[NYTr] Landau: 47-Year-Old Memories of Cuba
 
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:56:03 -0500 (CDT)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Progreso Weekly - Oct 18, 2007
http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=193&Itemid=1

47-year-old memories of Cuba

By Saul Landau

I first visited Cuba in early June 1960, about a year after the First
Agrarian Reform Law (May 1959) called for the confiscation of the
islandbs largest farms and estates.

On June 6, 1960, just after I arrived, the Cuban government demanded
that the managers of U.S.-owned oil refineries (Texaco and Esso) and
the British-owned Shell refine Soviet crude oil. The U.S. government
instructed the refinery owners to refuse the demand. On June 28, Cuba
nationalized the refineries.

On the street, worried middle class members predicted such disobedience
would induce the empire to act with force. The exodus to the United
States accelerated.

On July 6, President Dwight D. Eisenhower retaliated by cutting off
Cubabs sugar quota. bSin cuota pero sin amo,b read one sign (No quota,
but no boss.) bNo quota, but no asshole,b chided Guillermo Cabrera
Infante. (He directed Lunes de Revolucion, a weekly cultural
supplement. He served as cultural attachC) in Belgium before defecting
in 1965).

A raucous demonstration of telephone workers dumped a coffin marked
AT&T into the sea. Students and workers of both sexes held frequent
demonstrations to show support for their revolution which began to
resemble a metaphorical snowball plummeting down the mountain, gaining
speed and depth.

Each day, I would read of new factories being bintervened,b the step
preceding nationalization. A worker would report illegal procedures.
The state would send an binterventor,b who would bdiscoverb evidence of
illegality. The firm would become nationalized.

By summer 1960, a joke dramatized the speed of Cubabs socialist
transformation -- although the word was still officially taboo. A man
calls a factory, asks to speak to the interventor. The receptionist
says: bBut this factory hasnbt been intervened.b

bOK,b the caller replies, bIbll call back in five minutes.b

On August 6, Revolucion reported all U.S. commercial properties on the
island had been nationalized. A friend phoned me at my cheap hotel. His
father had owned a string of supermarkets and his plush Havana
apartment was no longer of use to him. Did I want to stay there?

You bet. The Jamaican maids -- bthey come with the apartment,b my
friend informed me -- reported the daily gossip. Both hated communism,
which bgave power to the worthless poorb and identified with the bnice
people with moneyb who thought Batista had imposed the kind of order
they bcould respect.b

bSocialism means you canbt buy shrimp at the store.b one quipped,
referring to the shortage of consumer goods as the U.S. stopped its
trade and merchants had their stores nationalized. (By 1962, that
apartment became part of a complex for housing thousands of Soviet
advisers.)

In mid September, Fidel went to New York to address the UN General
Assembly. Before he left, Cuba nationalized U.S.-owned banks including
First National City Bank of New York and Chase Manhattan.

The revolutionary government had already nationalized big hotels,
renaming the Havana Hilton bHabana Libre.b Cuba had earlier seized
United Fruit and King Ranch holdings as well as large Cuban-owned
property, like the Bacardi Rum factories. Heady stuff for a young
socialist like myself!

In October 1960, 47 years ago, I left Cuba on the last scheduled ferry
from Havana to Key West -- just as the government passed the 1960 Urban
Reform Law that nationalized commercially owned real estate and
eliminated landlords.

During the eight hour ride, I chatted with middle class Cubans who
decided to abandon their homes and leave the island after losing their
businesses.

bThe Communists have taken over,b Jorge, a middle aged doctor and
clinic owner told me. bWe thought Fidel was reasonable, but he only
wants to communize the island, take everything I worked so hard for and
give it to lazy people. This is not patriotism. Itbs Marxist-Leninism
like he spouted at the UN. The Russians will soon be here with their
armies.b

He referred to Fidelbs September UN General Assembly address in which
he documented U.S.-based terrorist attacks that cost Cuban lives and
destroyed property. How would the UN preserve the rights of small
countries to choose their destinies bwhen their rights have been denied
and aggressive forces are marshaled against them?b

Martha, Jorgebs wife, a chemist, who worked in a laboratory they also
owned, dismissed as bexaggerationb the revolutionbs baccomplishments.b
Fidel had boasted of building 10,000 new schools and 5,000 new houses
and sending tens of thousands of students leaving home to go to the
countryside to teach peasants to read and write.

She and Jorge talked bitterly of their teenage son -- age 17 -- who had
stayed behind to bfight for the revolution.b In tears, Martha almost
screeched: bThey stole him from me.b Indeed, I had spoken to a
rebellious teenage girl whose parents refused to let her go to the
campo to balphabetizeb the illiterate. She and her parents understood
that this meant loss of control -- of her virginity -- to the
revolution.

At the UN, Castro had reported on a major loss as well, some $500
million dollars stolen by bthe politicians who had enriched themselves
during the tyranny of Batista.b

bWe hated Batista but we never imagined Fidel would turn on his own
class and confiscate our property, the basis of civilization. The
United States will not allow this.b

Fidel had questioned the U.S. bright to promote and encourage
subversion in our country.b Fidel, the lawyer, asked: bDoes the
Government of the United States feel it has the right to promote
subversion on our country, violating all international treaties?b

The answer? For empire, might makes right. Cuban workers, mobilized by
their government, had thrown down the gauntlet. They seized U.S.
property and then defied the bimperialistsb to do something about it. A
revolution began as anti-Batista. It turned quickly into a class and
anti-imperialist struggle in which the propertied opposition lost their
political parties, mass media and other public outlets.

By summer of 1960, members of the propertied classes, who had assumed
their social prerogatives as axioms, saw the collapse of their culture.
Instead, bthe massesb as Fidel referred to the workers and peasants of
Cuba in his speeches, had taken the initiative and usurped the status
and honorific deference previously enjoyed by those of wealth.

In his UN speech as in his long discourses in Cuba, Fidel cast his lot
with the downtrodden. The words of his UN speech were dwarfed in U.S.
headlines to the spectacle of Fidel and the Cuban delegation kicked out
of the Shelburne Hotel in mid town and moving to the Hotel Theresa in
Harlem. The pretext was that Cubans had plucked their own chicken
before cooking them in the hotel room, a silly fib repeated endlessly
by the U.S. press. But his stay in Harlem, with a well-publicized visit
from a friendly Malcolm X, accurately reflected the sharp leftward
direction of the Cuban government.

On the grim ferry ride, those I spoke to felt confident the United
States would react to bcommunismb on the island it virtually owned
until 1959. Then, they would return and resume their middle class
lives. Indeed, the rumor had become deafening that the CIA was training
exiled Cubans to invade.

By the time I returned to Cuba in December 1960, every Cuban awaited
the U.S. invasion. The covert CIA training of thousands of Cuban exile
men in Guatemala had become the worldbs worst kept secret. The only
questions that remained were: when and where would the invasion come
and how much U.S. military involvement would support it?

On January 2, 1961, I watched an impassioned and determined Fidel from
about forty feet away. He denounced the U.S. Embassy as a nest of spies
and demanded that Washington reduce its staff from 87 Americans and 120
Cubans to 11, the number of Cubans working at its Embassy in
Washington. The million people assembled in Revolution Plaza exploded
in applause and chants.

bFidel seguro, a los Yankis, dales duro.b (bRight on Fidel, Give the
Yankees hell.b)

Eisenhower responded. bThere is a limit to what the United States in
self-respect can endure. That limit has now been reached.b On January
3, he broke diplomatic relations with Cuba. New York Times columnist
James Reston complemented Ike, who btold off his tormentors and slammed
the door on his way out. It was a grand exit which made the pictures
dance on the wall and rattled old Fidel's back teeth, and this country
obviously loved it.b (January 5, 1961)

In my mail box at the Hotel Riviera I discovered a note from a U.S.
Embassy staffer advising me to leave Cuba. The Embassy could bno longer
protectb me. From my window, I saw the U.S. Embassy staff pack and
leave. I walked to get a closer view on that chilly winter day (55
degrees?). The departing personnel looked grin. They knew an invasion
was imminent.

I drove west into Pinar del Rio. Cuban militia teams planted explosives
under bridges. Teenagers in militia uniforms hoisted Czech-made anti
aircraft guns onto the mezzanine roof of the Riviera. I returned to
Miami two months before Kennedy authorized the CIA to send Cuban exiles
to destroy the Cuban Revolution.

[Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies Fellow. His new book is
A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD. His new film is WE DONbT PLAY GOLF HERE.]

                                 *
=================================================================
 NY Transfer News Collective     *    A Service of Blythe Systems
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
            Our main website:   http://www.blythe.org
   List Archives:       http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
   Subscribe:     http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
=================================================================