Castro’s Challenge to Britain and the United States

There we go. Our speaker this afternoon is

Jonathan Brown, who has rather extraordinary qualifications.

He is one of the very few p_h_d_ at the University of Texas who has

gone ahead to become a member of the department. He studied under Tom McGann,

who by all recognition was one of the foremost historians

of Latin America. He also has the distinction of having studied under Walt

Rostow, but in the capacity of an economic historian rather than of

Vietnam. Jonathan

is the author of several books, and his most recent one

is Cuba’s Revolutionary World, and this has recently been published by

Harvard University Press. His other books include A Socio Socio Economic

History of Argentina, Oil and Revolution in Mexico

and Latin America, A Social History of the Colonial

Period. I started to say that there are other anonymous publications.

I hope I pronounce the word OK as the new pronunciation.

And so, John. Jonathan, we’re very glad to have you. This is one of the rare occasions

in which we do stretch out to Latin America, in which, of course, there was a very great

British influence, not only in the Caribbean, but throughout

the continent of the Falklands, of course, but also the building

of the railways and so on in Argentina. In preparation

for this session, I re read Graham Greene’s Our Man in

Havana, which stands up very well. It’s a very funny

novel and I think it’s one of the best that Graham GREENE has written. You’ll

recall the the principal figure

has been recruited by the British intelligence service to report on

what’s going on in Cuba. And the person

happens to be a vacuum cleaner seller. And at one point, the chief of

staff in Imai 6 saying that these. These pictures

of the installations of missiles and so on have a strange

resemblance to vacuum cleaners.

And I hope that Jonathan will begin by saying just a few words about Graham GREENE.

Well, first of all, thank you very much for introducing me, you gave me a wonderful introduction,

included all of my old professors so that people can date when I got my

p._h._d. Very convenient for them. Well, I’ve

read every single book that Graham GREENE wrote on Latin America and he’s

traveled quite a few places. There was travels with my aunt.

There was the honorary council. There was one of the first ones,

I think was the power and the glory about Mexico in the 1920s,

Haiti. Did I miss any. The what?

The one about Pamela. Oh, that’s correct. This is. Why did. Why didn’t I remember that?

My next project actor actually is on Panama General today horse. And it turns

out that Graham GREENE was a great friend of all Mato rehost,

the dictator of Panama. That is the dictator of Panama.

Before he was. He was succeeded by another dictator who

was not as nice. And Graham GREENE

did not did not befriend him. But

as a matter of fact, Graham GREENE actually was at the was attending at

the invitation of Omar Teddie host, the signing of the Panama Canal Treaty

with President Jimmy Carter,

with President Jimmy Carter in 1977. My wife is sitting back there

prompting me with the names. Thank you very much. So if I hesitated

on a name, you know, I’m I’m getting it from my wife.

Something very interesting about this was not only that the the parts

of a vacuum cleaner that were sent back to M

I five and got them all interested. They thought at first or they were

they perceived that at first to be a secret weapon, something along the line

of a missile. And Graham GREENE was there in 1957.

I figure this book first. The first printing of his book was in nineteen

fifty eight. So he must have been there in 1956, 1957, gathering

material and going to the places that appear in the book. And so it’s very recognizable.

He does not mention Fidel Castro, even though Fidel

Castro was with the guerrilla band in the Sierra Maestra. He mentions the Sierra Maestra

in the eastern part of the island and that the guerrilla bands are operating there. But he doesn’t

mention the name of Fidel Castro. So in 1957, Fidel

Castro was just a minor part of the revolution. He didn’t come into his own

until 1958 and then he dominated the revolution. And it’s mainly because

the reason that he was able to consolidate the revolution so quickly is that all of

his partners in the revolution had died off. By that time, he

was the only one who survived. And he practically inherited

the revolution on the first day of January. Nineteen fifty nine. And

Graham really would have been wonderful. Graham GREENE had been there when when the guerrillas

came in down the Malecon, which is the the Oceanside

Boulevard in Havana. The other thing that I noted out of here

is that he did borrow liberally from what was happening

in the during the revolution inside of Havana,

where he probably spent most of his time. Although I I realize now that he also went down

to the city of Santiago, which is on the opposite end of the island, and spent some time

there because he describes the hotel he was in, which still exists

there. And there’s so much that is familiar about what

he describes for Havana. And the reason is that Havana has not changed in the

last 60 years. It looks like

it did on the day that Fidel Castro rode in on the back

of an army tank to take power on the first day of January

The city is much more shabby today than it was back then. It was fairly well kept up.

The 1950s was a good time. Economically, for. For

Cuba. And so the several new buildings

were built in the 1950s, which still exist in and dominate

the skyline, really. But all the rest of it all the rest of it

looks exactly the same as it did back then.

There is one this kind of proves a maxim that

people in Havana are saying these days.

You recall the book by Lenin and imperialism.

Imperialism is the last stage of capitalism. Well, they’re saying

in Havana right now that underdevelopment is the last stage

of socialism. And largely because the economy

of the country is has recovered from the loss of

the patronage of the Soviet Union all along, about nineteen

ninety. They lost that patronage when the the

communist empire collapsed practically overnight.

A couple of other things too about this book. Some I guess. Well what am I doing? I just

published a book myself on Cuba. I should be talking about that. Right.

He borrowed liberally about what was happening inside of Havana at

the time. There was a one of the chief characters

and probably the most prominent Cuban character in the book is

Captain Say Good, the captain say good, what

is known as the Red Vulture, because

he was engaged in torturing and and killing

young people who are involved in the revolution inside of a.

Castro escaped this because he was in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra, where captain

say Hooda and hit the person who is really

supposed to be Captain Sigurður. His name was Colonel Van Duda,

say Goodat Van Doodah, and he was known not as the Red

Vulture, but as the White Angel of death. It

is because he took off his white linen

suit. He always dressed in a white linen suit with a coat jacket,

and he took that off when he went in to torture people. I said, you can understand

why. There are some other things. He was thrown into jail

in Santiago. That is a wormhole. The character. And by the way, what kind of name is

Rumold? Is a good. Did he make up this name

or is this a good British name wormhole? That’s the character. Who

was the salesman? The vacuum cleaner salesman.

Yeah, that’s right. What a nut. I think he made up this name.

No, he didn’t. He didn’t make this up. No. Okay. Yeah. So that’s a real.

Absolutely. Within a relevant. But it’s the thing itself on a Sunday. But it’s

not an uncommon name. It’s a Sunday. Okay. I know two people with that.

Yeah. Unrelated

in your family. No, I’m sorry. I know. I was true to bring that

up. I guess I’m here because

there is one small a role that that

Great Britain played in the Cuban revolution. Besides

sending one of their their most famous novelists over there

before the revolution was completed. And that is

that the government of Great Britain never

joined the United States diplomatic boycott of

Cuba. That’s for sure. In the 1960s, that between both

President Kennedy and President Johnson, that the United States was able

to get every country in Latin America to break

diplomatic relations with Cuba because

Cuba was exporting its revolution to the rest of Latin America. They were

training guerrillas to go back to their home countries to fight

in an grua outbreaks occurred in Venezuela. In

fact, the ones in Venezuela lasted for 10 long years.

The Cuba put on a lot of money into it and a lot of arms and training for

the Venezuelans. They were so adamant about getting Venezuela

to join the revolution with them because they were dependent upon imports

of petroleum. So they singled out Castro, did himself, singled

out Venezuela. Now, is it turned out later on that

that Cuba got Venezuela anyway? And something is very interesting

about Venezuela. Venezuela today is, as you know, probably

the worst economic performance. It’s in practically in freefall

with about a thousand percent a thousand

percent devaluation of the money.

How can people live through that? And they’re doing a very bad job of living that

way. And therefore, thousands of people are every week trying to get out of the

country. And the one interesting thing here

is that in the 1970s, there were a number of military takeovers in Latin America. Practically

every country of South America save for two countries. There had military

governments and the militaries took over for

and they came to power when the civilian

regime had reached a certain level of inflation

and that level was about 600 percent.

So I’m asking myself, this is when the militaries in

the past at least would take over a government that seems to be failing

economically. Why is Venezuela at this present time

immune from a military takeover? And

I asked this question of a Venezuelan graduate student in the department who is a student

of mine. He told me it’s because the

the military has all the tourist trade

and they’re very big in the economy. They own about half of all the economic

assets in the country. Now, this is actually

the Cuban model. This is what Fidel Castro put together in the 1960s

to retain the loyalty of his own army.

So, for example, when you travel to Cuba and I hope you do. And by the way, pick

up a couple of these shirts while you’re there. The why Havana shirts? Because

they can come in handy around here in Texas.

But he involved. That is Fidel Castro. Involve the army

in running the economy. So you will see when you

go there or you probably won’t know this, but all the companies that deal with

the economy, the tourist economy, the hotels, the

car rentals, they all belong to the army and generals

within the army. So this idea of keeping the loyalty of

your military by involving them in the economy and owning all the best

assets in the country. This was picked up by

Hugo Chavez, the man who socialized

the country and started the Chavez state party, which is still

in power, even though Chavez is. Am I

getting away from Cuba? Not really.

Chavez was one of Castro’s best friends.

He would go to Cuba quite often to get the advice of

the maximum leader of the revolution in Latin America.

He was always an honored guest. He dedicated a great

portion of free. Supplies of crude oil

he built for Cuba, the latest

refinery, which unfortunately doesn’t work very well.

It’s like a like a Russian refinery. It doesn’t quite measure

up to first world standards. But anyway,

he helped the economy of Cuba in the 1990s and the

early 20th century because he had his control

of the flow of oil to Cuba. But he believed

so much in Cuba that he won. Fidel Castro told

him that we have the best doctors in the world. That’s where he went.

He went to Cuba when he developed a cancer.

And it was in Cuba that he died

because he would not go to any other cancer doctor.

I want to say something about my book. Do you mind if I do that?

All right, here’s here’s the book. I could pass this around. I don’t

have any copies to sell. You can. You can buy this. However,

it’s published at Harvard University Press. It only costs twenty five bucks.

Twenty five. Yeah, it’s six. Six hundred pages long.

But it reads so well. I read

it several times in it. It’s like Brian GREENE.

It holds up where they only published this last year. So

there’s plenty of copies available. The one thing that I was

that I remarked once I got into the study of the Cuban revolution is how powerful

the Cuban revolution was in international affairs.

When Fidel Castro took over Cuba and consolidated power there after

in 1959, Cuba only had

six million people. They had never been

and very prominent in world affairs. The Cubans

simply were not on the map as far as Europe.

And it was known for producing sugar. Sure enough. And some

wild nightlife, some of which is described by Graham GREENE,

but not in my book. So forewarning you about that.

But you go over to the LBJ library. You go to do some

research, as I did, and Lenore went with me as well. We went to the JFK

Library and there are reams and reams of paper just

on Cuba. You couldn’t find anything on Cuba before

in the presidency, particularly of JFK, it was the number one foreign

problem of the United States. That’s why it generated so

much documentation. And

it’s pretty heavily documented even in an LBJ time.

It’s probably second only to Vietnam among the foreign documentation

that you can find there. Why was this?

Well, this was because when Fidel Castro came to power, the

CIA ignored him. They ignored Fidel Castro because he wasn’t

thought to have been while he was fighting a guerrilla warfare. He wasn’t thought

to have been a communist. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t a communist when

he fought the revolution in this area, Maestra. And

there were plenty of studies. There were people connected to the CIA who were with the

the embassy in Havana. They did make trips down to the Sierra Maestra

to question people down there. But the thing was that Fidel Castro

had the support of the middle class. So

he never professed a never spoke like a communist. He didn’t use Marxist-Leninist

words, concepts. His he

smoke like a spoke like in a smoke quite a bit, too.

But he spoke like a nationalist,

a middle class nationalist who speaks of loving the nation.

The pottery. And the heroes of the wars of independence like Jose Marti

and all the rest. So he certainly did not pretend to be

a socialist. And I believe he was not.

So the CIA goes into Santiago very shortly after.

In nineteen nineteen fifty eight. Probably

around the time that this book was published by Graham GREENE and they queried all

of the people in the middle class and they were solidly behind

Fidel Castro. He was their man. He had grown up and went to school in Santiago

de Cuba. He went to private school like all the people of the

better off classes do, and they supported him. This was his revolution. And

the reason was there was a bit of racism, racism

involved here. The only non white.

Person ever to be chief of state. In Cuba was

Firenze Batista. He was the man who was the dictator that

Fidel Castro was fighting against. So the dictator forehands

you might teach there was not really well respected among the middle class

and therefore the middle class very. Thoroughly.

Backed Fidel Castro. And it was

only after he began to consolidate power in the first couple of months

that he began to court the Soviet Union

and the socialist bloc. This is why

he has to become a great kind of public enemy here in the United States.

The other thing that bolstered this, this idea that he was a danger to the United

States was the fact that all the middle class who had been backing him in the revolution in the 1950s,

in the 1960s, they emigrated and went to Miami.

And there they organized all manner of of groups

to influence United States policy in Latin America.

And they became mercenary troops for the CIA

trying to overthrow the government of Cuba and Fidel

Castro. As long as I’m about this, I’d like

to talk a little bit about the role of Great Britain, Great Britain. Somehow

the British are somehow in the title of my talk. Are they not? Yes. What is the title of

my talk? Please remind me. Kestrels Challenge to Britain and the United

States. Wow. I

didn’t know I put it that way because

while all of Latin America were obeying the Presidents

Kennedy and an LBJ to break diplomatic relations

with Cuba, Great Britain did not. As a matter of fact,

neither did some of the other great powers of Europe. Spain probably

not one of the great powers of Europe in the 1960s, but Spain, even though General

Franco, you’d think that if anybody in Europe is going to break relations

with with a Cuba that is

quickly becoming a communist state, it would be Franco.

But Franco never gave up. He continued to have relations, diplomatic

relations with Cuba, France, France under de Gaulle also

did so. The great powers in the center of Europe

retained trade. Not that they traded as much as the United States did, or then later

on the Soviet Union. But they retained trading privileges with

Cuba all throughout the 1960s. At the time that the United States was organizing

a big boycott, as a matter

of fact, Great Britain and British ships, British merchant vessels

occasionally came under fire from some of the mercenary troops

that were sponsored and paid for by the CIA in the 1960s.

You may have heard about fast boats and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Well, this is exactly the sort of Cuban anti-Castro

Cubans who were given money by the CIA to

buy arms and buy fast boats, mother ships,

and then circle around the island of Cuba and

making raids on Cuba. The idea behind this, they were known

as the they were known also as revolutionary groups. That is

every one of these groups to tie themselves into the the middle class

participation in the revolution in the 1950s that they say Fidel Castro

stole. Every one of these anti-Castro groups, had

revolution in its name, the revolutionary front of of the Eskom bri-.

And there were other named everybody in the revolutionary rehabilitation.

That was another mercenary group, another armed group

that. But the one thing is they were not effective.

As a matter of fact, they may they became counterproductive. And this comes

directly from the book. They became counterproductive because the action

of these groups out of Miami. Gave Fidel

Castro an excuse. To mobilize

the population, to organize the militias and to organize

a group known as the defenders of the Revolution.

That were, in fact, neighborhood watch groups throughout

Cuba who kept their eyes on their neighbors for demonstrations

of disloyalty to the state, to the revolutionary state and to Fidel Castro.

I was gonna make a Trump joke. Probably I shouldn’t.

This is being recorded. And

anyway, Trump would have liked this group. But

in other words, Castro was able to consolidate his power and eliminate his enemies from within

the revolution because of the activities of these armed

groups sponsored by the CIA and bringing the British

back in here. I guess the challenge was that sometimes they attacked British

shipping. There was one famous case during the presidency of John

F. Kennedy in which the idea

that one of these armed groups attacked a ship and shot it up, a British

merchant vessel. So they got a letter. The United States got a letter from

the British government protesting the c.i.a.’s groups

operating out of Havana who were somehow interdicting

and trade on the high seas, becoming pirates.

You know, the worst case of this happened in 1964,

when LBJ, who had inherited the presidency

of Kennedy as vise president and he was running in November

in order to win election in his own name. So you can understand how touchy he

was by this incident. One of these armed groups out of Miami,

actually, they had a a base in Nicaragua under

the simonson’s, another infamous dictator from Latin America that was

never visited by Graham GREENE.

And they attacked a Spanish merchant vessel. They shot it up

badly, killed about five officers and watched them

at at night. They mistaken they had mistaken

this. Ship for a a merchant

vessel of Cuba. Name the Sierra. My Estrada over. Named

after the the place for the revolution. And Fidel Castro.

But it was really the Sierra Houghton’s zsuzsa.

It’s a it’s a mountain chain in.

In Spain. And it was a Spanish vessel. Therefore, this

was piracy on the high seas. They disabled this vessel, had to be towed

into into port. And

there was a lot of diplomatic anger over this directive

that the president of the United States. Of course, since the CIA

was involved, everybody at the White House. Including my

economic history professor, Walt Rostow, and wanted to

downplay this, and so they said they’re just good patriots who

have no connection and no direction from the CIA.

That was that was correct. There was no direction from the CIA. There was only

financing from the CIA. That’s how they could buy all these these weapons.

But Johnson then pulled the plug on that operation. He told

the CIA to stop sponsoring groups from Miami

and to shut them down in any way. He was beginning to move towards

and move the whole crusade against Cuba.

He’s moving the anti-communist crusade to Southeast Asia.

One other thing here, and that is that Great

Britain, which sold some Leeland buses in 1964.

This became a big deal in the newspapers once again. The

administration here in Washington, D.C., was up in arms about how could the British do

this one deal with this communist state. And of course, we

were selling wheat to the Soviet Union. So I guess it was a perfectly rational

sort of operation.

In a way, I think that this European, our allies in Europe

were much more important to us as allies against

the Soviet Union than Cuba was a threat to the United States.

So the Kennedy and the Johnson administration

tolerated their continued diplomatic recognition of Cuba.

And I think that the one reason was that

the United States needed our allies in Europe in order to protect

the one captive city of capitalism.

And that was West Berlin. The reason why JFK

pulled back the U.S. fleet from Cuban waters during the Bay

of Pigs in April 1961, the Bay of Pigs

invasion, as you know, was a brigade of Cuban Americans

who had signed up for training in Guatemala in order to invade

Cuba. And they, too, were sponsored by the CIA.

And this was a hush hush project begun and then laid on the lap

of Kennedy by

Eisenhower, by President Eisenhower. This had worked

once in Guatemala in 1954. When the

few communists were known to be working in the

the the government of the country

that was about to expropriate some land, unused land belonging

to the United Fruit Company, for whom the New York

law, the New York law offices. That

in which the Dulles brothers were partners

and that law office in New York represented internationally

the United Fruit Company. So the CIA,

under the direction then of Allen Dulles, decided

and got the word from Eisenhower to send in the CIA

and see if we can’t undermine this revolutionary government that was taking

land away from foreigners. And it worked.

There was a military revolt inside of the country and the

military revolt unseated the the revolutionary president who

was trying to undertake land reform for the benefit of

the landless peasants in Guatemala. This worked

in Guatemala, but it didn’t work in Cuba. Fidel Castro.

And one of the reasons is that already Fidel Castro had learned the lesson of Guatemala

because there was a young Argentine doctor who was on

his way through Central America and he was living

for a while in revolutionary Guatemala.

And he was there when the CIA cabal took place

and unseated the revolutionary government of Guatemala in 1954. That

was Che Guevara, or he was known later on as Che Guevara.

So Che Guevara, when he met Fidel Castro in Mexico City,

already told him about one thing that we must watch out for is

the see eye A but. The fact

that we had in Europe a number of countries who did

not want to break relations with Cuba.

This turned out also to be a source of information about what was happening inside

of Cuba. Well, Lenore and I went to the the the

archive at Kew Gardens, wonderful place to work, great

lunches and great tee times. If you get a chance to do it.

Go do some research there. I will say that

they they had some influence and

some cooperation out of their own embassy’s in there in order to

to shunt to the United States. Some intelligence reports.

They didn’t send them the juicy stuff. They did send them something every now and then.

So it became a kind of convenient source paying back your

powerful ally, the United States, by providing him some intelligence about things going on in

Cuba. And that’s because

the secret police in Cuba began to be organized

by Soviet agents. The very first KGB officer shows

up in Cuba at the end in the last months of 1959. I’ve got

his picture in here. Alexander Alexiev

shows up in Niger and immediately he goes to work for the

the Interior Ministry. And then the KGB had about

five officers who were constantly supervising

the work of the secret police in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

Therefore, by the time LBJ come came to office,

practically all of the sources of information that the CIA

could collect from inside of Cuba had dried up because all

of the agents that the CIA ran in Cuba were picked up by

the secret police.

So getting back to the invasion.

The United States armed forces did not back the invasion. That is,

they did not send U.S. pilots, they did not send U.S. warplanes.

They did not bombard Cuba at this time

with naval canons.

They backed away from protecting even those who

the Cuban Americans who had rushed ashore in April of nineteen

sixty one at the Bay of Pigs. The reason is

that. That West West Berlin was simply

much more important. They knew in 1961 that

Khrushchev had expressed on several occasions support for

Fidel Castro. He had even given Fidel himself a bear hug

in the in the United Nations. So it

was common knowledge that that Cuba was becoming

an ally of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union

could put, could attack or at least hold

hostage to protect Cuba from invasion

from U.S. military forces. And so all throughout the 1960s at

the time that we were the most difficult

in maintaining our economic and political

boycott of the Cuban regime. The the

Europeans did not. And I think that the real secret to that

and we’ve never used any U.S. military forces

against Cuba whatsoever. And I think that the reason is that the

allies were interested in protecting West Germany. Were

interested in protecting to the West Berlin,

which was inside of East Germany from harm. And this is why

the United States modified its antagonism against Cuba

and relegated it to trade and to diplomatic boycott rather

than All-Out U.S. invasion of Cuba. What the

United States armed forces, thus the title, the challenge

to to to Great Britain. I.

I have no idea where that came from,

but I had to have Great Britain in the title.

A couple of reasons that I discovered why Cuba was so

important in the 1960s. One, it was the

it was a vulnerable time in the Cold War.

Sputnik had been launched. The Soviet Union had the biggest army

in the world. They were thought to have all these tanks. And there was

the missile gap, the so-called missile gap that came became part of the 1960s

election. It was believed

in 1960 that they had more missiles than the United States did. Even

though Eisenhower knew better, he was not about to publicize that.

So there was all this for all of these reasons.

And then the fact that the Fidel Castro

nationalized all of U.S. businesses in the year 1960

with one fell swoop, nobody was willing then in 1960

to go to war over the loss of a few refineries of Standard

Oil. All of the lands. The sugar

lands owned by American companies also were confiscated

and there was no kind of belligerence on the part of the United States. There

was just continued kind of support

for Cuban counter-revolutionaries in Miami. That was about

it. Here’s another

reason. The fact that there was this trade

and political alliance between Cuba and the Soviet Union and

also Red China. Chairman Mao was

got a visit from Che Guevara himself. Or maybe I should say Chairman Mao

himself got a visit from Che Guevara and

became a a supporter of the Cuban revolution. Even though

there wasn’t much trade that could be carried on between China and

the US and Cuba. Nonetheless, they did have political ties.

And so this made Cuba outsized

in all of world affairs. As a matter of fact, you could say that

Fidel Castro was the cause for the fall of

Nikita Khrushchev in 1964, just a year and a half after

the Cuban missile crisis, which occurred in Cuba. And Cuba,

was the the one territory in all

the world in which the major powers were so

close to come to war in the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October

of 1962. All of these are the reasons why Cuba

became such a problem for the United States in the 1960s. And

Cuba also carried great weight throughout the world.

They eventually sent troops in to two to Africa. At the end of

the nineteen sixties and large number, several thousands

of troops from the regular army were sent into Africa in the 1970s

and the 1980s. They for a country of six

million people who adopted socialism because of the Cuban

revolution. Cuba carried great weight

and it still does. And I would say mainly because of

opposition by the United States, which continues even today.

Still, if you got a chance to visit I-word suggestion. It’s really a

wonderful place and I believe it. From

the book by Graham GREENE. Thank you very much.