Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Castro’s efforts to take Cuba into the Communist bloc began almost as soon as he took Havana in January 1959. His refusal to allow post-revolutionary elections to confirm his victory, a traditional Latin American tactic, and his outlawing of the traditional political parties (but not the Communists, PSP, which had secretly cooperated with Batista for years) left him in an ideological and political vacuum. Soon the closing down of all opposition newspapers, but the continued publication of the Communist paper, Hoy , showed that only this group would fill that vacuum. And finally the small group of Old Communists in Cuba were allowed to take over control of the administrative system and, within months, had a reasonable facsimile of the Kremlin’s arrangements operating from Havana. They took control of the Rebel Militia, especially G-2, its Intelligence branch; President Manuel Urrutia was removed for an anti-Communist speech and replaced by a fellow-traveller, Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado. A struggle between the Communists and the Fidelistas of the 26th of July Movement for control of the Confederation of Cuban Labor Unions was settled by Castro himself in favor of the Communists. A chief Communist leader, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, professor of economics at the University of Havana, led a student revolt that gave the Communists control of the university. All political movements were merged into the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI), whose leadership was practically identical with the Old Communist leadership. This group set up Communist-type cells in farms, factories, and government offices. Anibal Escalante, secretary of the Communist Party, became organizational secretary to ORI. The Military Secret Police, G-2, was transformed into a Ministry of the Interior, based on the Kremlin’s MVD, with a Communist, Ramiro Valdes, at its head. The lands that had been distributed or seized by peasants were “nationalized” by local Communist groups, and many of the cooperative farms that had risen from these became collective farms. In all significant governmental posts, Fidelistas were replaced, or circumvented, by Communists. Control of the economy was taken from Major Ernesto “Che” Guevara and given to Professor Rodriguez, who became president of the Agrarian Reform Institute, and drew up the economic development plans for the years following 1961. Thus within a few months, the ORI became a real government, making most of the significant daily decisions, and Escalante was exercising more power than Castro. The latter, still the darling of the masses, spent much of his time rousing them to frenzy with his speech-making and marching.

The chief resistance to this Communization of Cuba came from the peasants, by curtailing production and by sabotage. Smaller farmers produced enough for their families but no more, in resistance to government-fixed prices and the compulsion to sell all their marketable produce to the National Institute of Agrarian Reform. Farmers refused to labor on the collective or state farms and occasionally set fire to the canebrakes on these. A good part of the coffee crop of 1961 was lost because the workers refused to harvest it. Similar resistance arose with the sugar and other crops. Drastic food rationing had to be established in March 1962. The 1962 coffee crop was sabotaged, and coffee rationing had to be established in February 1963. Most critical was the sugar crop, source of four-fifths of Cuba’s foreign exchange. Efforts to harvest the crop with the militia, students, or city workers failed, and by 1962 the crop harvested had fallen to about half of the pre-Castro figure. At the same time, the ending of almost all trade ties with the United States, which had been a principal source of Cuban food, left Cuba dependent on countries like the Communist bloc, which had difficulties feeding themselves. The food ration fell to 3/4 pound of meat a week per person, and 5 eggs with 2 ounces of butter a month. The food shortage was soon followed by shortages of manufactured goods, as the exodus of technicians, lack of spare parts, and bureaucratic confusions disorganized industrial production.

The economic collapse in no way discouraged Castro’s efforts to establish a socialist regime, but the Communist Party’s curtailment of his personal power led to a strong counteraction in March 1962. On May-Day 1961, Castro had proclaimed that Cuba would be a socialist state, and, in a two-day speech on December 1-2, 1961, he had announced his own “Marxist-Leninist” beliefs. This ended the earlier arguments, disseminated by American Establishment circles led by The New York Times, that Castro was simply a progressive reformer. But despite his statements, he was not in any way a convinced Communist or a convinced anything else, but was a power-hungry and emotionally unstable individual, filled with hatred of authority himself, and restless unless he had constant change and megalomaniac satisfactions. His tactical skill, especially in foreign affairs, is remarkable, and shows similarity to Hitler’s. His allegiance to Communism had nothing to do with ideological conviction or devotion to the Kremlin, but arose from his recognition that Russia was the only Power in a position to counterbalance the United States and was, to him, preferable to the United States both because of its greater distance and because its ideological pretenses would never allow it to permit an admitted Communist state like Cuba to be attacked by the United States. Thus Castro sought to get the Soviet Union more deeply committed to Cuba so that it could not disentangle itself whatever Castro did but must protect him from the United States, even when he openly disregarded its advice. In the same way, Castro was willing to build up his indebtedness to the Soviet Union because the Communist commitment would not allow the Kremlin to do anything drastic to collect such a debt. For these reasons, Castro wished to join the Warsaw Pact, but this at least Moscow was able to prevent. At the same time, Castro recognized that his own adoption of the Communist ideology would not weaken him in Latin America, where the impoverished masses care nothing about ideologies, and the middle classes, especially the youth and university students, like Communism as an ideology, although it has little influence on their own actions or political behavior.

Although the Communist takeover in Cuba began in 1960, it was not until February 1962 that Castro began to realize what had happened. Within a month, particularly during the week of March 16-22, he eliminated the Communists from most positions of significant power. The Rodriguez economic plan of November 1961 was denounced; the ORI system was purged; his brother, Raul Castro, was made vice-premier; Escalante was forced into exile; the militia and bureaucracy were recaptured by the Fidelistas; and on March 26th Fidel himself gave a five-hour speech narrating what had happened. Pravda did not accept the change until April 11th.

This acceptance of the reestablishment of Fidelism by both the Kremlin and the Cuban Communist Party, largely because they had no alternative, was followed by their full-scale support of the Castro regime in political and economic policies. On May 31st it was announced that Moscow would provide 600,000 tons of food in the balance of 1962 to stave off the Cuban economic collapse, and later Moscow released claims on some Cuban sugar so that it could be sold in the world market for hard currencies. Above all, the Soviet Union appeared to accept Castro’s argument that another American military assault on Cuba was in preparation.

The United States, Castro, and Moscow all must have known that no effort was likely to be made to repeat the American invasion of Cuba, but Castro made the charge because he wanted Soviet weapons, and the Kremlin pretended to believe it for reasons that are still doubtful. It is possible that the Russians hoped that the Soviet IRBM’s in Cuba would help to slow up the increasing American lead over the Soviet Union in the missile race. It is also possible that they hoped that such missiles, once established, might be bargained away in return for a Soviet-favored solution to the Berlin question.