conscience, and a sympathetic journalist, Herbert Matthews, had arrived early in 1957 to live with this new charismatic rebel: he put Castro on the map, himself striking poses of a kind used by Hollywood later on to portray the journalist-as-hero. Senator Mansfield, a warhorse in the making, spoke for an arms embargo against Batista, and, as had happened with the Kuomintang, there was now pressure for human rights, which made for trouble in Havana in 1957. Here, Castro was cunning. He did not want successful rivals, and therefore withheld help from the anti-Batista strikers and the Havana underground; it was not he but the Americans who, on 10 December 1958, told Batista that he should go. There was a final New Year party, and Batista used it as a blind: he got away (to Santo Domingo) beforehand, and early that morning, the Batista women in their finery had to escape by plane to Miami. The chief judge of the Supreme Court, Manuel Urrutia, agreed to take over as temporary president and a general strike in Havana ensured Castro’s arrival in the city. It was a
But this moment did not last for long. Very early in 1959, Castro at once took over from the Havana people, and Urrutia escaped, disguised as a milkman. Castro was not just aiming to succeed Batista and proclaim yet another exercise in radicalism. There was to be a social and by implication an anti-American revolution. The first steps involved rent reductions, wage increases and on 1 May 1959 the establishment of a militia. American property was taken over, and there were fights with Esso and Shell. But Castro was popular enough on the Left, and that included much of the American Left, which saw in him only a sort of Jacksonian democrat. Beards ruled (as they had done ever since the 1830s, as a badge of the Left: thus Marx). Writers and artists popular-fronted themselves in the thirties Comintern manner: Juan Goytisolo appeared; Picasso applauded; Le Corbusier offered to design a proper prison provided Picasso’s murals were not used; a well-known French agronomist, Rene Dumont, offered his services but was expelled for criticizing Castro’s plans for huge collectives to grow pineapples that could not compete with those of Abidjan. Pablo Neruda appeared but, out of jealousy, the local poet, Nicolas Guillen, tried to sabotage the visit. Castro had read some books, and he did impress men such as Graham Greene, who had lived for a time in Haiti and recognized the problems involved in the Caribbean. At this stage Communists were only tangentially involved: only one, Carlos Rodriguez, had joined Castro, at the last minute, in the Sierra, and even he had been a Batista minister. However, Castro made international waves as the fight against American interests grew, and in February 1960 Mikoyan appeared. He warned against precipitate action, but got the measure of Castro’s vanity: he ‘can’t stand not being front-page news’.
Radicalism proceeded apace. The trade unions were taken over, and a land reform was proclaimed (maximum holding: 67 acres). Castro refused to hold elections, and his brother Raul appeared as a Saint-Just figure, shrilly and self-righteously denouncing opposition: it grew, even among the peasants, but was divided and in any case there was an expectation that the Americans would come to the rescue. They were certainly provoked, as their business interests were taken over, and as Castro refused, for weeks, even to see the ambassador (he himself ran affairs chaotically, from a hotel floor, and addressed million-strong crowds with hours-long speeches). Eisenhower was bewildered: he meant well enough and so did Christian Herter, the new head of the State Department, but early in 1960, with cattle ranches being invaded, there were television rantings by Castro as to the expropriation of property: American companies, including General Electric and Remington Rand, had $200m at stake in October 1960. Trials in public started, in the sports centre, with public executions, and Castro vastly resented the criticism. By May 1960 there were huge anti-American rallies, but there was also a small flood of refugees, at 2,000 per day on occasion. The free press was now closed down, the printers refusing to print it (‘anti-democratic’) and in July the US Congress voted to let the President reduce Castro’s sugar quota. Castro responded by expropriating all foreign property, and there were demonstrative foreign displays, as in the Organization of American States and in New York, when Castro visited the United Nations, stayed in a Harlem hotel, and met Khrushchev.
Either Castro gave way, or he went on. He went on. A single Marxist-Leninist Party was set up, in 1961, with the usual paraphernalia, including revolutionary fancy dress and a theoretical journal,
Relations were broken off, and a plot to use Cuban counter-revolutionaries went ahead. By now there was a new President, John F. Kennedy, and he allowed the plan to proceed. Preparations went ahead for a landing at the Bay of Pigs; but in Guatemala, where a hundred different Cuban exile groups were represented, there was an atmosphere of black farce: a brothel was built for them, while the American trainers, arrogant and speaking no Spanish, lived apart and better, and their commander, a colonel, simply said, ‘I just don’t trust any goddam Cuban.’ The counter-revolution turned into a huge version of the U2 fiasco. Of course, it needed some preparation from the air, but that was kept very limited, as Kennedy did not want to expose his involvement too far and anyway feared criticism from Castro’s friends in New York. Two planes attacked each of the airfields — warning of something coming, but not enough to affect the issue and, despite precautions of a clumsy sort, very obviously not the work of exiled Cubans. The landing at the Bay of Pigs in mid-April was music hall floundering. It occurred on a reef coast, which damaged the ships, and the deep water swamped the invaders’ mobile radios (‘walkie-talkies’). The coast was not, as expected, deserted: on the contrary there were charcoal burners at work, and they spread news of the landings. Almost at once the exile force — 1,500 men — was pinned own. Kennedy would not use air power to help; 1,200 men were taken prisoner (they were bought out, late in 1962). Here was another opening for Khrushchev: he would now pose as the protector of the People’s Cuba.
Cuba made for legend: Che Guevara agonizing on student T-shirts and posters the Western world over. But those T-shirts could as well have had a thermonuclear cloud instead, because the collision of the USA and the USSR over this and other ‘Third World’ matters did for a time threaten the ultimate disaster. Cuba now provoked this. Castro was full of himself, and so was Khrushchev: they had stood up to the Americans and their proxies, and in the United States Castro had many sympathizers who even blamed America for his turn to Communism: he had been, they said, just a sort of Jacksonian democrat, and it was only the vicious and interest-bound hatred in Washington that threw him into alliance with the Soviet Union. The truth was of course more complicated. The Soviet machine was used to dealing with such matters as national liberation fronts, had managed their precursors in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-9, and had handled European resistance movements. Raul Castro and Guevara himself had been members of the Party and in April 1959, weeks after the capture of Havana, they sought Soviet military help: it came, through Czechoslovakian weaponry, and with mediation by the KGB, the resident of which in Havana subsequently became Soviet ambassador (in general, the affair was handled not by the Soviet foreign ministry but by the KGB and the Central Committee’s International Department). By March 1960 Castro himself was approaching Moscow, suspecting that the Americans would intervene. Khrushchev spoke out against American intervention early in July, described the Cuban revolution as ‘national-democratic’ (i.e. a step towards socialism, according to his own understanding of Lenin) and in January 1961 made a famous speech in which he offered Soviet protection for movements of national liberation, such as Castro’s. The speech came before Kennedy’s own Inaugural, which offered help to any nation saving itself from Communist takeover (an echo of the ‘Truman Doctrine’ of 1947). Then came the Bay of Pigs, in April 1961, which threw Cuba and the USSR together, and Castro, with KGB help, ruthlessly suppressed opposition.
Khrushchev was in forward mode: he had just exploded an ICBM, but needed to make up, he thought, for the Americans’ superiority there (and the moratorium on tests, of 1958, had been broken, first by himself, then by the Americans). Placing intermediate rocketry on Cuba would allow him to reach two thirds of American territory directly. In any case, the rockets were something of a counterpart to the American Jupiter missiles that had just been placed in Turkey. Khrushchev used this as an argument with the Politburo in May 1962 for the placement of Soviet missiles on Cuba (which the experienced and cautious Mikoyan thought risky). In July Raul Castro came to Moscow and the despatch was agreed — Khrushchev insisting on secrecy, which meant disguising ships and sailors; not a realistic notion, given the U2 flights, which recorded everything serious. The Soviet Union sent far more than was until recently thought — 50,000 men and eighty-five ships, not 10,000 — and there were eighty nuclear weapons of differing range. In other words the operation went far beyond a simple defence of Cuba.
On 14 October an American spy plane did record the missile bases that were being constructed. Khrushchev wanted the secret kept so that Kennedy would not be forced into a public confrontation — the Soviet missiles could
