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BURGLARY OR BANDITRY?
A Study of Super-power Perceptions of
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS – OCTOBER
1962
By E. Amatei Akuete, B. Sc. (Econ.)
Hons. (Lond.), M. A. (JHU)
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Page Five (Bibliography)
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The two authors continue to argue
that the origins of the revolution may lie more in
the fact that Cuba had been for over fifty years “a
dumping ground for North American filth (a
convenient locus of gambling casinos, brothels, and
cheap abortions), a dependent - and later subsidized
– one-crop economy, and repeated victim of
thoughtless and casual political interventions.”
This is valid so far as it goes. However, even
though Cuba ranked high among the Caribbean group of
nations and the Latin American States in per capita
income, education and social services, such facts
bore no relation to the actual economic well-being
of the citizens. There were grave inequalities in
income distribution and in the enjoyment of social
services as between the urban dweller and the
‘campesino’ (i.e. the rural person) as well as
between the white Cuban and the ‘mulatto’ and the
black. Equally galling were serious disparities in
income levels between the ‘obrero’ (i.e. the worker
or labourer) and the ‘funcionario’ or bureaucrat.
Considering these facts and the
oppressive political conditions under which the
Cubans lived at that time, one may conclude that the
causes of the revolution were as much political as
economic. It is true that by its very success, the
revolution brought U.S. influence and control over
the island to an end. However, the achievement of
that goal seems much more than “a simple political
defiance of the United States” as Stillman and Pfaff
suggest.
If the primary aim of the revolution
was to bring about social justice to the Cuban
people in the fullest possible exercise of their
freedom and independence, then it was logical that
the revolution should, from the outset, seem a
serious threat to American business and those
political officials who were thriving on graft and
plunder. As opposition to the Batista regime grew
in strength, those who stood to lose gave greater
support to that dictatorship which frantically tried
to stay in power by increased oppressive measures.
Meanwhile, anti-American sentiment in Cuba grew and
as the popularity of the revolutionary group
increased, American officials in Havana and the
business magnates became alarmed at the turn of
events. It was therefore not surprising that in the
all-too-familiar American predilection of viewing
all social and economic reform as “communist
inspired”, Castro’s government was classified as
communist, or at least having communist tendencies.
Many have wondered precisely when
Castro became a Communist or whether he is ever one
at all. This debate may continue for some time in
the absence of any conclusive evidence to support or
deny his conversion to communism. Admittedly, his
ideas about government and social reforms were
radical. But throughout the early years of the
revolution, Castro described the Cuban experience as
a “socialist revolution” and not communism.
It is also true that Castro and his
Fidelistas (i.e. members of the 13th
March and 26th July Movements including
Armando Hart, former Minister of Education; Captain
Antonio Nuñez Jimenez, former President of the Cuban
Academy of Sciences; and Commandante Faure Chomon,
ex-Minister of Communication and first
post-Revolution Ambassador to Moscow) all preferred
to be considered as followers of the great Cuban
revolutionary patriot, poet and journalist, Jose
Marti (1853-1895) with intense passion for freedom
and justice, self-reliance and national development
and not as Marxist-Leninists. They were vehemently
opposed to colonial and other political domination,
rejected dictatorship and corruption and championed
the cause of internal freedom etc. Above all, they
treasured national sovereignty and did not want to
be tied to the apron strings of any external power,
notably, the super-powers.
In political philosophy, therefore,
Castro in the early 1960s was more in the mould of
the great leaders of the then Non-Aligned Movement –
Gamel Nasser (Egypt), Jawaharlal Nehru (India),
Josip Tito (former Yugoslavia), Kusno Sukarno
(Indonesia) and Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana) - a
nationalist, pure and simple. He was intent on being
his own boss, directing the affairs of his own
country as best as he could and choosing Cuba’s
friends and allies without let or hindrance from
anyone else or from any other country.
It is a fact that the Communists
joined forces with Castro during the last stages of
the revolution and he agreed to work with them
although they (the communists) had previously
condemned his movement as a band of adventurers or
“petty bourgeoisie”. Consequently, at best, Castro’s
union with the Communists can be described as a
classical “marriage de convenance” in Cuban
politics. It also demonstrated once again the
astuteness of the Communists to collaborate with a
government they might intensely dislike, as they did
during the earlier Batista period in 1943 when, for
example, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez became a Cabinet
Minister in Batista’s Administration. In
collaborating with the Castro regime, the apostles
of Marxism acted like carpet-baggers and managed to
reap large political dividends where they had not
sowed.
On Castro’s part,
there is no question that he had in the Communists,
a group of highly educated, professional and
experienced men in politics and administration who
helped in no small way to keep the Revolutionary
government afloat during the initial and most
crucial years of its existence. Some of those
gentlemen were Dr. Juan Marinello, former Rector of
the University of Havana and, later, Cuban
Ambassador to UNESCO; Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, ex-
Head of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform
and former Minister of Economic Affairs; Lazaro Peña
and Anibal Escalante, both well-versed in Trade
Union matters and organization; Dr. Osvaldo Dorticos,
First President of post- Revolution Cuba from July
1959 to December 1976; Blas Roca, Secretary of the
Cuban Communist Party at the time; Cesar Escalante
and Flavio Bravo.
It is no exaggeration to suggest that the roles
played by these gentlemen coupled with the
determination of the regime to succeed, saved the
revolution from collapsing under the weight of
governmental responsibilities and the myriad social
demands and expectations of the Cuban people during
those critical years.
To say this is not
to deny the existence of serious mismanagement and
general disorder within the machinery of government
at all levels. But neither can one contend, as
Schlesinger does, that “the year 1959 saw the clear
commitment of Castro’s revolution to the
establishment of a Marxist dictatorship in Cuba and
the service of the Soviet foreign policy in the
world…”
because of the part the played by these gentlemen in
the general administration of Cuba in that year.
Indeed, anyone personally familiar with life and
conditions in Cuba* in the early 1960s, would find
Schlesinger’s assertion overstated, if not
altogether untenable.
There is ample
evidence that in 1959, there was intense dislike of
the Communists by the Fidelistas. Consequently,
apart from Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, no member of the
Communist Party had a cabinet position in the Cuban
Government. Furthermore, it is submitted that even
long after Castro had declared himself as having
been “intuitively Marxist-Leninist” on December 1,
1961, he still had serious misgivings about the ‘old
guards’ (as the Communists were called in Cuba), and
the schism between them and the Fidelistas only
seemed to have subsided after the establishment of
the United Party of the Socialist Revolution (Partido
Unido de la Revolucion Socialista – PURS) on
February 22, 1963.
In spite of the merger and support given to Castro
by some of the leading Cuban Communists as indicated
above, one would still argue that the fusion of the
parties was by no means complete and distrust of the
Communists by the Fidelistas continued till about
the mid-1960s.
There are really few
events in Cuba which can readily lend themselves to
correct interpretations based on absolute knowledge
of all the facts. Despite that difficulty, one may
hazard a conclusion that what others like
Schlesinger consider Castro’s embrace with communism
did not exist in 1959 and, even in 1963, it was
still only a lukewarm flirtation with that
doctrine. As Suarez rightly notes “it was no
accident that neither Blas Roca nor Carlos Rafael
Rodriguez nor any other member of the former
People’s Socialist Party (PSP) leadership was
included in Castro’s entourage on his first visit to
the Soviet Union. In fact, those who accompanied
Castro to the Soviet Union were all ‘Castroites’
(another name for the Fidelistas) including Emilio
Aragones, Sergio del Valle, Guillermo Garcia, Regino
Boti, and Raul Curbelo.”
It had earlier been remarked that
historically, the U.S. has always shown a tendency
to regard any “radical” social and economic reforms
designed to help the broad masses of people,
especially the poor, as “communist” or
“communist-inspired”. In view of this proclivity,
as early as July 1959, most Americans in government
and private life had already labelled Castro’s
revolution as being “communist”, therefore,
constituting a ‘betrayal’ of the revolution and a
threat to the security interests of the United
States. This innate fear of and hostility towards
the revolution increased as the Cuban government
proceeded to nationalize the extensive American
industrial and commercial interests on the island.
In his Foreign
Affairs article, Bonsal concedes that although
Americans controlled no more than a third of the
Cuban sugar production, that one-third production
was “the most important and perhaps the most
profitable third. Besides, many American companies
owned or controlled vast (italics for
emphasis) Cuban cane plantations” as well as mills.
Furthermore, according to Bonsal, “the active
exploitation of Cuba’s important nickel resources
was in the hands of Americans…and the cement plant
which supplied the booming construction of Havana
was American-owned and operated…”
It seems the most
embarrassing revelation in U.S.-Cuban relations at
the time is Bonsal’s observation that “the United
States was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba
that…the American Ambassador was the second most
important man in Cuba, sometimes even more important
than the President (of Cuba)”.
If that indeed was the case - and there is hardly
any reason to doubt that - then the situation
described above was tantamount to “American
domination”
of the island.
Schlesinger
describes Philip Bonsal as “a skilled and
liberal-minded professional” who was indeed
objective enough to realize that, taken as a whole,
the impact of American business interests in Cuba
“was irritating, stifling and frustrating to the
rising sense of Cuban nationalism.”
Despite that scenario, it was quite baffling that
the U.S. Government and many American officials,
political leaders in Congress as well as journalists
and media commentators found nothing wrong with that
American posture in Cuba.
Another important
point to note is that, while U.S. businessmen and
politicians were having a field day in Cuba, Bonsal
with all his stature as a “skilled and
liberal-minded professional” was strangely throwing
his weight around in Cuba. It may be recalled that
in an interview with Castro on September 5, 1959,
Bonsal described statements which a Cabinet Minister
of his host government had made as “outrageous.”
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