Castro’s chief of staff turned out to be Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentinian Communist assigned to work with Castro by the Soviet apparatus called “Asistencia Tecnica.” Raul Castro had received considerable training during a recent trip to Prague, Moscow and Red China. He was therefore made commander of Castro’s army. Other trained Communists moved deftly into every phase of the program.
But in spite of all the training, intrigue and planning, the famous “Invasion of Cuba” by Castro’s forces turned out to be a real fiasco. Castro’s total strength was a mere handful of only 82 men who clambored aboard a leaky yacht on November 19, 1956 and set out to sea. The Captain of the yacht was Hipolito Castillo, well known strategist of the Soviet organization for the subversion of Latin America. The sluggish yacht was slow in reaching Cuba and when the men waded ashore to make their heroic invasion they were cut to pieces with gun-fire. Most of them were captured or killed.
Castro managed to escape into the hills and eventually work his way up into the 8,000 foot heights of the Sierra Maestra. He arrived there with only a handful of his original force. “Che” Guevara took over and began using propaganda and tactical strategy to dominate the immediate area and gradually rally others to the cause— especially young Cubans “full of life, ideals and faith.” Thus the strange forces of revolutionary fire began to be built and soon civil war was reaching out across Cuba.
Two major factors led to the final success of Castro’s revolution. One was centered in the Soviet Union and the other was centered in the United States.
Raul Castro who had previously been behind the Iron Curtain made several trips to Russia and Czechoslovakia to negotiate for arms and finances. The arms arrived by submarine, the money came through by couriers. During the last months of the revolution, observers were amazed at the quantities of Czech and Russian equipment being used by the Castro forces. They were equally surprised at the vast supplies of money which Castro had available—money for wages, food, equipment, liquor, bribery and favors.
Batista, on the other hand, suddenly found himself at the other end of the horn. Because of his pro-U.S. policies he had assumed that when the struggle for Cuba became critical he would be able to rely on the United States to sell him arms and supplies. To his amazement he discovered that his request for permission to buy arms in the U.S. fell on deaf ears. What he had not realized was that Herbert Matthews, Edward Murrow, Ed Sullivan, Ruby Phillips, Jules Dubois and a multitude of other writers and opinion makers had been eulogizing Castro and castigating Batista. In Congress, Senator Wayne Morse, Representative Charles O. Porter and Representative Adam Clayton Powell had thrown their combined weight behind the Castro cause. All this “Robin Hood” propaganda definitely had its effect.
At the same time Assistant Secretary of State Roy Rubottom and Caribbean Director William Wieland—the two persons who were supposed to know what was going on—blandly assured all inquirers that Fidel Castro was the hope of Cuba and had no Communist taint whatever. As late as June, 1959 (and that was extremely late), Congressman Porter was assuring his colleagues: “No one in the State Department believes Castro is a Communist, or a Communist sympathizer, nor does any other responsible person who wants get his facts straight.”{116}
Of course, as time marched on toward Cuba’s inexorable doom, the course of history embarrassed the Congressman and also the State Department. In the closing months of the conflict American policies followed blind alleys which authorities have since attributed to either “stupidity, incompetence, or worse.”
The Communist Take-Over
It was January 1, 1959, that Fidel Castro became the political steward of a dazed, war-weary Cuba. Batista had fled. All opposition was crushed. In many circles of American liberals and confused newspaper readers there was a great huzza as though liberty and constitutional government had come to Cuba at last.
But many students of international problems saw ominous signs that the suffering and blood-letting for Cuba had barely begun. The first warnings were exultant boasts from the Communist press that “they” had won. In Moscow, Pravda pointed out that from the very beginning of the Castro movement “our party considered it its first duty to aid the rebels, giving them the correct orientation and the support the popular masses. The party headed the battles for land and thereby increased its authority among peasantry. Our party… appealed to the popular masses Fidel Castro in every way….”{117}
The Communist Party of Cuba also came out in the open to boast that they had provided an important part of the revolutionary action “to overthrow the bloody tyranny of Batista which served as the instrument of imperialistic interests and was supported by imperialism.”{118}
If General Batista read this statement he may have wondered where this “imperialistic” support was supposed to have come from. He knew that if the Communists were accusing him of enjoying U.S. support they were really confused.
As soon as Castro took over he used his revolutionary courts of mob justice to send over 600 persons to the firing squads. American liberals described the punishment as “harsh, but deserved.” Then he reached out and began a “reform” movement of typical Communist dimensions:
• Confiscation of land and settling Cuban workers on what turned out to be large, Soviet-type collectivized farms.
• Confiscation of more than a billion dollars worth of American industry which Castro had neither the technicians nor finances to operate.
• Breaking up of Cuban family life and placing medium-aged children in special farm communes so “the children will be under the influence of teachers and not their families.”
• Reorganization of the schools to serve as propaganda transmission belts to dispense Communist doctrine and the “Hate Yankee” line.
• Suspension of civil liberties and other constitutional guarantees.
• Elimination of free elections.
• Capture of all press, TV and radio for government propaganda purposes.
• Termination of all cultural, political and economic ties with the United States.
• Alliances with Russia.
• Recognition of Red China.
• Trade with the Communist bloc.
While all of this Communist machinery was being put into operation during 1959 and early 1960, many American apologists for Castro continued to insist that he was neither Communist nor dictatorial, just “misunderstood.” They snatched at every hopeful atom of news from Cuba indicating that Castro might be “getting more reasonable now,” or “Castro is changing.”
But all of these dreams of hopeful illusion were smashed by Castro himself when he dutifully answered the call of Nikita Khrushchev in the summer of 1960 and went to the United Nations as part of the Red Bloc “show of strength.” At Castro’s Harlem headquarters the two dictators warmly embraced each other. They were brothers and comrades.
Now that the Iron Curtain has come rumbling down on little Cuba perhaps some Americans occasionally reflect on the glowing description of Castro which Herbert Matthews wrote for the New York Times in 1957: “Castro,” he said, “has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the constitution, to hold elections.”
Other Americans who chose the wrong side have since said, “It is all so unfortunate. Perhaps it was inevitable.”
This last statement has a familiar ring. This is precisely the theme which Dean Acheson put in his White Paper when he tried to explain why we lost China. He excused it as “inevitable.” But the Wedemeyer Report revealed that China was also lost because of stupidity, incompetence or worse. China was lost when the State Department promoted an arms embargo against this long-standing U.S. ally at a time when she was fighting for her very existence. The same kind of thinking put the arms embargo on Batista. Both were lost. Both were casualties of Communism.
All of this led former Ambassador Gardner to remark sadly:
