At a time
when US imperialism is baring its teeth once again in Venezuela, which like
Iraq is coincidentally another oil laden country, it is good to be reminded of
another American ‘war for democracy’ in Cuba. What is staggering, in view of
the past 60 years of embargos and sanctions (only sanctions against Israel are
hateful, those on Cuba are full of love) is that when the Cuban revolution
happened, it was welcomed in the belly of the beast, the United States.
However
that situation did not last for long. US
Corporations and their spokesmen were not amused at seeing their assets being nationalised. Castro, who at that time had nothing to do
with Cuba’s Communist Party which had
opposed his driving out of Batista, was forced into the hands of the Soviet
Union by Eisenhower and Nixon. Castro was an anti-imperialist and the United
States was the world’s major imperial power.
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| Castro with Dr. Grayson Kirk, president of Columbia University. IMAGE: JOHN DUPREY/NY DAILY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES |
Today
the United States under their idiot President Trump has rolled back the
agreement Obama reached with Cuba. Trump would dearly love to see the overthrow
of the Cuban state but that is beyond his grasp.
Tony
Greenstein
He is either incredibly naive about
communism or under communist discipline. My guess is the former.
1959
When
New York went crazy for the Cuban leader
When
Fidel Castro came to New York in April 1959, it was a mere four months since
the 33-year-old had led the successful revolution to overthrow the Cuban
dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Castro had pulled no punches in his anti-America speeches, and
he had extensive associations with the political left. Yet the press loved
Castro, and it was the American Society of Newspaper Editors who extended an
invite for his visit to the U.S.
Castro seemed almost super-real, like a character from an action
movie, in his trademark green army uniform, boots and bushy beard. Castro
certainly did not disappoint his journalistic hosts, regaling reporters with
the many tales of his time as a fighter in the Cuban guerilla war.
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| The police confront a ring of anti-Castro Cubans at 39th Street and Fifth Avenue. They were among spectators who launched a fusillade of eggs when Castro supporters showed up in red shirts for the fifth annual United Puerto Rican-Hispanic parade up Fifth Avenue. Fidel's fans were shouting "Viva Castro" and "Down with Yankees." IMAGE: PHIL GREITZER/NY DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES |
President Eisenhower had refused to meet Castro — that job was
handed down to Vice President Richard Nixon. But Castro took full advantage of
his 11-day stay. He hired a public relations firm, ate hot dogs, kissed
ladies like a rock star, and held babies like a politician. He even placed a
wreath on George Washington’s grave.
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| Youngsters admire Fidel Castro's beard during a visit to his hotel. The children attended a Queens school with Castro's son. The boy was secretly living In New York while his father led the Cuban revolution. Left to right: Gene Wolf, Kathy Johnston, Kathy Tableman, David Friedlander, Karen Leland and Robert Boyle. IMAGE: GEORGE MATTSON/NY DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES |
But within a year, Eisenhower had authorized a plan to attack
Cuba. With the CIA arming and training Cuban exiles, the attack when it came —
the operation known as the Bay of Pigs — was a fiasco.
We take A Look Back in Time When Fidel Castro
Charmed the United States
Sixty years ago
this month, the romantic victory of the young Cuban revolutionaries amazed the
world—and led to a surreal evening on the US’s
premier variety show “The Ed Sullivan Show”
January 27, 2019 Smithsonian
Magazine
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| Ed Sullivan interviews Fidel Castro in January 1959, shortly after dictator Fulgencio Batista had fled the country. , CBS Photo Archives / Getty Images |
The world’s most notorious guerrilla
leader was about to invade their living rooms, and Americans were thrilled. At
8:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 11, 1959, some 50 million viewers tuned their
television sets to “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the trendsetting variety revue that
had introduced them to Elvis Presley a few years earlier and would bring them
the Beatles several years later. On this winter’s evening the avuncular
Sullivan was hosting a Latin celebrity who had aroused intense curiosity across
the United States: Fidel Castro, a charming 32-year-old
lawyer-turned-revolutionary, known for his unkempt beard and khaki patrol cap,
who had against all odds overthrown a bloodthirsty military regime in Cuba.
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| Miss Gladys Feijoo, 19, who was nominated Miss La Prensa of 1959, kisses Castro as he signs an autograph for her collection. IMAGE: GEORGE LOCKHART/NY DAILY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES |
For America’s most beloved
entertainment program, it was a rare excursion into politics. Earlier in the
hour, Sullivan had presented a more typical array of artistic offerings for the
staid Eisenhower era. Four acrobats leapt and gamboled around the stage (two of
them wearing ape costumes). The Little Gaelic Singers crooned soothing Irish
harmonies. A stand-up comic performed a cheesy routine about suburban house
parties. Finally, Sullivan cut to the main attraction: his friendly interview
with Fidel at the very cusp of the rebels’ victory.
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| Castro waves to crowds on his way to Pennsylvania Station from the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York City, en route to Boston. IMAGE: CARL T. GOSSETT JR/NEW YORK TIMES CO./GETTY IMAGES |
The segment had been filmed at
2:00 a.m. on January 8 in the provincial outpost of Matanzas, 60 miles east of
Havana, using the town hall as an improvised TV studio. Only a few hours after
the interview, Fidel would make his triumphant entrance into the Cuban capital,
his men riding on the backs of captured tanks in euphoric scenes that evoked
the liberation of Paris. It was the electrifying climax of history’s most
unlikely revolution: a scruffy handful of self-taught insurgents—many of them
kids just out of college, literature majors, art students, and engineers,
including a number of trailblazing women—had somehow defeated 40,000
professional soldiers and forced the sinister dictator, President Fulgencio
Batista, to flee from the island like a thief in the night.
Cuba Libre!: Che, Fidel,
and the Improbable Revolution That Changed World History
The surprising story of Che Guevara, Fidel
Castro, and the scrappy band of rebel men and women who followed them.
Given the animosity that sprang up
between the U.S. and Cuba soon after, the chummy atmosphere of the conversation
today seems closer to “The Twilight Zone.” On-screen, Sullivan and his guest
could hardly look more incongruous. Trying to look casual as he leans against a
table, the thickset 57 -year-old yanqui impresario appears
to have just walked out of a Brooks Brothers ad in his tailored suit and tie,
his helmet of dyed hair neatly combed and brilliantined. (He was often parodied
as a “well-dressed gorilla.”)
Fidel, by contrast, was already a
fashion icon for rebellious American youth, his olive-drab uniform, martial
kepi, and raffish facial hair instantly recognizable. Clustered around the pair
are a dozen equally shaggy young rebels who were known in Cuba simply as los
barbudos, “the bearded ones,” all cradling weapons—“a forest of tommy
guns,” Sullivan later said. Fidel’s lover and confidante, Celia Sánchez, who
often appeared by his side in press interviews, was this time standing
off-camera, wearing specially tailored fatigues and balancing a cigarette in
her finely manicured fingers. The most efficient organizer of the Rebel Army,
she had brokered the media event and now dedicated herself to keeping the male
guerrillas, who were as excitable as schoolboys, from wandering across the set
or talking.
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| Police and plainclothes detectives ride the miniature railway transporting Fidel Castro during his tour of the Bronx Zoo. IMAGE: OSSIE LEVINESS/NY DAILY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES |
With his first breath, Sullivan
assures CBS viewers that they are about to meet “a wonderful group of revolutionary youngsters,” as if they are the
latest pop music sensation. Despite their unwashed appearance, Fidel’s
followers are a far cry from the godless Communists depicted by the Cuban
military’s propaganda machine, he adds; in fact, they are all wearing Catholic
medals and some are even piously carrying copies of the Bible. But Sullivan is
most interested in Fidel himself. The sheer improbability of his victory over
the thuggish strongman Batista had bathed him in a romantic aura. U.S.
magazines openly described Fidel as a new Robin Hood, with Celia as his Maid
Marian, robbing from the rich to give to the poor.
Sullivan’s first questions are not
the most hard-hitting: “Now, in school,”
he chortles in his distinctively nasal voice, “I understand you were a very fine student and a very fine athlete. Were
you a baseball pitcher?”
“Yes,” Fidel replies in the halting English learned at his Jesuit
high school and several visits to New York City. “Baseball, basketball,
softball. Every kind of sport.”
“Undoubtedly
all of this exercise you did at school prepared you for this role?”
“Yes.
I found myself in good condition to exist in the mountains . . .”
The hardened celebrity hound
Sullivan is clearly starstruck by his guest, and his delivery is far more
animated than his usual monotonous drone back in the New York studio. Comandante
en Jefe Castro, meanwhile, comes across as earnest, sweet-natured,
and eager to please, furrowing his brow with effort as he grasps for his
English vocabulary. It’s hard not to feel for the rebel leader as he struggles
gamely with the half-remembered tongue.
Some of the interview is haunting
in retrospect. “I’d like to ask you a
couple of questions, Fidel,” Sullivan says, serious for a moment. “In Latin American countries over and over
again, dictators [have] stolen millions and millions of dollars, tortured and
killed people. How do you propose to end that here in Cuba?”
Fidel laughs. “Very easy. By not permitting that any
dictatorship come again to rule our country. You can be sure that Batista . . .
will be the last dictator of Cuba.”
In 1959, Sullivan saw no reason to
argue.
The lovefest now proceeds to its
crescendo. “The people of the United States,
they have great admiration for you and your men,” the host advises Fidel. “Because you are in the real American
tradition—of a George Washington—of any band who started off with a small body
[of men] and fought against a great nation and won.” Fidel takes the
compliment in stride; after all, the U.S. press had been idolizing him for
nearly two years as a citizen-soldier in the very spirit of 1776.
“What do you feel about the United States?” Sullivan asks.
“My feeling to the people of the United States is a feeling of
sympathy,” Fidel says evenly, “because they
are a very worker people . . ."
(“They work hard,” Ed interprets.)
“They
have founded that big nation, working very much . . .”
(“That is right . . .” Ed nods.)
“United
States is not one race [of] people, [they] came from every part in the world .
. . at is why the United States belong[s] to the world, to those who were
persecuted, to those who could not live in their own country . .
.”
“We want you to like us.” Sullivan glows. “And we like you. You and Cuba!”
The show then cuts back to
Sullivan in CBS’s Manhattan studio, where the arbiter of middle-class American
taste lavishes Fidel with the same magnanimous praise he had heaped on Elvis.
“You
know, this is a fine young man and a very smart young man,”
he pronounces, squeezing his arms together in his famous hunched stance. “And with the help of God and our prayers,
and with the help of the American government, he will come up with the sort of
democracy down there that America should have.”
And then the show rolled on to its
next variety segment: a fashion show for poodles.
**********
Today, it is all but impossible to
imagine that moment in 1959 when the Cuban Revolution was fresh, Fidel and Che
were young and handsome, and Americans could view the uprising as an embodiment
of their own finest ideals. As Sullivan observed, here was a people fighting
for freedom against injustice and tyranny, a modern echo of the War of
Independence, with Fidel as a sexier version of a Founding Father and his guerrillas
the reincarnation of Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys, the irregular
sharpshooters who helped defeat the redcoats.
A string of other gushing
interviews would quickly follow Sullivan’s, conducted by everyone from the
revered CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow to the Hollywood actor Errol Flynn. A few
months later, in April 1959, Fidel even traveled on a victory lap of the
northeastern United States: he was mobbed by admirers as he ate hot dogs in New
York City, spoke at Princeton, and made dutiful visits to hallowed shrines of
democracy such as Mount Vernon and the Lincoln Memorial.
Meanwhile, American Cubaphiles
flocked to Havana to see the revolution firsthand and were warmly welcomed.
They immersed themselves in the Mardi Gras atmosphere, attending mass rallies
and wacky, radical street celebrations such as a mock funeral parade for a
nationalized telephone company, complete with musicians dressed as mourners and
fake coffins. Havana was a round-the-clock fiesta, with buskers on every corner
singing patriotic songs to raise money for the new Cuban state in a delirious
wave of optimism.
Beat poets wrote odes to Fidel.
African-Americans were exhilarated by Cuba’s overnight abolition of all
segregation laws, just as the Civil Rights Movement was gaining pace in the
U.S., and joined special group tours for black writers and artists. A Creek
chief traveled to meet Fidel wearing a full-feathered war bonnet. Feminists
rejoiced in Cuba’s promise that women’s liberation would be “a revolution within the revolution.”
The entire world was fascinated by
the apparent explosion of idealism: Fidel, Che and Celia basked in goodwill,
entertaining intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. There
was a chance, many felt, that Cuba would become a paradise of political,
racial, and gender equality.
The reason for our amnesia about
how the revolution was received is, of course, political: the popular memory of
the guerrilla campaign was an early casualty of the Cold War. When los
barbudos first rolled into Havana in January 1959, they were showered with
admiration for what seemed a black-and-white struggle for liberty. But Atomic
Age milestones such as the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 and
the near-Armageddon of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, which pushed
the human race the closest it has ever come to extinction in nuclear war,
quickly overshadowed any romance for most in the Western world. It became
widely accepted in the U.S. that Fidel and his supporters had been covering up
Communist sympathies that had lurked in their hearts from the start.
And yet, the story of how a few
amateur subversives defeated one of Latin America’s most loathsome regimes
remains a defining saga of the 20th century. In the words of historian Nancy
Stout, Cuba’s was “the perfect revolution”
for the visual media age that kicked off in the 1950s: it was short; it was
successful; it unfolded in neat stages—“like
an operetta”—and yet with the narrative arc of a paperback thriller. It was
also full of larger-than-life characters. Coinciding with the birth of network
television and the golden age of magazines, it became history’s most photogenic
revolt. Images of the dashing guerrillas and attractive guerrilla women—almost
all in their 20s or early 30s, some of them fresh-faced teenagers—jolted the
world towards the 1960s.
Thanks to the veil of suspicion
and ideology hanging over Cuba today, few are aware of just how improvised the
revolution was; its leaders were largely forced to make up their own brand of
jungle combat and urban resistance as they went along. Even fewer recall the
genuine bravery and self-sacrifice of those years, when ordinary Cubans risked
torture and death every day at the hands of Batista’s henchmen, who were as
sadistic as Gestapo agents. Under Batista, thousands of young rebel
sympathizers disappeared into police torture chambers, their mutilated bodies
strung up in parks or dumped in gutters the next morning. Today, long decades
after el triunfo, “the triumph,”
a few famous images of the main characters—Fidel with his Old Testament beard,
Che in his beret gazing mystically ahead—have become frozen as Soviet-era
clichés.
But by going back to original
letters, diaries, TV and newspaper accounts, it's possible to turn back the
clock to recapture the atmosphere of Cuba in the 1950s, when the actors were
unknowns, history was unformed, and the fate of the revolution hung in the
balance. Imagining history as it was lived helps to explain how the optimism of
the uprising went so badly awry. Were Americans—and the many moderate Cubans
who supported the revolution—duped by Fidel, as hardliners would later allege,
tricked by a Machiavellian figure who had a secret agenda from the start? Or
could the story of modern Cuba, which reshaped international politics so
radically, have gone another way?
Tony Perrottet is a contributing
writer for Smithsonian magazine, a regular contributor to the New
York Times and WSJ Magazine, and the author of six books
including The
Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games, Napoleon's
Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped and The
Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe.
From Cuba
Libre!: Che, Fidel and the Improbable Revolution That Changed World History by
Tony Perrottet, published by Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2019
by Tony Perrottet.
