Speaker – Jonathan Brown<\/p>\n
When Fidel Castro formed an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1962, it
\nsparked the Cuban missile crisis and became a defining incident of the Cold
\nWar. Graham Greene\u2019s Our Man in Havana predates the Cuban missile crisis, but
\nthe plot involves missile installations and seems to anticipate the events of
\n1962. In the real world, the British tolerated the Cuban revolutionaries.
\nAmerican politicians, for domestic reasons, could not. The British refused to
\njoin the American economic boycott of the Revolution. Did Britain help the
\nCuban Revolution to survive US antagonism?<\/p>\n
Jonathan Brown’s book, Cuba’s Revolutionary World was published by Harvard
\nUniversity Press in 2017. His other books include Oil and Revolution in Mexico
\n(1993); and A Socioeconomic History of Argentina (1979). His articles have
\nbeen translated into many languages including Chinese. With Alan Knight he
\nedited The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the Twentieth Century (1992). With a
\nUT Ph.D. in History, he has taught at UT History since 1983. He is presently
\nwriting a book on the renegotiation of the Panama Canal Treaty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaker – Jonathan Brown When Fidel Castro formed an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1962, it sparked the Cuban missile crisis and became a defining incident of the Cold War. Graham Greene\u2019s Our Man in Havana predates the Cuban missile crisis, but the plot involves missile installations and seems to anticipate the events of […]","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/09\/18-09-07-British-Studies-Lecture-Series.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"56.4M","filesize_raw":"59139074","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[7,50,39,48,47,40,49,43,45,46,42,41,44,8],"categories":[],"series":[2],"class_list":{"0":"post-60","1":"podcast","2":"type-podcast","3":"status-publish","5":"tag-british","6":"tag-british-lecture-series","7":"tag-british-studes","8":"tag-british-studies-event","9":"tag-british-studies-lecture","10":"tag-british-studies-lecture-series","11":"tag-british-studies-series","12":"tag-bsls","13":"tag-dr-louis","14":"tag-dr-roger-louis","15":"tag-lecture","16":"tag-lecture-series","17":"tag-roger-louis","18":"tag-studies","19":"series-bsls","20":"entry"},"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":949,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_content":"\n
Wm. Roger Louis is head of the British Studies Lecture Series. He is an American historian and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin<\/a>. Louis is the editor-in-chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire<\/a><\/em>, a former president of the American Historical Association<\/a> (AHA), a former chairman of the U.S. Department of State's Historical Advisory Committee, and a founding director of the AHA's National History Center in Washington, D. C.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Wm. Roger Louis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"wm-roger-louis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_modified_gmt":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/?post_type=speaker&p=949","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":[{"ID":812,"post_author":"40","post_date":"2020-06-23 19:28:26","post_date_gmt":"2020-06-23 19:28:26","post_content":"\n Jonathan Brown's book, Cuba's Revolutionary World was published by Harvard There we go. Our speaker this afternoon is<\/p>\n Jonathan Brown, who has rather extraordinary qualifications.<\/p>\n He is one of the very few p_h_d_ at the University of Texas who has<\/p>\n gone ahead to become a member of the department. He studied under Tom McGann,<\/p>\n who by all recognition was one of the foremost historians<\/p>\n of Latin America. He also has the distinction of having studied under Walt<\/p>\n Rostow, but in the capacity of an economic historian rather than of<\/p>\n Vietnam. Jonathan<\/p>\n is the author of several books, and his most recent one<\/p>\n is Cuba’s Revolutionary World, and this has recently been published by<\/p>\n Harvard University Press. His other books include A Socio Socio Economic<\/p>\n History of Argentina, Oil and Revolution in Mexico<\/p>\n and Latin America, A Social History of the Colonial<\/p>\n Period. I started to say that there are other anonymous publications.<\/p>\n I hope I pronounce the word OK as the new pronunciation.<\/p>\n And so, John. Jonathan, we’re very glad to have you. This is one of the rare occasions<\/p>\n in which we do stretch out to Latin America, in which, of course, there was a very great<\/p>\n British influence, not only in the Caribbean, but throughout<\/p>\n the continent of the Falklands, of course, but also the building<\/p>\n of the railways and so on in Argentina. In preparation<\/p>\n for this session, I re read Graham Greene’s Our Man in<\/p>\n Havana, which stands up very well. It’s a very funny<\/p>\n novel and I think it’s one of the best that Graham GREENE has written. You’ll<\/p>\n recall the the principal figure<\/p>\n has been recruited by the British intelligence service to report on<\/p>\n what’s going on in Cuba. And the person<\/p>\n happens to be a vacuum cleaner seller. And at one point, the chief of<\/p>\n staff in Imai 6 saying that these. These pictures<\/p>\n of the installations of missiles and so on have a strange<\/p>\n resemblance to vacuum cleaners.<\/p>\n And I hope that Jonathan will begin by saying just a few words about Graham GREENE.<\/p>\n Well, first of all, thank you very much for introducing me, you gave me a wonderful introduction,<\/p>\n included all of my old professors so that people can date when I got my<\/p>\n p._h._d. Very convenient for them. Well, I’ve<\/p>\n read every single book that Graham GREENE wrote on Latin America and he’s<\/p>\n traveled quite a few places. There was travels with my aunt.<\/p>\n There was the honorary council. There was one of the first ones,<\/p>\n I think was the power and the glory about Mexico in the 1920s,<\/p>\n Haiti. Did I miss any. The what?<\/p>\n The one about Pamela. Oh, that’s correct. This is. Why did. Why didn’t I remember that?<\/p>\n My next project actor actually is on Panama General today horse. And it turns<\/p>\n out that Graham GREENE was a great friend of all Mato rehost,<\/p>\n the dictator of Panama. That is the dictator of Panama.<\/p>\n Before he was. He was succeeded by another dictator who<\/p>\n was not as nice. And Graham GREENE<\/p>\n did not did not befriend him. But<\/p>\n as a matter of fact, Graham GREENE actually was at the was attending at<\/p>\n the invitation of Omar Teddie host, the signing of the Panama Canal Treaty<\/p>\n with President Jimmy Carter,<\/p>\n with President Jimmy Carter in 1977. My wife is sitting back there<\/p>\n prompting me with the names. Thank you very much. So if I hesitated<\/p>\n on a name, you know, I’m I’m getting it from my wife.<\/p>\n Something very interesting about this was not only that the the parts<\/p>\n of a vacuum cleaner that were sent back to M<\/p>\n I five and got them all interested. They thought at first or they were<\/p>\n they perceived that at first to be a secret weapon, something along the line<\/p>\n of a missile. And Graham GREENE was there in 1957.<\/p>\n I figure this book first. The first printing of his book was in nineteen<\/p>\n fifty eight. So he must have been there in 1956, 1957, gathering<\/p>\n material and going to the places that appear in the book. And so it’s very recognizable.<\/p>\n He does not mention Fidel Castro, even though Fidel<\/p>\n Castro was with the guerrilla band in the Sierra Maestra. He mentions the Sierra Maestra<\/p>\n in the eastern part of the island and that the guerrilla bands are operating there. But he doesn’t<\/p>\n mention the name of Fidel Castro. So in 1957, Fidel<\/p>\n Castro was just a minor part of the revolution. He didn’t come into his own<\/p>\n until 1958 and then he dominated the revolution. And it’s mainly because<\/p>\n the reason that he was able to consolidate the revolution so quickly is that all of<\/p>\n his partners in the revolution had died off. By that time, he<\/p>\n was the only one who survived. And he practically inherited<\/p>\n the revolution on the first day of January. Nineteen fifty nine. And<\/p>\n Graham really would have been wonderful. Graham GREENE had been there when when the guerrillas<\/p>\n came in down the Malecon, which is the the Oceanside<\/p>\n Boulevard in Havana. The other thing that I noted out of here<\/p>\n is that he did borrow liberally from what was happening<\/p>\n in the during the revolution inside of Havana,<\/p>\n where he probably spent most of his time. Although I I realize now that he also went down<\/p>\n to the city of Santiago, which is on the opposite end of the island, and spent some time<\/p>\n there because he describes the hotel he was in, which still exists<\/p>\n there. And there’s so much that is familiar about what<\/p>\n he describes for Havana. And the reason is that Havana has not changed in the<\/p>\n last 60 years. It looks like<\/p>\n it did on the day that Fidel Castro rode in on the back<\/p>\n of an army tank to take power on the first day of January<\/p>\n The city is much more shabby today than it was back then. It was fairly well kept up.<\/p>\n The 1950s was a good time. Economically, for. For<\/p>\n Cuba. And so the several new buildings<\/p>\n were built in the 1950s, which still exist in and dominate<\/p>\n the skyline, really. But all the rest of it all the rest of it<\/p>\n looks exactly the same as it did back then.<\/p>\n There is one this kind of proves a maxim that<\/p>\n people in Havana are saying these days.<\/p>\n You recall the book by Lenin and imperialism.<\/p>\n Imperialism is the last stage of capitalism. Well, they’re saying<\/p>\n in Havana right now that underdevelopment is the last stage<\/p>\n of socialism. And largely because the economy<\/p>\n of the country is has recovered from the loss of<\/p>\n the patronage of the Soviet Union all along, about nineteen<\/p>\n ninety. They lost that patronage when the the<\/p>\n communist empire collapsed practically overnight.<\/p>\n A couple of other things too about this book. Some I guess. Well what am I doing? I just<\/p>\n published a book myself on Cuba. I should be talking about that. Right.<\/p>\n He borrowed liberally about what was happening inside of Havana at<\/p>\n the time. There was a one of the chief characters<\/p>\n and probably the most prominent Cuban character in the book is<\/p>\n Captain Say Good, the captain say good, what<\/p>\n is known as the Red Vulture, because<\/p>\n he was engaged in torturing and and killing<\/p>\n young people who are involved in the revolution inside of a.<\/p>\n Castro escaped this because he was in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra, where captain<\/p>\n say Hooda and hit the person who is really<\/p>\n supposed to be Captain Sigur\u00f0ur. His name was Colonel Van Duda,<\/p>\n say Goodat Van Doodah, and he was known not as the Red<\/p>\n Vulture, but as the White Angel of death. It<\/p>\n is because he took off his white linen<\/p>\n suit. He always dressed in a white linen suit with a coat jacket,<\/p>\n and he took that off when he went in to torture people. I said, you can understand<\/p>\n why. There are some other things. He was thrown into jail<\/p>\n in Santiago. That is a wormhole. The character. And by the way, what kind of name is<\/p>\n Rumold? Is a good. Did he make up this name<\/p>\n or is this a good British name wormhole? That’s the character. Who<\/p>\n was the salesman? The vacuum cleaner salesman.<\/p>\n Yeah, that’s right. What a nut. I think he made up this name.<\/p>\n No, he didn’t. He didn’t make this up. No. Okay. Yeah. So that’s a real.<\/p>\n Absolutely. Within a relevant. But it’s the thing itself on a Sunday. But it’s<\/p>\n not an uncommon name. It’s a Sunday. Okay. I know two people with that.<\/p>\n Yeah. Unrelated<\/p>\n in your family. No, I’m sorry. I know. I was true to bring that<\/p>\n up. I guess I’m here because<\/p>\n there is one small a role that that<\/p>\n Great Britain played in the Cuban revolution. Besides<\/p>\n sending one of their their most famous novelists over there<\/p>\n before the revolution was completed. And that is<\/p>\n that the government of Great Britain never<\/p>\n joined the United States diplomatic boycott of<\/p>\n Cuba. That’s for sure. In the 1960s, that between both<\/p>\n President Kennedy and President Johnson, that the United States was able<\/p>\n to get every country in Latin America to break<\/p>\n diplomatic relations with Cuba because<\/p>\n Cuba was exporting its revolution to the rest of Latin America. They were<\/p>\n training guerrillas to go back to their home countries to fight<\/p>\n in an grua outbreaks occurred in Venezuela. In<\/p>\n fact, the ones in Venezuela lasted for 10 long years.<\/p>\n The Cuba put on a lot of money into it and a lot of arms and training for<\/p>\n the Venezuelans. They were so adamant about getting Venezuela<\/p>\n to join the revolution with them because they were dependent upon imports<\/p>\n of petroleum. So they singled out Castro, did himself, singled<\/p>\n out Venezuela. Now, is it turned out later on that<\/p>\n that Cuba got Venezuela anyway? And something is very interesting<\/p>\n about Venezuela. Venezuela today is, as you know, probably<\/p>\n the worst economic performance. It’s in practically in freefall<\/p>\n with about a thousand percent a thousand<\/p>\n percent devaluation of the money.<\/p>\n How can people live through that? And they’re doing a very bad job of living that<\/p>\n way. And therefore, thousands of people are every week trying to get out of the<\/p>\n country. And the one interesting thing here<\/p>\n is that in the 1970s, there were a number of military takeovers in Latin America. Practically<\/p>\n every country of South America save for two countries. There had military<\/p>\n governments and the militaries took over for<\/p>\n and they came to power when the civilian<\/p>\n regime had reached a certain level of inflation<\/p>\n and that level was about 600 percent.<\/p>\n So I’m asking myself, this is when the militaries in<\/p>\n the past at least would take over a government that seems to be failing<\/p>\n economically. Why is Venezuela at this present time<\/p>\n immune from a military takeover? And<\/p>\n I asked this question of a Venezuelan graduate student in the department who is a student<\/p>\n of mine. He told me it’s because the<\/p>\n the military has all the tourist trade<\/p>\n and they’re very big in the economy. They own about half of all the economic<\/p>\n assets in the country. Now, this is actually<\/p>\n the Cuban model. This is what Fidel Castro put together in the 1960s<\/p>\n to retain the loyalty of his own army.<\/p>\n So, for example, when you travel to Cuba and I hope you do. And by the way, pick<\/p>\n up a couple of these shirts while you’re there. The why Havana shirts? Because<\/p>\n they can come in handy around here in Texas.<\/p>\n But he involved. That is Fidel Castro. Involve the army<\/p>\n in running the economy. So you will see when you<\/p>\n go there or you probably won’t know this, but all the companies that deal with<\/p>\n the economy, the tourist economy, the hotels, the<\/p>\n car rentals, they all belong to the army and generals<\/p>\n within the army. So this idea of keeping the loyalty of<\/p>\n your military by involving them in the economy and owning all the best<\/p>\n assets in the country. This was picked up by<\/p>\n Hugo Chavez, the man who socialized<\/p>\n the country and started the Chavez state party, which is still<\/p>\n in power, even though Chavez is. Am I<\/p>\n getting away from Cuba? Not really.<\/p>\n Chavez was one of Castro’s best friends.<\/p>\n He would go to Cuba quite often to get the advice of<\/p>\n the maximum leader of the revolution in Latin America.<\/p>\n He was always an honored guest. He dedicated a great<\/p>\n portion of free. Supplies of crude oil<\/p>\n he built for Cuba, the latest<\/p>\n refinery, which unfortunately doesn’t work very well.<\/p>\n It’s like a like a Russian refinery. It doesn’t quite measure<\/p>\n up to first world standards. But anyway,<\/p>\n he helped the economy of Cuba in the 1990s and the<\/p>\n early 20th century because he had his control<\/p>\n of the flow of oil to Cuba. But he believed<\/p>\n so much in Cuba that he won. Fidel Castro told<\/p>\n him that we have the best doctors in the world. That’s where he went.<\/p>\n He went to Cuba when he developed a cancer.<\/p>\n And it was in Cuba that he died<\/p>\n because he would not go to any other cancer doctor.<\/p>\n I want to say something about my book. Do you mind if I do that?<\/p>\n All right, here’s here’s the book. I could pass this around. I don’t<\/p>\n have any copies to sell. You can. You can buy this. However,<\/p>\n it’s published at Harvard University Press. It only costs twenty five bucks.<\/p>\n Twenty five. Yeah, it’s six. Six hundred pages long.<\/p>\n But it reads so well. I read<\/p>\n it several times in it. It’s like Brian GREENE.<\/p>\n It holds up where they only published this last year. So<\/p>\n there’s plenty of copies available. The one thing that I was<\/p>\n that I remarked once I got into the study of the Cuban revolution is how powerful<\/p>\n the Cuban revolution was in international affairs.<\/p>\n When Fidel Castro took over Cuba and consolidated power there after<\/p>\n in 1959, Cuba only had<\/p>\n six million people. They had never been<\/p>\n and very prominent in world affairs. The Cubans<\/p>\n simply were not on the map as far as Europe.<\/p>\n And it was known for producing sugar. Sure enough. And some<\/p>\n wild nightlife, some of which is described by Graham GREENE,<\/p>\n but not in my book. So forewarning you about that.<\/p>\n But you go over to the LBJ library. You go to do some<\/p>\n research, as I did, and Lenore went with me as well. We went to the JFK<\/p>\n Library and there are reams and reams of paper just<\/p>\n on Cuba. You couldn’t find anything on Cuba before<\/p>\n in the presidency, particularly of JFK, it was the number one foreign<\/p>\n problem of the United States. That’s why it generated so<\/p>\n much documentation. And<\/p>\n it’s pretty heavily documented even in an LBJ time.<\/p>\n It’s probably second only to Vietnam among the foreign documentation<\/p>\n that you can find there. Why was this?<\/p>\n Well, this was because when Fidel Castro came to power, the<\/p>\n CIA ignored him. They ignored Fidel Castro because he wasn’t<\/p>\n thought to have been while he was fighting a guerrilla warfare. He wasn’t thought<\/p>\n to have been a communist. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t a communist when<\/p>\n he fought the revolution in this area, Maestra. And<\/p>\n there were plenty of studies. There were people connected to the CIA who were with the<\/p>\n the embassy in Havana. They did make trips down to the Sierra Maestra<\/p>\n to question people down there. But the thing was that Fidel Castro<\/p>\n had the support of the middle class. So<\/p>\n he never professed a never spoke like a communist. He didn’t use Marxist-Leninist<\/p>\n words, concepts. His he<\/p>\n smoke like a spoke like in a smoke quite a bit, too.<\/p>\n But he spoke like a nationalist,<\/p>\n a middle class nationalist who speaks of loving the nation.<\/p>\n The pottery. And the heroes of the wars of independence like Jose Marti<\/p>\n and all the rest. So he certainly did not pretend to be<\/p>\n a socialist. And I believe he was not.<\/p>\n So the CIA goes into Santiago very shortly after.<\/p>\n In nineteen nineteen fifty eight. Probably<\/p>\n around the time that this book was published by Graham GREENE and they queried all<\/p>\n of the people in the middle class and they were solidly behind<\/p>\n Fidel Castro. He was their man. He had grown up and went to school in Santiago<\/p>\n de Cuba. He went to private school like all the people of the<\/p>\n better off classes do, and they supported him. This was his revolution. And<\/p>\n the reason was there was a bit of racism, racism<\/p>\n involved here. The only non white.<\/p>\n Person ever to be chief of state. In Cuba was<\/p>\n Firenze Batista. He was the man who was the dictator that<\/p>\n Fidel Castro was fighting against. So the dictator forehands<\/p>\n you might teach there was not really well respected among the middle class<\/p>\n and therefore the middle class very. Thoroughly.<\/p>\n Backed Fidel Castro. And it was<\/p>\n only after he began to consolidate power in the first couple of months<\/p>\n that he began to court the Soviet Union<\/p>\n and the socialist bloc. This is why<\/p>\n he has to become a great kind of public enemy here in the United States.<\/p>\n The other thing that bolstered this, this idea that he was a danger to the United<\/p>\n States was the fact that all the middle class who had been backing him in the revolution in the 1950s,<\/p>\n in the 1960s, they emigrated and went to Miami.<\/p>\n And there they organized all manner of of groups<\/p>\n to influence United States policy in Latin America.<\/p>\n And they became mercenary troops for the CIA<\/p>\n trying to overthrow the government of Cuba and Fidel<\/p>\n Castro. As long as I’m about this, I’d like<\/p>\n to talk a little bit about the role of Great Britain, Great Britain. Somehow<\/p>\n the British are somehow in the title of my talk. Are they not? Yes. What is the title of<\/p>\n my talk? Please remind me. Kestrels Challenge to Britain and the United<\/p>\n States. Wow. I<\/p>\n didn’t know I put it that way because<\/p>\n while all of Latin America were obeying the Presidents<\/p>\n Kennedy and an LBJ to break diplomatic relations<\/p>\n with Cuba, Great Britain did not. As a matter of fact,<\/p>\n neither did some of the other great powers of Europe. Spain probably<\/p>\n not one of the great powers of Europe in the 1960s, but Spain, even though General<\/p>\n Franco, you’d think that if anybody in Europe is going to break relations<\/p>\n with with a Cuba that is<\/p>\n quickly becoming a communist state, it would be Franco.<\/p>\n But Franco never gave up. He continued to have relations, diplomatic<\/p>\n relations with Cuba, France, France under de Gaulle also<\/p>\n did so. The great powers in the center of Europe<\/p>\n retained trade. Not that they traded as much as the United States did, or then later<\/p>\n on the Soviet Union. But they retained trading privileges with<\/p>\n Cuba all throughout the 1960s. At the time that the United States was organizing<\/p>\n a big boycott, as a matter<\/p>\n of fact, Great Britain and British ships, British merchant vessels<\/p>\n occasionally came under fire from some of the mercenary troops<\/p>\n that were sponsored and paid for by the CIA in the 1960s.<\/p>\n You may have heard about fast boats and Pirates of the Caribbean.<\/p>\n Well, this is exactly the sort of Cuban anti-Castro<\/p>\n Cubans who were given money by the CIA to<\/p>\n buy arms and buy fast boats, mother ships,<\/p>\n and then circle around the island of Cuba and<\/p>\n making raids on Cuba. The idea behind this, they were known<\/p>\n as the they were known also as revolutionary groups. That is<\/p>\n every one of these groups to tie themselves into the the middle class<\/p>\n participation in the revolution in the 1950s that they say Fidel Castro<\/p>\n stole. Every one of these anti-Castro groups, had<\/p>\n revolution in its name, the revolutionary front of of the Eskom bri-.<\/p>\n And there were other named everybody in the revolutionary rehabilitation.<\/p>\n That was another mercenary group, another armed group<\/p>\n that. But the one thing is they were not effective.<\/p>\n As a matter of fact, they may they became counterproductive. And this comes<\/p>\n directly from the book. They became counterproductive because the action<\/p>\n of these groups out of Miami. Gave Fidel<\/p>\n Castro an excuse. To mobilize<\/p>\n the population, to organize the militias and to organize<\/p>\n a group known as the defenders of the Revolution.<\/p>\n That were, in fact, neighborhood watch groups throughout<\/p>\n Cuba who kept their eyes on their neighbors for demonstrations<\/p>\n of disloyalty to the state, to the revolutionary state and to Fidel Castro.<\/p>\n I was gonna make a Trump joke. Probably I shouldn’t.<\/p>\n This is being recorded. And<\/p>\n anyway, Trump would have liked this group. But<\/p>\n in other words, Castro was able to consolidate his power and eliminate his enemies from within<\/p>\n the revolution because of the activities of these armed<\/p>\n groups sponsored by the CIA and bringing the British<\/p>\n back in here. I guess the challenge was that sometimes they attacked British<\/p>\n shipping. There was one famous case during the presidency of John<\/p>\n F. Kennedy in which the idea<\/p>\n that one of these armed groups attacked a ship and shot it up, a British<\/p>\n merchant vessel. So they got a letter. The United States got a letter from<\/p>\n the British government protesting the c.i.a.’s groups<\/p>\n operating out of Havana who were somehow interdicting<\/p>\n and trade on the high seas, becoming pirates.<\/p>\n You know, the worst case of this happened in 1964,<\/p>\n when LBJ, who had inherited the presidency<\/p>\n of Kennedy as vise president and he was running in November<\/p>\n in order to win election in his own name. So you can understand how touchy he<\/p>\n was by this incident. One of these armed groups out of Miami,<\/p>\n actually, they had a a base in Nicaragua under<\/p>\n the simonson’s, another infamous dictator from Latin America that was<\/p>\n never visited by Graham GREENE.<\/p>\n And they attacked a Spanish merchant vessel. They shot it up<\/p>\n badly, killed about five officers and watched them<\/p>\n at at night. They mistaken they had mistaken<\/p>\n this. Ship for a a merchant<\/p>\n vessel of Cuba. Name the Sierra. My Estrada over. Named<\/p>\n after the the place for the revolution. And Fidel Castro.<\/p>\n But it was really the Sierra Houghton’s zsuzsa.<\/p>\n It’s a it’s a mountain chain in.<\/p>\n In Spain. And it was a Spanish vessel. Therefore, this<\/p>\n was piracy on the high seas. They disabled this vessel, had to be towed<\/p>\n into into port. And<\/p>\n there was a lot of diplomatic anger over this directive<\/p>\n that the president of the United States. Of course, since the CIA<\/p>\n was involved, everybody at the White House. Including my<\/p>\n economic history professor, Walt Rostow, and wanted to<\/p>\n downplay this, and so they said they’re just good patriots who<\/p>\n have no connection and no direction from the CIA.<\/p>\n That was that was correct. There was no direction from the CIA. There was only<\/p>\n financing from the CIA. That’s how they could buy all these these weapons.<\/p>\n But Johnson then pulled the plug on that operation. He told<\/p>\n the CIA to stop sponsoring groups from Miami<\/p>\n and to shut them down in any way. He was beginning to move towards<\/p>\n and move the whole crusade against Cuba.<\/p>\n He’s moving the anti-communist crusade to Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n One other thing here, and that is that Great<\/p>\n Britain, which sold some Leeland buses in 1964.<\/p>\n This became a big deal in the newspapers once again. The<\/p>\n administration here in Washington, D.C., was up in arms about how could the British do<\/p>\n this one deal with this communist state. And of course, we<\/p>\n were selling wheat to the Soviet Union. So I guess it was a perfectly rational<\/p>\n sort of operation.<\/p>\n In a way, I think that this European, our allies in Europe<\/p>\n were much more important to us as allies against<\/p>\n the Soviet Union than Cuba was a threat to the United States.<\/p>\n So the Kennedy and the Johnson administration<\/p>\n tolerated their continued diplomatic recognition of Cuba.<\/p>\n And I think that the one reason was that<\/p>\n the United States needed our allies in Europe in order to protect<\/p>\n the one captive city of capitalism.<\/p>\n And that was West Berlin. The reason why JFK<\/p>\n pulled back the U.S. fleet from Cuban waters during the Bay<\/p>\n of Pigs in April 1961, the Bay of Pigs<\/p>\n invasion, as you know, was a brigade of Cuban Americans<\/p>\n who had signed up for training in Guatemala in order to invade<\/p>\n Cuba. And they, too, were sponsored by the CIA.<\/p>\n And this was a hush hush project begun and then laid on the lap<\/p>\n of Kennedy by<\/p>\n Eisenhower, by President Eisenhower. This had worked<\/p>\n once in Guatemala in 1954. When the<\/p>\n few communists were known to be working in the<\/p>\n the the government of the country<\/p>\n that was about to expropriate some land, unused land belonging<\/p>\n to the United Fruit Company, for whom the New York<\/p>\n law, the New York law offices. That<\/p>\n in which the Dulles brothers were partners<\/p>\n and that law office in New York represented internationally<\/p>\n the United Fruit Company. So the CIA,<\/p>\n under the direction then of Allen Dulles, decided<\/p>\n and got the word from Eisenhower to send in the CIA<\/p>\n and see if we can’t undermine this revolutionary government that was taking<\/p>\n land away from foreigners. And it worked.<\/p>\n There was a military revolt inside of the country and the<\/p>\n military revolt unseated the the revolutionary president who<\/p>\n was trying to undertake land reform for the benefit of<\/p>\n the landless peasants in Guatemala. This worked<\/p>\n in Guatemala, but it didn’t work in Cuba. Fidel Castro.<\/p>\n And one of the reasons is that already Fidel Castro had learned the lesson of Guatemala<\/p>\n because there was a young Argentine doctor who was on<\/p>\n his way through Central America and he was living<\/p>\n for a while in revolutionary Guatemala.<\/p>\n And he was there when the CIA cabal took place<\/p>\n and unseated the revolutionary government of Guatemala in 1954. That<\/p>\n was Che Guevara, or he was known later on as Che Guevara.<\/p>\n So Che Guevara, when he met Fidel Castro in Mexico City,<\/p>\n already told him about one thing that we must watch out for is<\/p>\n the see eye A but. The fact<\/p>\n that we had in Europe a number of countries who did<\/p>\n not want to break relations with Cuba.<\/p>\n This turned out also to be a source of information about what was happening inside<\/p>\n of Cuba. Well, Lenore and I went to the the the<\/p>\n archive at Kew Gardens, wonderful place to work, great<\/p>\n lunches and great tee times. If you get a chance to do it.<\/p>\n Go do some research there. I will say that<\/p>\n they they had some influence and<\/p>\n some cooperation out of their own embassy’s in there in order to<\/p>\n to shunt to the United States. Some intelligence reports.<\/p>\n They didn’t send them the juicy stuff. They did send them something every now and then.<\/p>\n So it became a kind of convenient source paying back your<\/p>\n powerful ally, the United States, by providing him some intelligence about things going on in<\/p>\n Cuba. And that’s because<\/p>\n the secret police in Cuba began to be organized<\/p>\n by Soviet agents. The very first KGB officer shows<\/p>\n up in Cuba at the end in the last months of 1959. I’ve got<\/p>\n his picture in here. Alexander Alexiev<\/p>\n shows up in Niger and immediately he goes to work for the<\/p>\n the Interior Ministry. And then the KGB had about<\/p>\n five officers who were constantly supervising<\/p>\n the work of the secret police in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.<\/p>\n Therefore, by the time LBJ come came to office,<\/p>\n practically all of the sources of information that the CIA<\/p>\n could collect from inside of Cuba had dried up because all<\/p>\n of the agents that the CIA ran in Cuba were picked up by<\/p>\n the secret police.<\/p>\n So getting back to the invasion.<\/p>\n The United States armed forces did not back the invasion. That is,<\/p>\n they did not send U.S. pilots, they did not send U.S. warplanes.<\/p>\n They did not bombard Cuba at this time<\/p>\n with naval canons.<\/p>\n They backed away from protecting even those who<\/p>\n the Cuban Americans who had rushed ashore in April of nineteen<\/p>\n sixty one at the Bay of Pigs. The reason is<\/p>\n that. That West West Berlin was simply<\/p>\n much more important. They knew in 1961 that<\/p>\n Khrushchev had expressed on several occasions support for<\/p>\n Fidel Castro. He had even given Fidel himself a bear hug<\/p>\n in the in the United Nations. So it<\/p>\n was common knowledge that that Cuba was becoming<\/p>\n an ally of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union<\/p>\n could put, could attack or at least hold<\/p>\n hostage to protect Cuba from invasion<\/p>\n from U.S. military forces. And so all throughout the 1960s at<\/p>\n the time that we were the most difficult<\/p>\n in maintaining our economic and political<\/p>\n boycott of the Cuban regime. The the<\/p>\n Europeans did not. And I think that the real secret to that<\/p>\n and we’ve never used any U.S. military forces<\/p>\n against Cuba whatsoever. And I think that the reason is that the<\/p>\n allies were interested in protecting West Germany. Were<\/p>\n interested in protecting to the West Berlin,<\/p>\n which was inside of East Germany from harm. And this is why<\/p>\n the United States modified its antagonism against Cuba<\/p>\n and relegated it to trade and to diplomatic boycott rather<\/p>\n than All-Out U.S. invasion of Cuba. What the<\/p>\n United States armed forces, thus the title, the challenge<\/p>\n to to to Great Britain. I.<\/p>\n I have no idea where that came from,<\/p>\n but I had to have Great Britain in the title.<\/p>\n A couple of reasons that I discovered why Cuba was so<\/p>\n important in the 1960s. One, it was the<\/p>\n it was a vulnerable time in the Cold War.<\/p>\n Sputnik had been launched. The Soviet Union had the biggest army<\/p>\n in the world. They were thought to have all these tanks. And there was<\/p>\n the missile gap, the so-called missile gap that came became part of the 1960s<\/p>\n election. It was believed<\/p>\n in 1960 that they had more missiles than the United States did. Even<\/p>\n though Eisenhower knew better, he was not about to publicize that.<\/p>\n So there was all this for all of these reasons.<\/p>\n And then the fact that the Fidel Castro<\/p>\n nationalized all of U.S. businesses in the year 1960<\/p>\n with one fell swoop, nobody was willing then in 1960<\/p>\n to go to war over the loss of a few refineries of Standard<\/p>\n Oil. All of the lands. The sugar<\/p>\n lands owned by American companies also were confiscated<\/p>\n and there was no kind of belligerence on the part of the United States. There<\/p>\n was just continued kind of support<\/p>\n for Cuban counter-revolutionaries in Miami. That was about<\/p>\n it. Here’s another<\/p>\n reason. The fact that there was this trade<\/p>\n and political alliance between Cuba and the Soviet Union and<\/p>\n also Red China. Chairman Mao was<\/p>\n got a visit from Che Guevara himself. Or maybe I should say Chairman Mao<\/p>\n himself got a visit from Che Guevara and<\/p>\n became a a supporter of the Cuban revolution. Even though<\/p>\n there wasn’t much trade that could be carried on between China and<\/p>\n the US and Cuba. Nonetheless, they did have political ties.<\/p>\n And so this made Cuba outsized<\/p>\n in all of world affairs. As a matter of fact, you could say that<\/p>\n Fidel Castro was the cause for the fall of<\/p>\n Nikita Khrushchev in 1964, just a year and a half after<\/p>\n the Cuban missile crisis, which occurred in Cuba. And Cuba,<\/p>\n was the the one territory in all<\/p>\n the world in which the major powers were so<\/p>\n close to come to war in the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October<\/p>\n of 1962. All of these are the reasons why Cuba<\/p>\n became such a problem for the United States in the 1960s. And<\/p>\n Cuba also carried great weight throughout the world.<\/p>\n They eventually sent troops in to two to Africa. At the end of<\/p>\n the nineteen sixties and large number, several thousands<\/p>\n of troops from the regular army were sent into Africa in the 1970s<\/p>\n and the 1980s. They for a country of six<\/p>\n million people who adopted socialism because of the Cuban<\/p>\n revolution. Cuba carried great weight<\/p>\n and it still does. And I would say mainly because of<\/p>\n opposition by the United States, which continues even today.<\/p>\n Still, if you got a chance to visit I-word suggestion. It’s really a<\/p>\n wonderful place and I believe it. From<\/p>\n the book by Graham GREENE. Thank you very much.<\/p>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/british-studies.png","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/podcast-download\/60\/60.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/podcast-player\/60\/60.mp3","audio_player":"
University Press in 2017. His other books include Oil and Revolution in Mexico
(1993); and A Socioeconomic History of Argentina (1979). His articles have
been translated into many languages including Chinese. With Alan Knight he
edited The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the Twentieth Century (1992). With a
UT Ph.D. in History, he has taught at UT History since 1983. He is presently
writing a book on the renegotiation of the Panama Canal Treaty.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Jonathan Brown","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"jonathan-brown","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-23 19:28:26","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 19:28:26","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/?post_type=speaker&p=812","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"transcript":"