by Patrick Iber
33. On Castro’s secret meeting with the CIA, see William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 18–21. On anti-anti-Communism, see Thomas, Cuba, 1214.
34. Sergio López Rivero, El viejo traje de la Revolución: Identidad colectiva, mito y hegemonía política en Cuba (València: Universitat de València, 2007), 250; Anderson, Che Guevara, 499; Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 23; Ameringer, Don Pepe, 154–156.
35. Matos, Cómo llegó la noche, 78; Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba, 77. In July, Air Force Chief Pedro Luis Díaz Lanz had defected to the United States and accused Castro of Communism in testimony before the U.S. Senate. His case had been more compelling to U.S. conservatives than to liberals.
36. Franqui, Diary of the Cuban Revolution, 243; Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel, 79–81. Many Cuban newspapers, including even Prensa Libre, had been subsidized by Batista. Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba, 40. On Mañach’s views, see “La situación de la intelectualidad cubana,” IACF, series II, folder 8, box 209, UC/SCRC. On the origins of coletillas, see Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba, 121–125; and Thomas, Cuba, 1261.
37. Mario Llerena, “El imagen en el espejo,” Prensa Libre, [date unknown, early 1960], IACF, series II, box 217, folder 8, UC/SCRC; Mario Llerena, “Reflexiones ociosas,” Prensa Libre, 27 March 1960, IACF, series II, box 217, folder 8, UC/SCRC.
38. Quoted in Manuel Urrutia Lleó, Fidel Castro & Company, Inc.: Communist Tyranny in Cuba (New York: Praeger, 1964), 89.
39. Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba, 123–125; Patrick Symmes, The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro and His Generation—From Revolution to Exile (London: Robinson, 2007), 244–245; Peter Kornbluh, Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (New York: New Press, 1998), 107.
40. Invitations were extended by multiple parties, not only Betancourt, so there were some pro-Castro delegates in attendance and even some Communists. The bulk of the delegates, however, came from Christian Democratic parties and the traditional Democratic Left. Robert J. Alexander, Rómulo Betancourt and the Transformation of Venezuela (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1982), 550–551; Enrique Ros, Playa Girón: La verdadera historia (Miami, Fla.: Ediciones Universal, 1994), 17–19.
41. Llerena’s comment is in Gorkin to Carlos de Baráibar, 30 May 1960, IACF, series II, box 209, folder 6, UC/SCRC. On involuntary exile, see Gorkin to Ferrándiz Alborz, 22 September 1960, IACF, series II, box 210, folder 2, UC/SCRC. Rosario Rexach de León, March 14, 1961, Robert J. Alexander Interview Collection, reel 6, frame 572.
42. Jaime Benítez, “Jorge Mañach en la Universidad de Puerto Rico,” 35–40, in Jorge Mañach, Jorge Mañach (1898–1961): Homenaje de la nación cubana (Río Piedras, P.R.: Editorial San Juan, 1972). Before his suicide, Aja was serving as an instructor at the Universidad de Puerto Rico and was worried about his reappointment. Additionally, he had fallen and broken some ribs. It is not clear whether the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion contributed to his decision to commit suicide. Botsford to Josselson, 20 July 1961, IACF, series II, box 46, folder 3, UC/SCRC. On the silencing of Mañach, see Rafael Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego: Revolución, disidencia y exilio del intelectual cubano (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2006), 16.
43. Ros, Playa Girón, 71; Don Bohning, The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations against Cuba, 1959–1965 (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005), 136.
44. Roa is quoted in Thomas, Cuba, 1225–1226. His time with the CCF is omitted from later revolutionary hagiographies and from anthologies of his writing: Osa, Visión y pasión de Raúl Roa; Raúl Roa, Raúl Roa, el canciller de la dignidad (Mexico City: Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, 1985). Roa did, however, meet Che while he was in Mexico, and that may have been the key for the later transfer of Humanismo to Cuban hands. Anderson, Che Guevara, 168. “Material to Discredit Cuban Foreign Minister Raúl Roa,” 10 January 1962, Lot file—Arturo Morales Carrión Papers, box 9, folder 6, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Md. The “piece-of-shit thief” is “Un caco que jamás trascendió la categoría de caca.” Raúl Roa, Retorno a la alborada, vol. 1, 3rd ed. (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1977), 800–801.
45. Llerena, Unsuspected Revolution, 97. Javier Pazos, for example, had been recruited by Llerena and was a director of the 26th of July underground. Pazos was the son of economist Felipe Pazos, who served as head of the National Bank under both Prío and Castro before resigning in October 1959 over the treatment of Huber Matos. He left for exile in August 1960. Felipe Pazos was replaced by Che Guevara as head of the National Bank, according to an apocryphal anecdote, because Che misheard Fidel’s request for an “economist” as for a “Communist.” Jorge G. Castañeda, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 167–168. Javier Pazos remained in the Ministry of Economics until September 1960, when he made his own break. Javier Pazos, “The Revolution,” Cambridge Opinion, no. 32 (February 1963): 18–27.
46. Kepa Artaraz, Cuba and Western Intellectuals since 1959 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 34–35. “¿Por qué me gusta y no me gusta Lunes?,” Lunes de Revolución, no. 52 (28 May 1960): 2–3.
47. Sabá Cabrera, Guillermo’s brother, was one of the directors of P.M. Liliana Martínez Pérez, Los hijos de Saturno: Intelectuales y revolución en Cuba (Mexico City: FLASCO, 2006), 34–35.
48. Gosse, Where the Boys Are, 214. Theodore Draper, “Castro’s Cuba,” Encounter 16, no. 3 (March 1961): 12, 23; Arthur M. Schlesinger to President Kennedy, 14 March 1961, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKPOF-115–008.aspx; Theodore Draper, “Cuba y la política norteamericana,” Cuadernos, no. 51 (August 1961): 14; Kornbluh, Bay of Pigs Declassified, 2; Theodore Draper, Castro’s Revolution: Myths and Realities (New York: Praeger, 1962), 59; Anderson, Che Guevara, 519.
49. Julio García Luis, Cuban Revolution Reader: A Documentary History of 40 Key Moments of the Cuban Revolution (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2001), 76–82.
50. On state control of newspapers, see Symmes, Boys from Dolores, 284–291. Guillén is quoted in Anderson, Che Guevara, 483. His Stalin anecdote is in Martínez Pérez, Hijos de Saturno, 55.
51. David Craven, Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910–1990 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 75–116. For the impact of the Cuban Revolution on the New Left, see Artaraz, Cuba and Western Intellectuals since 1959; and Gosse, Where the Boys Are.
52. Cortázar to Eduardo Jonquières, 22 January 1963, in Julio Cortázar, Cartas a los Jonquières, eds. Aurora Bernárdez and Carles Álvarez Garriga (Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 2010), 411.
53. On Rayuela, see Craven, Art and Revolution in Latin America, 133.
5. Peace and National Liberation in the Mexican 1960s
1. Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare: A Method (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1961); Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution? Armed Struggle and Political Struggle in Latin America, trans. Bobbye Ortiz (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967). Guevara was not the only author responsible for the myth; see also, for example, Carlos Franqui, El libro de los doce (Havana: Guairas, 1967). Enthusiasm for sponsoring revolutionaries abroad did wax and wane with results. On the complicated relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union over the issue of armed insurrection, see Daniela Spenser, “The Caribbean Crisis: Catalyst for Soviet Projection in Latin America,” in In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War, ed. Gil Joseph and Daniela Spenser (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008), 77–111; Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Tanya Harmer, “Two, Three, Many Revolutions? Cuba and the Prospects for Revolutionary Change in Latin America, 1967–1975,” Journal of Latin American Studies 45, no. 1 (February 2013): 61–89.
2. John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (New York: New Press, 2004), 2.
3. The number of the “disappeared” in Mexico is given in Sergio Aguayo, La charola: Una historia de los servicios de inteligencia en México (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2001), 190. The peak year for counterinsurgent violence was 1974, with 180 disappearances. This is much less than in Chile or Argentina but probably more than in the entirety of Brazil’s Dirty War. Forcefully arguing for including Mexico within the dirty-war framework is Alexander Aviña, Specters of Revolution: Peasant Guerrillas in the Cold War Mexican Countryside (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Kate Doyle, “After the Revolution: Lázaro Cárdenas and the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, 31 May 2004, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB124/index.htm; Renata Keller, “A Foreign Policy for Domestic Consumption: Mexico’s Lukewarm Defense of Castro, 1959–1969,” Latin American Research Review 47, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 100–119. On the “secret deal,” see William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 100. For an account of a Mexican guerrilla fighter who was denied training in Cuba, see Alberto Ulloa Bornemann, Surviving Mexico’s Dirty War: A Political Prisoner’s Memoir, trans. Arthur Schmidt and Aurora Camacho de Schmidt (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 101–117.
4. Emilio Portes Gil, “El cuarto informe presidencial,” El Universal, 14 September 1962; Lázaro Cárdenas, “El Movimiento de Liberación Nacional no depende de ninguna potencia,” El Día, 22 September 1962.
5. On continuity between the MLN and the PRD, see Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, Sobre mis pasos (Mexico City: Aguilar, 2010); and Carlos B. Gil, ed., Hope and Frustration: Interviews with Leaders of Mexico’s Political Opposition (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1992), 63, 150, 254.
6. Lázaro Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1957–1966 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1973), 212.
7. “Por un millón de firmas,” Paz 1, no. 9 (December 1951): 57; Heriberto Saucedo (Secretario de Finanzas del PCM), “Apliquemos nuestra política justa de finanzas,” 27–30 May 1950, PCM archive, box 22, folder 3, Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero y Socialista (CEMOS), Mexico City; “Se informa el resultado de las investigaciones practicidades por este dependencia en relación con el Comité Mexicano por la Paz,” 8 September 1950, Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), Diego Rivera Barrientos file—versión pública, document 11–71–50, Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Mexico City.
8. Letter from Juan Pablo Sainz Aguilar, 1951 or 1952, PCM archive, box 24, folder 1, CEMOS. The party confronted the problem of control versus assembling a broad front in other organizations as well, such as the Unión Democrática de Mujeres Mexicanas, the national women’s affiliate. Dionisio Encina and J. Encarnación Valdés, “Instructivo para los Comités Estatales y Comisión Organizadoras para Ayudar a Organizar la U.D.M.M.,” 27 February 1951, PCM archive, box 23, folder 1, CEMOS.
9. The Iron Heel detail comes from Carlos Zapata Vela, Conversaciones con Heriberto Jara (Mexico City: Costa-Amic Editores, 1992), 20. On the Constitutional Assembly, see Jorge Sayeg Helú, El constitucionalismo social mexicano: La integración constitucional de México (Mexico City: Cultura y Ciencia Política, 1972), 95–96, 244–248, 314–315. On Jara’s political career, see John Lear, Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 172, 220–221, 250; Heather Fowler-Salamini, Agrarian Radicalism in Veracruz, 1920–38 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), 55–57; and Rodolfo Lara Ponte and Heriberto Jara Corona, Heriberto Jara: Vigencia de un ideal (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000), 39–40.
10. “Campeones de la lucha por la paz: El General Heriberto Jara, Premio Stalin de la Paz,” Paz 1, no. 2 (May 1951): 13; Zapata Vela, Conversaciones con Heriberto Jara, 143. The PRI awarded Jara the Belisario Domínguez Prize in 1959. Lara Ponte and Jara Corona, Heriberto Jara, 53.
11. Heriberto Jara, “Europa lucha por la paz,” published by Comité Mexicano por la Paz, 1950, gallery 3—Miguel Alemán Valdés Records, box 1152, folder 050/22301, AGN, 14, 38, 46–47; Zapata Vela, Conversaciones con Heriberto Jara, 123–124.
12. The WPC experienced structural changes that reflected its new posture. Its headquarters were moved from Prague to Vienna, and it increased efforts to combine forces with Christian peace groups. Austria, worried about WPC activities on its soil, requested that it leave in 1957; it dissolved and re-formed at the same address as the International Institute for Peace. Clive Rose, The Soviet Propaganda Network: A Directory of Organisations Serving Soviet Foreign Policy (London: Pinter, 1988), 108–110. In 1968 WPC headquarters were reestablished in Finland. On Khrushchev, see Andrew Brown, J. D. Bernal: The Sage of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 415. On the Soviet Union and the Third World, see Michael E. Latham, “The Cold War in the Third World, 1963–1975,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 264; and Roy Allison, The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-alignment in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). On Bernal, see Brenda Swann and Francis Aprahamian, J. D. Bernal: A Life in Science and Politics (London: Verso, 1999), ix–xx, 212–234.
13. Lázaro Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1941–1956 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1973), 182, 220, 223, 235.
14. Raquel Tibol, Frida Kahlo: An Open Life (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 79; Frida Kahlo, Carlos Fuentes, and Sarah M. Lowe, The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1995), 257; Isolda Pinedo Kahlo, Intimate Frida (Bogotá, Colombia: Cangrejo, 2006), 192. Elena Vázquez Gómez has been identified as code names “Elena” and “Seda” in the Venona decrypts. Mexico City to Moscow, 15 and 21 January 1944, http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/15jan_kgb_personality_elena.pdf and http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/21jan_info_about_kgb.pdf.
15. Proenza to Jara, 13 February 1952, Heriberto Jara Papers, folder 1433, box 36, Archivo Histórico de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (AHUNAM), Mexico City. On the poetry and politics of Huerta, see Frank Dauster, The Double Strand: Five Contemporary Mexican Poets (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 59–84. Jara to Palamede Borsari (Budapest), 21 June 1953, Heriberto Jara Papers, folder 1434, box 36, AHUNAM.
16. Barry Carr, Marxism and Communism in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 189; Aaron W. Navarro, Political Intelligence and the Creation of Modern Mexico, 1938–1954 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010); Aguayo, Charola.
17. “Se informa en relación con los estudiantes universitarios,” 22 June 1954, document 63–1–54, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solorzano file—versión pública, gallery 1, AGN; Cárdenas Solórzano, Sobre mis pasos, 23–32; Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1941–1956, 573. “La independencia de los pueblos de la América Latina y el mantenimiento de la paz,” 20 May 1955, PCM archive, box 27, folder 5, CEMOS. On the general subject of student politics in Mexico’s 1950s and 1960s, see Jaime Pensado, Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture during the Long Sixties (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013).
18. Selden Rodman, Mexican Journal (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1958), 259. Tannenbaum to Lázaro Cárdenas, 24 February 1956, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, folder “Cárdenas,” box 1, Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, New York. I thank Carlos Bravo Regidor for making his copies of these materials available to me.
19. Lázaro Cárdenas to Tannenbaum, 11 March 1956, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, folder “Cárdenas,” box 1, Columbia University; “Discurso de entrega por el Prof. Grigori Alexandrov, a nombre del ‘Comité Adjudicador de los Premios Internacionales Stalin,’ ” Heribero Jara Papers, box 36,
folder 1428, AHUNAM; Eric Zolov, “Between Bohemianism and a Revolutionary Rebirth: Che Guevara in Mexico,” in Che’s Travels: The Making of a Revolutionary in 1950s Latin America, ed. Paulo Drinot (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010), 270–271. “Discurso del General Lázaro Cárdenas,” Heriberto Jara Papers, folder 1428, box 36, AHUNAM.
20. Heriberto Jara to Lázaro Cárdenas, May 1957, Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (LCR) Papers, microfilm roll 23, AGN; Bernal to Cárdenas, 31 July 1959, Cárdenas to Bernal, 7 October 1959, LCR Papers, section “Consejo Mundial de la Paz—I, 1949–1960,” roll 23, AGN.
21. Valentín Campa, Mi testimonio: Memorias de un comunista mexicano, 2nd ed. (Mexico City: Ediciones de Cultura Popular, 1985), 239–268; Carr, Marxism and Communism in Twentieth-Century Mexico, 16–19. “Se informa en relación con el Partido Popular,” 30 April 1959, Vicente Lombardo Toledano—versión pública, volume 5, gallery 1, AGN; “Poder ejecutivo: secretaria de gobernación,” Diario Oficial 129, no. 12 (14 November 1941), 1–2.
22. “Se informa en relación con las actividades del Lic. Narciso Bassols e Ing. Jorge L. Tamayo,” 22 July 1959; and “Se informa en relación con el Círculo de Estudios Mexicanos,” 20 August 1959, VLT—versión pública, volume 5, gallery 1, AGN; Jorge L. Tamayo and Narciso Bassols to Heriberto Jara, 26 June 1959, Heriberto Jara Papers, box 38, folder 1443, AHUNAM; Jorge L. Tamayo to Jara, 5 May 1960, Heriberto Jara Papers, box 38, folder 1444, AHUNAM.
