Download Cuba, Castro, Eisenhower - Orchestrating the Instruments of

Cuba, Castro and Eisenhower
Batista, Cuban Liberals and the United States
Fulgencio Batista, a former army sergeant, had stepped down from power in Cuba in 1944 - a
wealthy man. He returned to power in a coup d'etat in 1952, his regime quickly recognized by
the United States. The United States had just signed an agreement with Cuba to install an Army,
Navy and Air Force mission on the island and to provide military equipment under a mutual
defense assistance act. Strategists in the U.S. were pleased with Batista, who was known to them
as a reliable friend and a good anti-communist.
Batista took power with claims that he would honor all international agreements, guarantee lives
and property and continue public work projects. The army was Batista's main support in Cuba,
and also many Cuban businessmen gave Batista their support. Some from the middle and upper
classes were opposed to Batista, while his major opposition was from students - also from the
upper and middle classes.
Students were planning a massive demonstration and a symbolic burial of Cuba's 1940
Constitution. Four student leaders were arrested and taken to Batista. He told them they were
free but that he had a great desire to talk with them. He told them he had taken power to avoid a
civil war, that he needed the cooperation of all Cubans in order to reorganize the institutional life
of the nation and that the Constitution had not died. One of the student leaders accused Batista of
planning to ban all opposition, and Batista denied it, saying opposition was a necessity,
especially a constructive opposition. Batista said he had once been an idealist youth like they,
that he admired them and was not against their demonstration itself but against the "profession
agitators" who will capitalize on it.
One of the agitators that Batista worried about was a law student, Fidel Castro. Castro was the
son of a wealthy plantation owner who leased a large tract of land from the United Fruit
company and sold his cane back to it. Fidel presented himself as an idealist. His hero, he said,
was José Martí, Cuba's poet and fighter for independence of the 1890s. Fidel was an aggressive
idealist - one of the gun-toting student activists involved in the sometimes violent conflicts
between rival student political groups.
Castro wanted to be rid of Batista through armed uprising, and in 1953, at age 26, he organized a
dawn assault on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. He had a hundred youths
willing to follow him, poorly armed but aiming to capture weapons. The plan went awry. The
insurgents were overwhelmed, and the defending soldiers went on a rampage, beating to death
those who had surrendered, and they fanned out and killed anyone they believed had taken part
in the attack. In Santiago de Cuba, it was a bad time to be bandaged after some minor mishap.
The bishop in Santiago de Cuba, with others, met with Batista and stopped the killing and torture
of those suspected of having taken part in the attack on the barracks. Only a few of Castro's
hundred followers survived. Castro and his half-brother Raúl were captured a week after the
attack, Castro found hiding in the hills, after widespread protest had made treatment of prisoners
more circumspect. Cuba's middleclass, liberals, and professional people had been outraged by
the army's rampage - especially people in Santiago de Cuba. Castro was imprisoned and tried. He
made a speech and won considerable publicity and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, Raúl to
13 years.
On November 1, 1954, Batista held elections, and, with only half of the electorate going to the
polls, he won for himself the presidency. No one had run against him. He constructed a cabinet
and was inaugurated in February 1955. The Constitution of 1940 was said to have been restored,
and Batista told Cuba's Congress that he wanted amnesty and peace but that there could be no
amnesty during terrorism. He was referring to occasional bombings by dissidents and the
continuing political turmoil at the university.
But congressmen in the weeks ahead were enthusiastic for an amnesty. Prosperity was in the air,
brought on in part by an agreement to sell reserve sugar to the Soviet Union. Vice President
Richard Nixon came in February and gave Batista the Eisenhower administration's blessing.
Batista was relaxed and confident. The period of uncertainty, he believed, was over. In midApril, he granted amnesty, and among the prisoners released were Fidel and Raúl Castro, who
went into exile in Mexico.
Economically, Cuba was thriving in the mid-fifties. Cuba's main export, sugar, was getting a
good price in the United States. American investors were pouring money into the country and
already owned half of Cuba's sugar industry. International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT)
bought Cuba's telephone service. U.S. citizens were investing in petroleum and mining. And U.S.
goods of all kinds were marketed in Cuba. The United States and Cuba were enjoying a good
relationship. Seventy-one percent of Cuba's imports were from the United States and 67 percent
of its exports went to the United States.
Tourism was Cuba's second largest industry - before tourism had become common for the
average U.S. citizen. People with money went to Cuba to enjoy its fine beaches - for their
exclusive use - for the casino gambling, lewd shows and open prostitution of all kinds. A
percentage of the money won from the tourist industries went straight to Batista, and Batista paid
his go-betweens well.
The best casino was run by a U.S. gangster, Meyer Lansky, a casino that for a while had the only
honest gaming. The Cuban government had Lansky instruct and transform Cuban-owned casinos
into honest establishments similar to his.
Among Latin American nations, Cuba was third in per capita income. (Venezuela was first at
around 38 percent of the average income of U.S. citizens, and Argentina was second at 24
percent.) The average Cuban made 19 percent of what the average U.S. citizen earned, and in
Cuba a large gap existed between better off families and the common Cuban worker. Forty-three
percent of the population was still rural. Sugar cane harvesting occurred only a couple months of
the year, leaving cane cutters unemployed the rest of the year. Telephones were still for the
middle and upper class in the major cities - one person in 38 having a telephone.
On paper everyone had the same rights. The races got along, the Cubans accustomed to
intermixing. Batista was one of the mixed - part Chinese, Spanish-Indian and Afro-Cuban. But
there was some elitism. Even Batista had been refused membership in Havana's elitist yacht club.
What concerned U.S. strategists about Cuba was its Communist Party. Cuba had a Communist
Party of about 25,000 - in a population of a little more than 6 million. The Party had described
Castro's assault on the military barracks as putschist, a dirty word for Marxist-Leninists. They
saw Castro as politically immature, and they believed in working peacefully within Cuba's labor
movement while waiting for that wonderful day when the Cuban masses would acquire the
correct consciousness for taking power.
Batista had tolerated them for years before 1954. He had had communists in his cabinet during
the Second World War, and between 1952 and 1954 he had had a couple of communists in his
cabinet representing labor. Then in 1954 he had outlawed the Party. That was the year that John
Foster Dulles had gone to a meeting of the Organization of American States in Venezuela and
had asked for a strong resolution against "intervention" in Latin America by "international
Communism." And in April 1955, Dulles' brother Allen, head of the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency, visited Cuba, inspected Cuban security and complained about the danger posed by the
Cuban communists.
Fidel Castro and the Overthrow of Batista
The attack on the army barracks in 1953 increased Fidel Castro's prominence among those
opposed to Batista. Castro went to the United States and gathered $9,000 in contributions from
Cubans there, before complaints from the Batista regime resulted in the U.S. taking away his
visa, forcing him to leave. Castro also received donations from Puerto Ricans, Costa Ricans,
Venezuelans and from Cuban businessmen who hoped that Castro would end corruption and
mismanagement.
It was about corruption that Castro complained. People with Batista were enriching themselves,
he said, while the pockets of his movement were empty. Castro also complained of "foreign
trusts" stealing millions from Cuba and of money being wasted in "gambling, vice, and the black
market."
Castro's movement was called the 26 of July Movement, named for the day he had attacked the
Moncada barracks. For his movement, Castro bought arms, and he bought a boat named Granma
for $20,000 from an American living in Mexico City. With Castro were 130 others, but only 81
could fit on the boat, and, on November 25, 1956, the 81 chugged down the Tuxpan River
(halfway between Tampico and Veracruz) and into the Gulf of Mexico, hoping they were not
noticed by Batista's agents. After a miserable seven days at sea they ran aground in a swamp at
the foot of the Sierra Maestras in eastern Cuba. An airplane had spotted them, and Batista's army
was waiting for them. A government report claimed that forty of the invading rebels had been
killed, including Castro. Only a few of the rebels made it into the Sierra Maestras - among them
Fidel, his brother Raul and a gun toting, asthmatic Argentinean physician, Che Guevara.
These few survived with the help of people who lived in the mountains, while outside the Sierra
Maestras few knew of the rebel's existence. In early 1957, Herbert Mathews of the New York
Times sneaked by army checkpoints, interviewed Castro, and returned to New York. Publication
of his interview was a sensation and was followed by Cuba's minister of defense calling the story
a fantasy. The New York Times published a photo of Mathews and Castro, making the Batista
regime look foolish, and some who disliked Batista drew hope. Soon a cell of support among
Cubans working at the US naval base at Guantánamo, in Cuba, was stealing arms for the rebels
in the hills.
Castro had competition in his fight against Batista. On March 13, 1957, a student-based urban
group stormed Batista's palace, seized a radio station and tried to assassinate Batista. After fierce
fighting they were crushed. Castro denounced the assault. The real fight, he said, was in the
mountains. Batista denounced the communists for having participated in the attack, although the
communists were not involved.
Through 1957, Cuba's economy boomed, and investments continued to pour into the country,
while few tourists came. Castro's guerrilla campaign won an occasional small battle here and
there around the Sierra Maestras, his purpose not to kill but to capture more weapons. And his
force grew slightly, to nearly a hundred.
It was the attitude of the great numbers outside the Sierra Maestras that Batista had to worry
about, including those who filled the ranks of his army. If a significant number of them went
over to Castro then Castro would win. And the Eisenhower administration worried about this
also. By 1958, the Eisenhower administration was concerned about the war for hearts and minds
being lost in Cuba. The United States was also facing criticism from the middle and left side of
the political spectrum.
It was in May, 1958, that Vice President Richard Nixon made his goodwill tour of Latin
America. Young people hostile to dictatorships and American support for them attacked Nixon's
motorcade. A thousand troops rushed to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo in preparation to
rescue the vice president. The president of Costa Rica, José Figueres, said he was sorry about the
treatment of Nixon, but he criticized the U.S. for talking much about the human dignity that the
people in the Soviet Union should have and nothing about the dignity of people living under
dictatorships in Latin America, and he said that the U.S. should not sacrifice human rights for the
sake of "investments."
The Eisenhower administration refrained from intervening militarily to rescue Batista, and
Batista supporters were angered, claiming that the U.S. was not being as tough as it should and
reminding U.S. leaders that communism threatened Latin America.
In 1958 Batista launched a major military offensive against Castro, sending a force of some
10,000 against him. But his troops performed poorly in the mountains. And, fortunately for
Castro, it was not a point in history in which helicopter gunships and their trained crews would
be available to Batista's forces.
Batista's forces were more exposed than the rebels who waited for them, striking when they
wanted to and then withdrawing. Communications between the various army units was poor,
while Castro's communications were superb. Batista's offensive failed. Morale among his troops
fell. Castro acquired more weapons, including a tank, and more people saw the coming of a
Castro victory and a Batista defeat.
By December, a force under Che Guevara was expanding into central Cuba, and soldiers were
deserting Batista's army in droves. Castro's success was creating support for revolution in the
cities - to be described as a little engine (the guerrillas) driving the big engine (the masses).
Batista decided that the game was up. On New Year's Eve he and a group he had invited to his
party boarded three planes. Batista's plane flew to the Dominican Republic - ruled then by the
brutal Trujillo family. The other two planes went to the United States, avoiding Miami, where
many Cubans were hostile toward Batistianos.
On New Year's Day, 1959, people in Cuba were joyed by Batista's departure. In the days that
followed, people cheered the rebels riding in trucks coming from the hills to proclaim the success
of the revolution. Castro came and walked among the cheering crowds, unafraid of assassination
and relishing the opportunity to appear as a man of the people.
Castro versus the Eisenhower Administration
On January 4, Castro named a judge, Manuel Urrutia, president. Urrutia's cabinet consisted of
other anti-Batista liberals, but it was Castro's opinion that Urrutia would wait for him before
making a decision.
The immediate agenda for Castro was Cuba's economy, which had been declining in 1958 - a
year of recession in the United States. In March, the telephone industry was nationalized in
response to a special hostility that had risen in Cuba against International Telephone and
Telegraph.
Also on Castro's agenda was his version of war-crime trials. Around 700 of Batista's enforcers
were executed, the firing squads creating discomfort in the United States where they were shown
on television - a discomfort Castro attributed to people in the U.S. not knowing Batista-like
repression and torture except through novels and movies. Castro compared his shootings of
Batista murderers favorably against the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where
innocent women and children had been killed. And there was other rhetoric from Cuba that
displeased people in Washington.
In April, Castro went to the United States, invited by the American Society of Newspaper
Editors. Castro and his entourage went determined to avoid appearing to be begging for help
from the Yankees. Some in the Eisenhower administration recognized that Cuba could use loans
to restore its economy, and they hoped that help and good relations might tame Castro. Others in
the administration were uninterested in helping Castro. They disliked Castro's talk of neutralism
in the Cold War as much as they did the neutralism of Nasser of Egypt and Nehru of India. Some
saw Castro's rhetoric as a danger to the standing of the United States in various nations across
Latin America. The new Secretary of State, Christian Herter, did not like Castro's emotionalism
and his waving his arms around when he spoke. And suspicions existed that Raul Castro and Che
Guevara had communist sympathies.
Eisenhower snubbed Castro, leaving town to play golf. Instead, Vice President Nixon met Castro
in his office, and they talked for three hours. Nixon asked about elections, and Castro told him
that the Cuban people did not want elections, that they were suspicious of elections and believed
that elections produced bad government. Nixon asked him about the over-ruling of the acquittal
of Batista's aviators, and Castro spoke of carrying out the will of the people, leaving Nixon with
the impression that Castro was too inclined to follow the passions of the mob rather than leading
a nation in a rule of law. Nixon asked Castro about communism, and, after Castro left, Nixon
complained that Castro was "either incredibly naive about communism or under communist
discipline." His guess, he said, was the former.
Castro laid a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial, and he was invited to meet the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, telling them that he would not expropriate the property of Americans and
that he was against dictatorships and for a free press.
The Eisenhower administration chose to wait and see how Castro behaved rather than to offer
him any assistance. The director of the CIA, Allen Dulles (brother of John Foster Dulles who had
just died of cancer) spoke of the possibility of using punishment politics. He spoke of Congress
reducing the purchasing of Cuban sugar if Castro did not prove cooperative.
Castro returned to Cuba having said to a Social Democrat friend that he was not a communist
because communism was the dictatorship of a single class and meant hatred and class struggle.
On television he told the Cuban people that extremists had no place in the Cuban revolution. He
appeared to be a free-enterprise nationalist but in search of remaking Cuban society.
By now Cuba's Communist Party had joined the Castro's revolution - not unlike the Bolsheviks
in early 1917 had joined the revolution that overthrew Tsar Nicholas of Russia. And the
Communist Party complained that Castro was endangering Cuba's revolution.
Castro instituted agrarian reform. With exceptions having to do with productivity, estates larger
than 1,000 acres were subject to expropriation, with compensation paid to the owners in 20-year
bonds at 4.5 percent annual interest - higher interest than MacArthur's land reform in Japan, and
repayment faster than the land reform in Taiwan. In the future, land could be bought only by
Cubans; after the harvest of 1960, sugar plantations would have to be owned by Cubans; and
agricultural holdings were to be no less than 67 acres. Sugar company stocks fell on the New
York Stock Exchange. U.S. executives protested to the U.S. government. More talk erupted in
the U.S. about communism in Cuba, and the Eisenhower administration argued with Cuba over
its new agrarian reform.
During the agrarian reform, hostility was in full swing between anti-communist members of
Castro's revolution (the 26 of July Movement) and its communist members. The anti-communists
were calling the communists melons (green on the outside, as in green fatigues, and red on the
inside). The Communists denounced the red-baiting and spoke of the need for unity. Bombs
exploded in Havana, believed to be the work of counter-revolutionaries, and Castro veered to the
side of those supporting unity.
In increasing numbers anti-communists began abandoning Castro. President Urrutia objected to
the heightened radicalization of Castro's movement and resigned. So too did had his prime
minister, José Cardona. Osvaldo Dorticós was now Cuba's new president and Castro was the
prime minister. One of Castro's old anti-communist compañeros, Hubert Matos, was soon to be
arrested for treason and having disrupted agrarian reform. He was to be tried and sentenced to 20
years in prison.
In September, Khrushchev visited the United States and met Eisenhower at Camp David,
creating what was called the "spirit of Camp David." The Eisenhower administration believed it
was doing enough for peace, and it was facing criticism from some who thought it was being too
soft on communism.
In February, 1960, the Soviet Union's Anastas Mikoyan visited Cuba to inaugurate a Soviet trade
exhibition. He signed a five-year trade agreement with Cuba, promising the purchase of one
million tons of sugar annually. Cuba was to receive petroleum products in exchange. The
Eisenhower administration decided to work with anti-Castro groups inside Cuba in hope of
overthrowing Castro.
In March, a French ship, carrying a shipment of Belgian small arms, exploded in Havana harbor,
killing dozens of workers and soldiers. Castro publicly accused the CIA of sabotage, and the
U.S. protested the accusation. Also in March, Eisenhower ordered the CIA to train Cuban exiles
for an invasion of Cuba - with Batistianos forbidden to join the force. Eisenhower approved $13
million for the project.
Soviet tankers arrived with crude oil. The three oil refineries in Cuba - the Esso and Texaco
refineries and a refinery owned by the British - refused to refine the oil. Castro nationalized the
refineries. Castro saw the U.S. as having declared economic war on Cuba. And the following
month - July - the Cuban government passed a nationalization law providing for the
expropriation of foreign holdings in Cuba. Two days later, President Eisenhower reduced the
purchase of Cuban sugar by 95 percent, cutting off 80 percent of Cuban exports to the United
States. Then the Soviet Union announced that it was willing to buy the sugar that had been
destined for the United States.
Anti-Castro Cubans in the Sierra Maestras, trying to replicate Castro's success, were caught and
shot. Neighborhood watch groups had arisen, watching for people bent on sabotage, treason and
violence against the revolution. Castro was now more strongly on the side of those advocating
unity and opposing "red-baiting," and his old friend Che Guevara was describing himself openly
as a communist.
Seeing a threat of U.S. intervention, Khrushchev announced that Cuba could be defended with
rockets. He declared the Monroe Doctrine an anachronism and said that the Soviet Union would
purchase the sugar that the U.S. was rejecting. On August 16, members of the CIA launched their
first assassination attempt against Castro, with poisoned cigars.
A leading journalist in the U.S., Walter Lippmann, anticipated the tactics from the 1970s towards
Communist China, favoring economic cooperation and friendly relations with Cuba. He
criticized the Eisenhower administration for having "pushed the Cubans behind the iron curtain."
The right thing to do, he wrote, "is keep the way open for their return."