CUBA,
In 1959, a rebel, Fidel Castro, overthrew the reign of Fulgencia Batista in Cuba; a small island 90 miles off the Florida coast. There have been many coups and changes of government in the world since then. Few if any have had the effect on Americans and American foreign policy as this one.
In 1952, Sergeant Fulgencia Batista staged a successful bloodless coup in Cuba .
Batista never really had any cooperation and rarely garnered much support. His reign was marked by continual dissension.
After waiting to see if Batista would be seriously opposed, Washington recognized his government. Batista had already broken ties with the Soviet Union and became an ally to the U.S. throughout the cold war. He was continually friendly and helpful to American business interest. But he failed to bring democracy to Cuba or secure the broad popular support that might have legitimized his rape of the 1940 Constitution.
As the people of Cuba grew increasingly dissatisfied with his gangster style politics, the tiny rebellions that had sprouted began to grow. Meanwhile the U.S. government was aware of and shared the distaste for a regime increasingly nauseating to most public opinion. It became clear that Batista regime was an odious type of government. It killed its own citizens, it stifled dissent. (1)
At this time Fidel Castro appeared as leader of the growing rebellion. Educated in America he was a proponent of the Marxist-Leninist philosophy. He conducted a brilliant guerilla campaign from the hills of Cuba against Batista. On January 1959, he prevailed and overthrew the Batista government.
Castro promised to restore democracy in Cuba, a feat Batista had failed to accomplish. This promise was looked upon benevolently but watchfully by Washington. Castro was believed to be too much in the hands of the people to stretch the rules of politics very far. The U.S. government supported Castro's coup. It professed to not know about Castro's Communist leanings. Perhaps this was due to the ramifications of Senator Joe McCarty's discredited anti-Communist diatribes.
It seemed as if the reciprocal economic interests of the
U.S. and Cuba would exert a stabilizing effect on
Early on however developments clouded the hope for peaceful relations. According to American Ambassador to Cuba, Phillip Bonsal, "From the very beginning of his rule Castro and his sycophants bitterly and sweepingly attacked the relations of the United States government with Batista and his regime".(3) He accused us of supplying arms to Batista to help overthrow Castro's revolution and of harboring war criminals for a resurgence effort against him. For the most part these were not true: the U.S. put a trade embargo on Batista in 1957 stopping the U.S. shipment of arms to Cuba. (4) However, his last accusation seems to have been prescient.
With the advent of Castro the history of U.S.-
These actions and the U.S. reaction to them set the stage
for what was to become the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the end of
U.S.-
Castro promised the
After secretly drawing up his Land Reform Law, Castro used
it to form the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (
These seizures were protested. On January 11 Ambassador
Bonsal delivered a note to Havana protesting the
As this continued Castro was engineering a brilliant propaganda campaign aimed at accusing the U.S. of "conspiring with the counter revolutionaries against the Castro regime"(9). Castro's ability to whip the masses into a frenzy with wispy fallacies about American "imperialist" actions against Cuba was his main asset. He constantly found events which he could work the "ol Castro magic " on, as Nixon said , to turn it into another of the long list of grievances, real or imagined, that Cuba had suffered.
Throughout Castro's rule there had been numerous minor attacks and disturbances in Cuba. Always without any investigation whatsoever, Castro would blatantly and publicly blame the U.S..
Castro continually called for hearings at the Organization of American States and the United Nations to hear charges against the U.S. of "overt aggression". These charges were always denied by the councils. (10)
Two events that provided fuel for the Castro propaganda furnace stand out. These are the "bombing" of Havana on October 21 and the explosion of the French munitions ship La Coubre on March 4, 1960.(11)
On the evening of October 21 the former captain of the
rebel air force, Captain Dian-Lanz, flew over Havana and
dropped a quantity of virulently anti-Castro leaflets. This was
an American failure to prevent international flights in
violation of American law. Untroubled by any considerations of
truth or good faith, the
This outburst constituted "the beginning of the end " in
U.S.-
Up until 1960 the U.S. had followed a policy of non
intervention in Cuba. It had endured the slander and seizure
of lands, still hoping to maintain relations. This ended,
when, on March 4, the French munitions ship La Coubre arrived
at Havana laden with arms and munitions for the
Castro and his authorities wasted no time venomously
denouncing the U.S. for an overt act of sabotage. Some
observers concluded that the disaster was due to the careless
way the
Castro's reaction to the La Coubre explosion may have been
what tipped the scales in favor of Washington's abandonment of
the non intervention policy. This, the continued slander, and
the fact that the Embassy had had no reply from the
The American posture of moderation was beginning to become, in the face of Castro's insulting and aggressive behavior, a political liability. (16)
The new American policy, not announced as such, but implicit in the the actions of the United States government was one of overthrowing Castro by all means available to the U.S. short of open employment of American armed forces in Cuba.
It was at this time that the controversial decision was
taken to allow the CIA to begin recruiting and training of
ex-
Shortly after this decision, following in quick steps, aggressive policies both on the side of Cuba and the U.S. led to the eventual finale in the actual invasion of Cuba by the U.S!
In June 1960 the U.S. started a series of economic aggressions toward Cuba aimed at accelerating their downfall.
The first of these measures was the advice of the U.S. to
the oil refineries in Cuba to refuse to handle the crude
petroleum that the
Upon receiving the refusal Che Gueverra, the newly appointed head of the National Bank,and known anti-American, seized all three major oil company refineries and began producing all the Soviet crude,not just the 50% they had earlier bargained for. This was a big victory and a stepping stone towards increasing the soon to be controversial alliance with Russia.
On July 6, a week after the intervention of the refineries, President Eisenhower announced that the balance of Cuba's 1960 sugar quota for the supply of sugar to the U.S. was to be suspended. (18). This action was regarded as a reprisal to the intervention of the refineries. It seems obvious that it was a major element in the calculated overthrow of Castro.
In addition to being an act of destroying the U.S. record for statesmanship in Latin America, this forced Cuba into Russia's arms and vice-versa.
The immediate loss to Cuba was 900000 tons of sugar
unsold. This was valued at about $100000000.(19) Had the
Castro had announced earlier in a speech that action
against the sugar quota would cost Americans in Cuba "down to
the nails in their shoes" (21) Castro did his best to carry
that out. In a decree made as the Law of Nationalization, he
authorized expropriation of American property at Che Gueverra's
discretion. The compensation scheme was such that under
current U.S. -
The Soviet Unions assumption of responsibility of Cuba's
economic welfare gave the
On January 6, 1961, Castro formally broke relations with
the United States and ordered the staff of the U.S. embassy to
leave. Immediately after the break in relations he ordered
full scale mobilization of his armed forces to repel an
invasion from the United States, which he correctly asserted
was imminent. For at this time the Washington administration,
under new President-elect Kennedy was gearing up for the
President Kennedy inherited from the Eisenhower-Nixon administration the operation that became the Bay of Pigs expedition. The plan was ill conceived and a fiasco.
Both Theodore Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger describe the President as the victim of a process set in motion before his inauguration and which he, in the first few weeks of his administration, was unable to arrest in spite of his misgivings. Mr. Schlesinger writes -"Kennedy saw the project in the patios of the bureaucracy as a contingency plan. He did not yet realize how contingency planning could generate its own reality." (23)
The fact is that Kennedy had promised to pursue a more successful policy towards Cuba. I fail to see how the proposed invasion could be looked upon as successful. The plan he inherited called for 1500 patriots to seize control over their seven million fellow citizens from over 100000 well trained, well armed Castroite militia!
As if the plan wasn't doomed from the start, the information the CIA had gathered about the strength of the uprising in Cuba was outrageously misleading. If we had won, it still would have taken prolonged U.S. intervention to make it work. This along with Kennedys decision to rule out American forces or even American officers or experts, whose participation was planned, doomed the whole affair.
Additionally these impromptu ground rules were not relayed to the exiles by the CIA, who were expecting massive U.S. military backing!
The exiles had their own problems; guns didn't work, ships sank, codes for communication were wrong, the ammunition was the wrong kind - everything that could go wrong, did. As could be imagined the anti-Castro opposition achieved not one of its permanent goals. Upon landing at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961, the mission marked a landmark failure in U.S. foreign politics. By April 20, only three days later, Castro's forces had completely destroyed any semblance of the mission: they killed 300 and captured the remaining 1200!
Many people since then have chastised Kennedy for his decision to pull U.S. military forces. I feel that his only mistake was in going ahead in the first place, although, as stated earlier, it seems as if he may not have had much choice.
I feel Kennedy showed surer instincts in this matter than
his advisors who pleaded with him not to pull U.S. forces. For
if the expedition had succeeded due to American armed forces
rather than the strength of the exile forces and the anti-Castro movement within Cuba, the post Castro government would
have been totally unviable: it would have taken constant
American help to shore it up. In this matter I share the
opinion of 'ambassador Ellis O. Briggs, who has written "The
Bay of Pigs operation was a tragic experience for the
Beyond its immediately damaging effects, the Bay of Pigs fiasco has shown itself to have far reaching consequences.
Washington's failure to achieve its goal in Cuba provided the catalyst for Russia to seek an advantage and install nuclear missiles in Cuba. The resulting "missile crisis" in 1962 was the closest we have been to thermonuclear war.
America's gain may have been America's loss. A successful Bay of Pigs may have brought the United States one advantage. The strain on American political and military assets resulting from the need to keep the lid on in Cuba might have lid on Cuba might have led the President of the United States to resist, rather than to enthusiastically embrace, the advice he received in 1964 and 1965 to make a massive commitment of American air power, ground forces, and prestige in Vietnam.
The threat of exportation of Castro's revolution permeates U.S.-Central and South American policy. (Witness the invasion of Grenada.)
This fear still dominates todays headlines. For years the U.S. has urged support for government of El Salvador and the right wing Contras in Nicaragua. The major concern underlying American policy in the area is Castro's influence. The fear of a Castro influenced regime in South and Central America had such control of American foreign policy as to almost topple the Presidency in the recent Iran - Contra affair. As a result the U.S. government has once again faced a crisis which threatens to destroy its credibility in foreign affairs. All because of one man with a cigar.
In concluding I would like to state my own feelings on the
whole affair as they formed in researching the topic. To
start, all the information I could gather was one-sided. All
the sources were American written, and encompassed an American
point of view. In light of this knowledge, and with the
advantage of hindsight, I have formulated my own opinion of
this affair and how it might have been more productively
handled. American intervention should have been held to a
minimum. In an atmosphere of concentration on purely
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