Cuba Libre: A 500-Year Quest for Independence

by Philip Brenner

  Cuba’s New Leadership Role

  Cuba’s shifting role in international relations also was evident in the Western Hemisphere. A 1975 Defense Intelligence Agency report stated that “Cuba is virtually inactive in subversive support in Latin America at this time.”31 After Che Guevara’s death, Cuba had reduced its support for insurgencies there and sought cooperative state-to-state relationships with governments less inclined to follow a pro-US line. Salvador Allende, the president of Chile from 1970 until his death during a right-wing coup in 1973, provided the first major opening for Cuba when he restored diplomatic relations on his first day in office. Cuba had already established friendly contacts with the leftist military government of Peru. In 1974, when Argentina’s populist leader Juan Domingo Perón returned to Buenos Aires from exile in Spain, Cuba created ties there.

  As the hemisphere turned left in the 1970s, Cuba offered technical and development assistance to established governments, especially in the Caribbean basin. Large contingents of Cuban teachers and doctors went to Jamaica starting in 1974. After Maurice Bishop’s New Jewel Movement overthrew the government of Grenada in 1979, Cuban engineers helped to construct a modern airport to stimulate the island’s tourist trade. (Though President Ronald Reagan charged that the airport was intended as a refueling station for Soviet bombers, it had been designed by the US Agency for International Development prior to the coup.) In Nicaragua, Cuba provided some training to the Sandinista rebels, but did not send arms until they ousted the country’s dictator, Anastasio Somoza, in 1979. Cuba then contributed significant development and military aid, including weapons and training, to the new Sandinista government. But Castro also advised the Sandinistas to take a measured approach in consolidating their revolution in order to avoid angering the United States. While the Reagan administration charged that Cuba was arming El Salvador’s Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, State Department officials had convincing evidence that the vast majority of rebel arms in El Salvador came from seized government weapons caches or were obtained via the black market within El Salvador.

  Meanwhile, Castro developed a working relationship with General Omar Torrijos, the military leader of Panama, and his intelligence chief, Colonel Manuel Antonio Noriega. Panama had allowed Cuba to set up several front companies that were used to circumvent the US embargo. But the relationship became complex because Torrijos and Noriega had close relations with US officials. Noriega, for example, served as an intermediary between Fidel Castro and the Reagan administration to defuse tensions in the aftermath of the 1983 US invasion of Grenada.32

  Cuba, all the while, was establishing its role as a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement. In 1973, the NAM first called for the creation of a “New World Economic Order” in which developing countries would use their “commodity power” (control of oil and strategic minerals) and market potential to obtain more favorable terms of trade. Castro envisioned Arab oil-producing countries as a key component in the plan to develop a South-South trading alliance that could challenge Northern domination and make commodity power meaningful. In part for this reason, Cuba broke diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973 and sent military advisers to Syria during the Arab-Israeli War that year. In 1974, Castro invited to Havana Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s leader, and the next year Cuba supported a majority of the UN General Assembly in declaring that Zionism was a form of racism.

  Ninety-six nations sent their heads of state to the September 1979 NAM summit in Havana (see a photo of the summit in figure 15.2). Along with their foreign ministers and other members of their delegations, they convened in a spanking new, modern convention center with telecommunications facilities for the 1,200 journalists covering the conference. But attendees were jarred just prior to the opening by US charges that the Soviet Union had secretly dispatched a “combat brigade” to Cuba. In fact, the “discovery” turned out to be misinterpreted intelligence—the 3,000-soldier unit had been in place, with US acquiescence, since the 1962 missile crisis. But Carter insisted it had to be removed because it could be used for military intervention in the Western Hemisphere. In October 1979, he created the Caribbean Contingency Joint Task Force in Key West in order to protect the region from the threat posed by the brigade. He also signed Presidential Directive 52, which declared that US policy was “to contain Cuba as a source of violent revolutionary change,” and he ordered national security agencies to devise strategies for “isolating” Cuba.33

  Figure 15.2. The sixth summit of the Non-Aligned Movement met in Havana in 1979. Photo by Philip Brenner.

  The summit gave Cuba a mandate to develop a long-range agenda for South-South relations. Yet Cuba’s leadership role was significantly compromised less than four months later when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Afghanistan was a member of the NAM and the inviolability of each member’s sovereignty was a core NAM principle. The Soviet leaders had not even informed Fidel in advance about the intervention. But he felt constrained to support the Soviet action by not condemning it, which was a position exactly opposite to the one that NAM countries expected their chair to take.

  As in 1968, when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, Cuba’s “benefactor” had placed the revolutionary government in a no-win situation. With advance notice, Fidel might have been able to find an acceptable compromise. But faced with the fait accompli of the invasion, he chose the option of not siding with the NAM and vitiating Cuba’s potential to strengthen the organization and its members’ bargaining power because it seemed less costly. In hindsight, the cost proved to be greater than in 1968, and it contributed to tension between Cuba and the Soviet Union that lasted until the Soviet empire collapsed.

  This is not where Cuban leaders earlier in the decade imagined that they would be standing—once again caught in the middle of US-Soviet Cold War tensions. Their hopes for a new world order were quickly evaporating. They had lost key allies in the hemisphere as the result of right-wing coups and the 1980 electoral defeat of Jamaica’s Michael Manley. Tensions with the United States had increased to their highest levels in fifteen years, signified by President Carter’s order to resume aircraft reconnaissance flights over Cuba. And on the island, there was growing unrest as 1980 began because the economy was sputtering.

  Notes

  1. Gabriel García Márquez, “Operation Carlota,” trans., Patrick Camiller, New Left Review, nos. 101–102 (January–April 1977), 126, 128, 137.

  2. Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 257–59; LeoGrande and Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba, 123–26.

  3. Bernard Gwertzman, “Rogers Says US Is Firm on Cuba,” New York Times, February 16, 1973, 77.

  4. Charles W. Whalen et al., “A Détente with Cuba,” Congressional Record, January 29, 1973, H-2507-9.

  5. US Senate, 93rd Cong., 1st Sess., “US Policy Toward Cuba,” Hearings before the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, March 26 and April 18, 1973, 1.

  6. LeoGrande and Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba, 126.

  7. Commission on United States–Latin American Relations, The Americas in a Changing World (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1974), 29.

  8. LeoGrande and Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba, 128–33.

  9. As quoted in Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 267.

  10. US House, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., “US Trade Embargo of Cuba,” Hearings before the Subcommittees on International Trade and Commerce and International Organizations, Committee on International Relations, on H.R. 6382, May 8 to September 23, 1975.

  11. Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 271.

  12. Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 782; Leslie H. Gelb, “US Relaxes Ban against Trading with the Cubans,” New York Times, August 21, 1975, 1.

  13. New York Times, December 21, 1975, 3; Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2002), 255–72; 285–93, 329–38; Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 782–84.

  14. LeoGrande and Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba, 146–47.

  15. US Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Operations, “Activities of Cuban Exile Leader Orlando Bosch during His Stay in Venezuela,” Digital National Security Archive, Accession number: CL01549; Document number: IN 069101; ProQuest document ID: 1679043549, October 14, 1976.

  16. Saul Landau, “The Cuban Five and the US War against Terror,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution, ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 273; Peter Kornbluh, “A Safe Harbor for Luis Posada Carriles,” NACLA Report on the Americas 39, no. 4 (January/February 2006): 17.

  17. Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 816.

  18. Odd Arne Westad, “Moscow and the Angolan Crisis, 1974–1976: A New Pattern of Intervention,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue 8–9 (Winter 1996/1997): 25–26.

  19. Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 306–7.

  20. Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 7–9, and chapters 2–6.

  21. David Binder, “Carter Says Cubans May Leave Angola, Is Receptive on Ties,” New York Times, February 17, 1977.

  22. Jimmy Carter, Presidential Directive/NSC-6, “Cuba” (Washington, DC: The White House,. March 15, 1977), http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/pddirectives/pd06.pdf.

  23. Quoted in Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 295.

  24. Kathleen Teltsch, “Young, Taking Over U.N. Duties, Prepares to Leave for Africa Today,” New York Times, February 1, 1977, 2.

  25. Associated Press, “Castro, Praising Carter, Sees a Prospect of Ties,” New York Times, February 10, 1977.

  26. Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 51.

  27. Hedrick Smith, “US Says Castro Has Transferred 60’s Policy of Intervention to Africa,” New York Times, November 17, 1977, 1.

  28. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981, revised edition (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1985), 180–90; quotation is on 180–81.

  29. Smith, The Closest of Enemies, 128–40.

  30. Smith, The Closest of Enemies, 141–42.

  31. Quoted in Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 271.

  32. Manuel Antonio Noriega and Peter Eisner, America’s Prisoner: The Memoirs of Manuel Noriega (New York: Random House, 1994), 93–95.

  33. PD-52 (October 29, 1979) is available at http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/pddirectives/pd52.pdf. Also see David D. Newsom, The Soviet Brigade in Cuba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Gloria Duffy, “Crisis Mangling and the Cuban Brigade,” International Security 8, no. 1 (Summer 1983).

  Chapter 16

  Mariel Exodus—A Warning Signal, 1980

  Pablo Armando Fernández had been a leader of Cuba’s avant-garde artistic community in the early days of the revolution. As the deputy editor of Lunes de Revolución, he used the publication to link many of the world’s most creative masters to Cuba’s writers, artists, dancers, and film directors. His first novel won a coveted award from Casa de las Americas in 1968.1 But by 1971, he had ruffled too many feathers. The government banned publication of his writing.

  In the 1970s, several of Cuba’s great writers went into exile. Fernández stayed, working as a copy editor for a Cuban publisher and maintaining his faith that the revolutionary government would rectify its error in isolating him. That moment came in April 1980, when he was allowed to accept invitations to speak at three US universities. The poet went to the US Interests Section for a visa dressed in his finest suit. His large mane of blondish white hair added to the image a distinguished man of letters who deserves the highest respect.

  But as he approached the entrance, angry onlookers waiting in a line that stretched around the building began to shout at him: “Get back in line, you bum. Who do you think you are that you can jump ahead?” They were among hundreds of Cubans who had begun to queue outside of the US diplomatic mission each day, hoping to secure a visa in order to emigrate.

  “Tears came to my eyes,” Pablo remarked, “because this was so beautiful. Twenty years earlier, such working-class people would have shuffled out of the way to make a path for a well-dressed person like me who had an appointment. But the Revolution had given these people something they did not even know they had, even as they turned their backs to it. These ordinary Cubans had acquired dignity.”

  —Interview with Pablo Armando Fernández2

  Figure 16.1. Pablo Armando Fernández in 2009. Photo by Philip Brenner.

  Events during the second half of the 1970s were like the winds that create a perfect storm. The flood that followed was the emigration of more than 125,000 Cubans in the span of nine months—from April to December 1980—many of whom left from the small port town of Mariel, twenty miles west of Havana. The Mariel exodus was a startling wake-up call for the Cuban leadership, because the marielitos were the very people whose lives the Cuban Revolution was supposed to improve.

  The United States was the natural destination for Cuban emigrants. It was the richest country in the world and a short boat ride away. Prior to 1959, there was a modest but steady flow of Cuban emigration to the United States. Pablo Armando Fernández’s family moved to New York City in 1945, and he returned to Cuba only after the 1959 revolution. The United States received 65,000 Cuban immigrants between 1950 and 1958. Almost 100,000 Cubans emigrated to the United States in the first two years after the revolutionaries overthrew the Batista dictatorship. In the next two years, an additional 125,000 arrived, and by the end of 1979, nearly 700,000 Cubans had moved north.3

  Prelude to the Mariel Exodus: Rising Discontent

  The Cuban economy was coming out of the doldrums by 1973. In the first half of the 1970s it grew at a remarkable annual rate of about 7.5 percent.4 Thanks to rising sugar prices, Cuba increased trade with Western countries. At the same time, a critical mass of newly trained professionals enabled the government to increase productivity, provide for increased personal consumption, and complete major projects. But the boom was short-lived. In the latter part of the 1970s, the price of sugar fell. Annual growth was only 5 percent in 1978 and 1.6 percent in 1979.5 While Cubans’ daily life worsened only slightly, government leaders had led them to believe their lives would be getting even better. Their comparison to the “good times” just a few years earlier engendered widespread discontent.

  Projects were placed on hold and half-finished buildings began to deteriorate. Young Cubans were now better educated and more workers had advanced training, but with the economy slowing down, many could not find jobs commensurate to their skills. Moreover, the babies born in the boom immediately after the Revolution were now entering the labor force. Underemployment was growing even as the official rate of unemployment dropped in the late 1970s to 1.3 percent. Factory and construction workers were laid off temporarily due to shortages in raw materials.6

  Meanwhile, Cuba’s larger role on the world stage entailed personal sacrifices for young Cubans, especially those with African ancestry. More than 35,000 Cuban troops were deployed to Angola starting in late 1975. Another 15,000 went to Ethiopia in 1977. By 1980, more than 100,000 had served in combat missions. The conditions in both countries were harsh, and there were times when the troops were ill-equipped or short of supplies. Between 1975 and 1979, the Cuban military may have suffered as many as 10,000 combat deaths and many more casualties. These losses, along with the long tours of duty, reportedly led to significant discontent among Cuban families with soldiers in Africa.

  In 1979, a potent ingredient was added to the concoction of discontent brewing on the island: an opening to Cuban-American visitors from the United States. Until then, few exiles had been allowed to return to Cuba for family visits. The pro
cess that set in motion this breakthrough began early in the Carter administration’s second year, when there was a brief moment of reprieve in Cuba’s long conflict with the United States. After Bernardo Benes, a Cuban-American banker who favored improved relations and gave large sums to the Democratic Party, had several meetings with high-level Cuban officials, he informed National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in March 1978 that Cuba wanted to discuss the possibility of releasing all political prisoners. This report quickly led to direct, secret negotiations between the two governments, and Fidel offered to release all political prisoners by the end of 1979.7 According to Wayne Smith, who was at the time the principal US State Department expert on Cuba, the United States would have to accept all of the Cuban prisoners who wanted to emigrate. This stipulation, among others, generated disagreements between the State and Justice Departments, and the National Security Council staff, which in turn stalemated the process.8

  Frustrated by the official US nonreaction, Fidel brought a new group into the fray, the Committee of 75, a courageous assemblage of Cuban-Americans who hoped to improve US-Cuba relations through a “dialogue.” At a press conference in September 1978, he publicly invited the group to Cuba and proposed discussing with them family visits by Cuban-Americans.9 In part, the Cuban leader sought to divide the exile community by elevating those who wanted a rapprochement with Cuba.