He then began to draw out his visitor’s political ideas. Recalling Jagan’s words of admiration for Harold Laski on Meet the Press, Kennedy observed that he himself had studied for a term under Laski at the London School of Economics and that his older brother had visited the Soviet Union with him. Jagan replied that the first book of Laski’s he had read was The American Presidency; he considered himself, he added, a Bevanite. We all responded agreeably to this, citing Bevan’s faith in personal freedom and recalling his belief that the struggle of the future would be between democratic socialism and communism. Jagan, after avowing his commitment to parliamentary government, went on to say that he also admired the Monthly Review and the rather pro-communist writings of Paul Sweezy, Leo Huberman and Paul Baran. George Ball and I pressed him on this point, declaring there was a large difference between Bevan and the Sweezy group. Jagan finally said, “Well, Bevanism, Sweezyism, Hubermanism, Baranism—I really don’t get those ideological subtleties.” Kennedy observed later that this was the one time when his exposition rang false.
For the rest Jagan spoke as a nationalist committed to parliamentary methods. When Kennedy asked how he conceived his relations with the communist bloc, Jagan inquired whether the United States would regard a trade agreement with the Soviet Union as an unfriendly act. Kennedy responded that a simple trading relationship was one thing; a relationship which brought a country into a condition of economic dependence was another. Ball described the case of Sékou Touré, who in order to recover his independence was now disengaging himself from the Soviet embrace.
The President avoided any discussion of aid figures. There were special problems here because Jagan was requesting $40 million—a figure all out of proportion to the size of his country, especially in relation to the competing needs of Latin American nations with much larger populations and closer bonds to the United States. For this and other reasons, it was decided after the meeting that no concrete commitments could be made to Jagan and that each project would have to be examined on its merits. Jagan was considerably upset on learning this and asked to see the President again. Taking advantage of the President’s usual free half-hour before luncheon, I reported these developments. Kennedy wholly agreed with the staff’s recommendation that he not receive Jagan a second time but instructed me to see him myself in view of the great British concern that Jagan not return disgruntled to British Guiana; perhaps a statement could be worked out which would give Jagan something to take home and satisfy the British without committing us to immediate action. Sitting down at his desk, he dashed off a longhand letter to Jagan, explaining that I came with his confidence, and asked Evelyn Lincoln to type it. When he looked at it again, he decided that it was a little cold, told me to “warm it up” and signed the warmed-up letter.
The President went on to express doubt whether Jagan would be able to sustain his position as a parliamentary democrat. “I have a feeling,” he said, “that in a couple of years he will find ways to suspend his constitutional provisions and will cut his opposition off at the knees. . . . Parliamentary democracy is going to be damn difficult in a country at this stage of development. With all the political jockeying and all the racial tensions, it’s going to be almost impossible for Jagan to concentrate the energies of his country on development through a parliamentary system.”
With William Burdett, a careful and intelligent Foreign Service officer, I saw Jagan that afternoon at the Dupont Plaza. He was in a desperate mood at the thought of going home empty-handed but brightened at the prospect of a statement. The final text, worked out after complicated negotiation in the next twenty-four hours, committed Jagan “to uphold the political freedoms and defend the parliamentary democracy which is his country’s fundamental heritage” and the United States to send a mission to determine what economic assistance we could give in support of the British Guiana development plan.
The problem was genuinely difficult. Assuming that Jagan would be the leader of an independent British Guiana, we estimated that, if we gave aid, there would be a 50 per cent chance of his going communist, that, if we didn’t, there would be a 90 per cent chance, and that we would all catch hell whatever we did. The State Department at first thought we should make the try; then Rusk personally reversed this policy in a stiff letter to the British early in 1962. AID was fearful from the start that assistance to British Guiana would cause congressional criticism and injure the whole aid program. The President, after meeting Jagan, had grown increasingly skeptical, but he was impressed by the British contention that there was no alternative. The British advanced this argument at every opportunity, though one always suspected that their main desire was to get out of British Guiana as quickly as possible and dump the whole problem on us (nor could one begrudge the Colonial Office its sarcasm when Americans, after bringing self-righteous pressure on London to advance the independence timetable in Africa, now kept urging delay in this case). Inside British Guiana the situation continued to disintegrate. In February 1962 frightening race riots broke out in Georgetown. Jagan, forgetting his objection to imperialism, requested British troops to help maintain order.
Thus far our policy had been based on the assumption that Forbes Burnham was, as the British described him, an opportunist, racist and demagogue intent only on personal power. One wondered about this, though, because the AFL-CIO people in British Guiana thought well of him; and Hugh Gaitskell told me that Burnham had impressed him more than Jagan when the two visited Labour party leaders in London. Then in May 1962 Burnham came to Washington. He appeared an intelligent, self-possessed, reasonable man, insisting quite firmly on his ‘socialism’ and ‘neutralism’ but stoutly anti-communist. He also seemed well aware that British Guiana had no future at all unless its political leaders tried to temper the racial animosities and unless he in particular gave his party, now predominantly African, a bi-racial flavor. In the meantime, events had convinced us that Jagan, though perhaps not a disciplined communist, had that kind of deep procommunist emotion which only sustained experience with communism could cure; and the United States could not afford the Sékou Touré therapy when it involved a quasi-communist regime on the mainland of Latin America. Burnham’s visit left the feeling, as I reported to the President, that ‘‘an independent British Guiana under Burnham (if Burnham will commit himself to a multi-racial policy) would cause us many fewer problems than an independent British Guiana under Jagan.” And the way was open to bring it about, because Jagan’s parliamentary strength was larger than his popular strength: he had won 57 per cent of the seats on the basis of 42.7 per cent of the vote. An obvious solution would be to establish a system of proportional representation.
This, after prolonged discussion, the British government finally did in October 1963; and elections held finally at the end of 1964 produced a coalition government under Burnham. With much unhappiness and turbulence, British Guiana seemed to have passed safely out of the communist orbit.
5. THE SECOND PUNTA DEL ESTE
British Guiana, however, was a marginal problem. The central threat remained Fidel Castro, whose broadcasters were now inveighing daily and agents conspiring nightly against the democratic regimes of Latin America. “The duty of every revolutionary,” as Castro’s Second Declaration of Havana put it in February 1962, “is to make revolution.” Fidel himself, who had talked wistfully in 1960 about converting the Andes into “the Sierra Maestra of the American continent,” now predicted in 1962 on the first anniversary of the Bay of Pigs that Betancourt and his regime would be overthrown in a year. Nor were such statements merely exercises in abstract prophecy—as the Venezuelan government learned when it found a great cache of weapons, unquestionably Cuban in origin and provenance, secreted for terrorists at a point along the Caribbean coast.
The Organization of American States had handled all this in 1960 and 1961 in somewhat gingerly fashion. The United States favored some form of collective action, or at least exhortation, against Castro; but when this was proposed at a meeting of
foreign ministers at San José, Costa Rica, in August 1960, most of the American republics demurred. Some, like Mexico and Argentina, cherished the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of their fellow republics; others, like Bolivia, feared the domestic political repercussions of an anti-Castro stand; still others did not want to antagonize Castro or make him further dependent on the Soviet Union. In some cases, no doubt, there was a furtive sympathy for David against Goliath, especially when Goliath seemed primarily agitated about economic properties he had previously appropriated himself. The tendency was to regard the Cuban matter as a private quarrel between Washington and Havana rather than as an inter-American responsibility. The resolution finally adopted at San José condemned interference by extra-continental powers in the hemisphere but said nothing about Cuba.
Castro’s growing fierceness during 1961, however, began to disturb his Caribbean neighbors. Venezuela and Colombia broke off diplomatic relations, and Lleras Camargo, increasingly concerned, called for a new meeting of foreign ministers to consider the Cuban problem. By a vote of 14 to 2, with five nations abstaining, the OAS Council resolved in December to hold such a session in January 1962. Again the resolution did not mention Cuba by name, and the split vote—the fact that such significant nations as Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico all either abstained or were opposed—showed the division in the hemisphere. While Lleras Camargo sought mandatory diplomatic and economic sanctions against Cuba, President Arturo Frondizi of Argentina came to Palm Beach at the end of the month in order to tell Kennedy, in effect, that the Castro problem could not be met head-on, that Washington was obsessed with Cuba at the expense of the long-run needs of the hemisphere and that a public OAS fight over Cuba would only strengthen Castro.
Within the United States government, deLesseps Morrison, our ambassador to the OAS, urged economic and diplomatic sanctions even at the risk of splitting the OAS. He argued that, if we brought enough pressure on the Latin-American countries, they would come along anyway, no matter how unwillingly. The President was less sure. The point, he told Morrison at a White House meeting early in January, was to isolate Castro, not ourselves. The day before the delegation left for Punta del Este, Kennedy held a final strategy meeting with Rusk, Goodwin and me. Rusk was enigmatic about the course we could pursue. Goodwin contended cogently that we should aim for the hardest result consistent with the best possible consensus, but not sacrifice substantial consensus to symbolic hardness. Kennedy agreed. With his appreciation of internal political problems in other countries, he said that he did not want a hard line at Punta del Este to set off a chain reaction of government crises across the continent. Also he expressed concern that the voting of sanctions by a narrow margin made up of small states representing a minority of the population of Latin America would be regarded as a victory for Castro.
And so we flew south through the equatorial night, arriving in Montevideo on January 21. A motorcade took us on to Punta del Este, a placid town dotted with palm trees meandering amiably along a wind-swept beach. In a few hours the tactical problem began to fall into shape. The Central American foreign ministers were committed to a hard line; some were under instruction to walk out if sanctions were not voted. Argentina, Brazil and Mexico were passionately opposed to sanctions. Within the United States delegation, Morrison, Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper and Congressman Armistead Selden favored an all-out effort for sanctions. Speaking with a certain sour force at the first delegation meeting, Hickenlooper said he saw no point in his trying to talk to delegates from other countries because he did not know what our policy was. “I don’t even know that we have a policy. It seems to be like the father who told his son, ‘Sell the cow for $25 if you can; but, if you can’t sell it for 25, accept 15.’ That is no policy. I still don’t understand why we can’t go all out for sanctions.” He later said, “The Washington bureaucracy doesn’t understand the depth of public feeling on this matter. But Congress knows how deeply people care. If we do not come back with very strong action against Castro, the whole Alliance for Progress will be in trouble.” Rusk suggested that fourteen votes—the bare two-thirds necessary—for sanctions might not be enough but, if we could get sixteen, it would be different. Goodwin observed that the meeting had two objectives—to get an immediate condemnation of Castro and to strengthen the future capacity of the OAS to deal with Castro; if we pushed the first objective too far, we might lose the second.
The conference displayed Rusk at his best. Here all his qualities—his intelligence, command of detail, inexhaustible patience and effortless inscrutability—precisely fitted the requirements of the occasion. With members of Congress and the Caribbean foreign ministers harassing him on one side and representatives of the most important South American states harassing him on the other, he strove coolly to work out the best possible combination of condemnation and consensus. There were twelve sure votes for a hard policy; but among the dissenters were the largest countries of the hemisphere—Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile—as well as Bolivia and Ecuador. Uruguay and Haiti hung uncertainly in the middle. The foreign minister of Haiti, recognizing the value of his vote, calmly remarked to Rusk that he came from a poor country in desperate need of aid; obviously this need would affect his vote. If the United States, which had been disengaging from aid to Haiti because of the Duvalier dictatorship, would agree to finance particular projects. . . . Rusk turned away and later sent him a message saying that, while the United States as a matter of policy did not associate economic aid and political performance, now that Haiti itself had made the link, it had to understand that any future aid would be scrutinized in the light of its role at Punta del Este.
In the meantime a new idea was emerging out of the incessant buzz of talk in the lobbies and corridors of the San Rafael Hotel—that the government of Cuba be excluded from the inter-American system. This idea had been informally advanced by Argentines seeking an alternative to mandatory sanctions. It could be done at once at this meeting; it would therefore spare wobbly governments the pain of taking something home which their parliaments would have to debate and ratify. Moreover, if the Argentines liked it, it might appeal to the Brazilians too. This proposition, along with partial economic sanctions and the establishment of a special security committee, now became the heart of the United States resolution. The congressional delegation, after 48 hours’ exposure to the atmosphere of the conference, agreed that this was the best we could get and said they would defend it in Washington.
My own particular assignment was to prepare, with Walt Rostow and Goodwin, Rusk’s address to the conference. The Secretary’s speech, with its social and economic emphasis, provided a relief, welcome even to the Latin Americans, from the juridical disquisitions standard for such gatherings; and it went over very well. Rusk concluded by asking the foreign ministers to recognize that Cuba’s alignment with “the Sino-Soviet bloc” was “incompatible” with the inter-American system, to exclude the Castro regime from the organs and bodies of that system, to end trade, especially in arms, between Cuba and the rest of the hemisphere and to seek means to defend the Americas against Castro’s indirect aggression.
The problem now was to find the missing votes for the resolution. Uruguay boggled at the proposal that the OAS exclude Cuba since the OAS Charter made no provision for expulsion; then Assistant Secretary Woodward solved these juridical scruples by arguing ingeniously that the declaration of incompatibility would exclude Cuba automatically. As for Haiti, we finally yielded to blackmail and agreed to resume our aid to the airport at Port au Prince.* There remained the Caribbean states which still wanted mandatory sanctions; but Kennedy in Washington called Lleras Camargo in Bogotá and asked him to instruct his representative to retreat from the original insistence. The other Caribbean foreign ministers followed Colombia’s example.
The result was a substantial success. Though only fourteen nations voted explicitly to exclude Cuba from the inter-American system, all twenty republics—the whole hemisphere except
for Cuba itself—supported the declaration of incompatibility and the exclusion of the Castro government from the Inter-American Defense Board; nineteen voted to create a Special Consultative Committee of Experts on Security Matters to combat Cuban subversive activities; seventeen voted to suspend arms traffic with Cuba; and sixteen voted to follow this up with study looking toward further extensions of the trade embargo. The resolution on security, calling on the OAS to take all appropriate steps for “individual or collective self-defense” against “the continued intervention in this hemisphere of Sino-Soviet powers,” turned out to be of particular importance. Much more progress was made toward the isolation of Cuba within the hemisphere than could have been anticipated a few months before.
6. THE RETURN OF THE MILITARY COUP
Punta del Este I had set in motion the grand project for the democratic modernization of Latin America; Punta del Este II now launched the indispensable supporting policy for the containment of Castro. But the meeting did not avert a political chain reaction. The Frondizi government, after originally floating the idea of excluding Castro from the OAS, had mysteriously glided away from its own formula and finally voted against it. One wondered later whether Frondizi, the artful dodger, may not have thrown out the idea in order to lure us away from sanctions without ever intending to support it himself. So far as his own military were concerned, it was almost the last knot in an overtwisted rope. When the Peronistas made impressive gains in the March election, the rope was at the end. The military now arrested Frondizi and installed the president of the senate, the next man in the line of constitutional succession, as the new President of Argentina.
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