FREE ESSAY ON FIDEL CASTRO

FIDEL CASTRO

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. However,
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 ashington. 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 Cuban politics. Cuba had been economically bound to find a market for its #1
crop, sugar. The U.S. had been buying it at prices much higher than market price. For
this, it received a guaranteed flow of sugar. (2) 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.- Cuban relations was subjected
to a revision of an intensity and cynicism, which left earlier efforts in the shade. This
downfall took two roads in the eyes of Washington: Castro's incessant campaign of slander
against the U.S. and Castro's wholesale nationalization of American properties. 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.- Cuban relations. Castro promised the Cuban people that
he would bring land reform to Cuba. When he took power, the bulk of the nation wealth and
land was in the hands of a small minority. The huge plots of land were to be taken from
the monopolistic owners and distributed evenly among the people. Compensation was to be
paid to the former owners. According to Phillip Bonsal, Nothing Castro said, nothing
stated in the agrarian reform statute Castro signed in 1958, and nothing in the law that
was promulgated in the Official Gazzette of June 3, 1959, warranted the belief that in
two years a wholesale conversion of Cuban agricultural land to state ownership would take
place. (5) Such a notion then would have been inconsistent with many of the Castro
pronouncements, including the theory of a peasant revolution and the pledges to the
landless throughout the nation. Today most of the people who expected to become
independent farmers or members of cooperatives in the operation of which they would have
had a voice are now laborers on the state payroll. (6) After secretly drawing up his Land
Reform Law, Castro used it to form the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) with
broad and ill-defined powers. Through the INRA Castro methodically seized All-American
holdings in Cuba. He promised compensation but frequently never gave it. He conducted
investigations in company affairs. He would hold control over them and never divulge the
results or give back the control. (7) These seizures were protested. On January 11,
Ambassador Bonsal delivered a note to Havana protesting the Cuban government seizure of
U.S. citizen's property. The note was rejected the same night as an U.S. attempt to keep
economic control over Cuba. (8) 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
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. The councils always denied these charges. (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 munition 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 Cuban authorities distorted
the facts of the matter and accused the U.S. of a responsibility going way beyond
negligence. Castro, not two days later, elaborated a bombing thesis, complete with
witnesses, and launched a propaganda campaign against the U.S. Ambassador Bonsal said,
This incident was so welcome to Castro for his purposes that I was not surprised when, at
a later date, a somewhat similar flight was actually engineered by Cuban secret agents in
Florida. (12) This outburst constituted the beginning of the end  in U.S.- Cuban
relations. President Eisenhower stated,Castro's performance on October 26 on the bombing
of Havana spelled the end of my hope for rational relations between Cuba and the U.S.
(13) 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 munition ship La Coubre arrived at Havana laden with arms
and munitions for the Cuban government. It promptly blew up with serious loss of life.
(14) 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 Cubans unloaded the cargo. (15) Sabotage was possible but it was preposterous to
blame the U.S. without even a pretense of an investigation. 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 Cuban government to its representations
regarding the cases of Americans victimized by the continuing abuses of the INRA. 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 was one
overthrowing Castro. It was at this time that the controversial decision was taken to
allow the CIA to begin recruiting and training of ex-Cuban exiles for anti-Castro
military service. (17) Shortly after this decision, following in quick steps, aggressive
policies on the side of both 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 Cubans were receiving from the Soviet Union. The companies such as
Shell and Standard Oil had been buying crude from their own plants in Venezuela at a high
cost. The Cuban government demanded that the refineries process the crude they were
receiving from Russia at a much cheaper price. These refineries refused at the U.S.
advice stating that there were no provisions in the law saying that they must accept the
Soviet product and that the low grade Russian crude would damage the machinery. The claim
about the law may have been true but the charge that the cheaper Soviet crude damaging
the machines seems to be an excuse to cover up the attempted economic strangulation of
Cuba. (The crude worked just fine as is soon to be shown) 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 diplomacy in Latin America, this forced
Cuba into Russia's arms and vice-versa. The immediate loss to Cuba was 900,000 tons of
sugar unsold. This was valued at about $100,000,000. (19) Had the Russians not come to
the rescue it would have been a serious blow to Cuba. However, they came to the rescue,
cementing the Soviet-Cuban bond and granting Castro a present he could have never given
himself. As Ernest Hemingway put it,I just hope to Christ that the United States doesn't
cut the sugar quota. That will really tear it. It will make Cuba a gift to the Russians.
(20) Now the gift had been made. 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. - Cuban trade
relations it was worthless and therefore confiscation without compensation. The Soviet
Unions assumption of responsibility of Cuba's economic welfare gave the Russians a
politico-military stake in Cuba. Increased arms shipments from the U.S.S.R and
Czechoslovakia enabled Castro to rapidly strengthen and expand his forces. On top of
this, Cuba now had Russian military support. On July 9, three days after President
Eisenhower's sugar proclamation, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev announced, The U.S.S.R is
raising its voice and extending a helpful hand to the people of Cuba...Speaking
figuratively in case of necessity Soviet artillerymen can support the Cuban people with
rocket fire. (22) Castro took this to mean direct commitment made by Russia to protect
the Cuban revolution in case of U.S. attack. The final act of the U.S. in the field of
economic aggression against Cuba came on October 19, 1960, in the form of a trade embargo
on all goods except medicine and medical supplies. Even these were to be banned within a
few months. Other than causing the revolutionaries some inconvenience, all the embargo
accomplished was to give Castro a godsend. For the past 25 years Castro has blamed the
shortages, rationing, breakdowns and even some of the unfavorable weather conditions on
the U.S. blockade. 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 Cuban
exile invasion of Cuba. The fact that this secret was ill kept led to increased arms
being shipped to Cuba by Russia in late 1960. 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 100,000 well-trained, well-armed Castroite
militia! As if the plan was not 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 Kennedy's 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 ere 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 destroyed any semblance of the mission: they killed 300 and
captured the remaining 1,200! 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. 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 He says that the operation
was a tragic experience for the Cubans who took part, but its failure was a fortunate (if
mortifying) experience for the U.S., which otherwise might have been saddled with
indefinite occupation of the island. 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. Cuban troops
have been a major presence as Soviet surrogates all over the world, notably in Angola.
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 today's
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. Therefore, the U.S. government has again faced a crisis,
which threatens to destroy its credibility in foreign affairs. This was all because of
one man with a cigar.