Reich’s replacement was Roger Noriega, a former staffer to North Carolina’s Republican senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) and author of the draconian Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. Noriega’s views were similar to Reich’s; he believed that closing the US Interests Section in Havana would further isolate Cuba, and he hoped that Cason might make that a reality. He o
nce proudly explained, “We told our friend James Cason that if only he could provoke the Cuban regime to expel him from the country, we could respond by closing the Interests Section.” Cason did his very best to oblige Noriega, but Castro had a much smarter way of retaliating than by throwing Cason out of the country or closing our Interests Section: he targeted the dissidents.

  With a hostile United States on his doorstep—Cason at the US Interests Section and Noriega at the State Department—Castro wasn’t taking any chances. On the eve of the US invasion of Iraq and one year after the Cuban Spring, Castro ordered a crackdown on dissidents. The media aptly labeled it the Black Spring of 2003. There simply could not have been a more glaring example of the absolute failure of the Bush administration’s hardline policy. One year earlier, the Cuban Spring of 2002 had flourished because of Bush’s moderate approach, but less than a year after the administration adopted a hostile policy, Castro purged the human rights movement—which, upon this writing in 2017, still has not recovered.

  In March and April 2003, six months after Cason’s arrival, Castro arrested, summarily tried, and incarcerated seventy-five dissidents. The charges against them were acting against the “integrity and sovereignty of the state,” collaborating with foreign media, and destabilizing the country. Their worst crime was meeting with American diplomats and writing media articles critical of Cuba. Marta Beatriz Roque, who was especially close to Cason, was the only woman arrested; she was sentenced to twenty years. Another leading dissident arrested in the purge was independent journalist and poet Raúl Rivero. About a third of those given long sentences were independent journalists and librarians who had collaborated with Osvaldo Payá’s Project Varela. All of the jailed dissidents were engaged in promoting peaceful change—none incited violence—but that did not protect them from being jailed; in some cases, their loved ones were punished as well, by being fired from their jobs.