I thought castro was a real colorful, Popular National hero, a savior of his nation. Unless we were reactionaries, we would have no right to think castro could not fulfill his goal. The victory of fidel castro was the victory of all of us latin americans, proud, nationalistic lovers of freedom. Havana, january 1, 1959. This 26th of july movement led by fidel castro turned out the tyrant bautista. To the cuban people and the admiring world, there could be no better way to start the new year. A correspondent remembers those heady days. 23 days after castros victory, we received him in caracas. He had just triumphed over a dictatorship and therefore, we welcomed his revolution. Castro was an impassioned man but a civil war is no joke. We had hoped that he would allow the cuban people to decide on their own future, to take her their place in the sun and that their institutions to their desires. The revolutionary leader to republic square in havana to tell the what victory meant. There would soon be general elections, there would be a free press beholden to no one, there would be land for the peasants. This revolution, fidel castro told the people standing in the sun, is as native as the cuban sons. But first there was further bloodletting to be done. The world had mixed emotions about such violence as convicted torturers fell at the maximum of publicity and the minimum of due process of law. It was the seventh month in power of the cuban revolution. While the people waited for the first free general election in 20 years as fidelity promised. Fidel had promised. Vertical orientation was carried out under the orders of che guevara, an argentine with the botticelli angels face and a scholar of marx. It was a fiction curiously tolerated by castro. On the night of july 13, the provisional president , a liberal judge you had denounced batista and had been forced into exile for his pains went on national television. There, he warned communism is not concerned with the welfare of the people but constitutes a danger for the cuban revolution. Among those who listened and watched was the man who brought the president back from exile. Four days later, he took to the Television Channels to accuse him of treason. He resigned it was put under virtual house arrest. Later, he once again sought political refuge. A member of the socialist party of italy recalls the time. It was the degeneration of the revolutionary movement. No elections were held, there is no democratic debate inside the revolutionary movement itself. The ideas of dissenters were not discussed since those who expressed opinions in disagreement with the majority were persecuted. As happened in the case of or he was sentenced to 20 years. It was a tense month for the cuban revolutions. To serve truth, one must serve freedom. These are the two recommendations albert camus made to the writer and they can be applied to the journalist. Journalist who wish to examine the situation in cuba for years after the revolution had to begin by knowledge and three acknowledging three undeniable facts that underlie everything that happened later. The first was the arrest in october of 1959 of commander hubert matos, one of castros colleagues and arrested his general headquarters. He was arrested for one reason he wrote a letter to castro in which he expressed his disagreement with the commune calm youommunizing position it was not yet a communist one, but a commune arising position of the government. He took, he played no rebellion, he just wrote a letter to a friend who is also a chief. He was arrested and despite castros request for a death sentence, he was sent to to 20 years in jail. I believe it is this fact that camus, where he still alive would have born in mine when he prepared those two principles. The refusal to deny what one knows and the resistance to oppression. In early 1960, the serious Communication Program that existed between the United States and cuba grew worse. The u. S. Ambassador who had come to cuba would support ingredients for the revolution was rebuffed. What would amount to 350 million worth of Land Property was expropriated without compensation. United states offers to reconcile differences went ignored. From his suite high up in the Hilton Hotels where he would often seek his own tormented counsel, castro made his choice. On february 4, 1960, the Havana Airport resounded to the excitement and confusion attendant to great occasions of state. The arriving celebrity, the first of the premier of the soviet union. In the months that followed, cuba and russia signed economic and trade agreements. Henceforth, cuban sugar would sweeten the cups of russian tea drinkers. 100 million with credit would be extended. Soon after, che guevara and fidels brother raul went to communist eastern europe. Toasts were offered and so were arms. In this 1960 havana mayday parade, the arms are checked. Soon, they will be soviet. From the kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev said the soviet union is extending a helping hand to the people of cuba. In the case of necessity, he threatened, soviet artillery men can support the cuban people with rocket fire. Meeting in san jose, costa rica, the Foreign Ministers of the american republics declared such extra continental intervention endangered the security of this hemisphere. In response, castros foreign minister walked out. In havana, and a rambling monologues which is now famous fidel castro attacked the organization of american states and denied the soviet union or communist china had interventionist intentions. Moreover, said castro, cuba would establish relations with the chinese peoples republic. As castro speaks, no amount of bluster can disguise the peoples unrest. Peoples brigades are rapidly formed. Children are encouraged to inform against their parents. Anyone protesting work criticizing is a counterrevolutionary and as such can be sentenced to the wall. A brazilian journalist revisited cuba during this time. I return to cuba in march of 1960 and things had still not been clearly defined. Many people still believed in it all but i must say i found a series of promises that had been made had not been fulfilled. Fidel was leading the country via television and speeches made all over the city. And with his police. Many persons had been held in prison for four or five days without being interrogated. Thousands of political adversaries have been shot. This massacre lost fidel many sympathizers in latin america. The great land owners who lost their land had found the land had not been given to the peasants. The land had been nationalized and the peasants were now serving the land owners and serving the state itself. Something that was even more distant and abstract than the landowners. Fidel had nationalized the great enterprises, which was fine, but through a work law, he had done away with rabbit property and small business, however humble it might be. The state has the right to intervene and nationalize a shop. If the employees were not satisfied with what they were being paid or the treatment they were receiving, the middle classes that had raised fidel to power were now deceived by him. In an interview fidel gave at that time, he told me socialism as far as he saw it was the best way for latin america but he wanted a more strict type then what existed so far. All the answers he gave last night were of marxist inspiration. He did not belong to the soviet block but he had become a selftaught marxist. In schools, the textbooks had been substituted by marxist textbooks, trade union said no more authority, and they had become organs of the body of a long soviet alliance. One day, a very wellknown cuban journalist, a close friend of fidels told me i had been misled. A few days later, fidel would throw them out of the country. This correspondent had to leave cuba for mexico. The next time fidel castro came to new york after a triumphant first visit in april 1959, it was not as a conquering hero. Soon diplomatic relations would be severed altogether. The news man who had once then been impressed now took another look. I obtained a clearer and when i look back more accurate teacher. Picture of castro. When he returned to new york for the General Assembly in the fall of 1960, that General Assembly when a great number of heads of state were there, and castro had to be there. It was a memorable performance he gave with low and vulgar taste, quite obviously cynically and wellplanned. And centrally directed. In a hotel castro chose first he declared he would live in a tank in central park. Then he went to a hotel in the colored quarter and Chris Jeff Khrushchev visited him and they embraced. Everything that would be cheap and vulgar was to be seen until the time castro went to the rostrum of the United States and United Nations and for five full hours with his shirt color open spoke for five hours to the General Assembly. At the occasion of this General Assembly, i believe any illusions one might have had about castro would have had to disappear. He who would say perhaps there is only an alliance with the communist or as a tool of the communists or was trying to use the communists for his own means had to recognize he had been completely wrong. It was clear there was a cynical plan for an alliance with the eastern bloc. Little by little, it came so far that at the occasion at the u. N. That cuba voted with the east. Another journalist saw it in pen and ink this way. During the third year in power cuba economy was in serious trouble. Unskilled farm labor, students and clerk were commandeered. Through government mismanagement and lack of incentive for peasants to work on state owned land, the sugar crop began to grow sparse. By 1962, cubans would be speaking of the harvest of the bitter sugar. There were cues for rations. There was hunger for clinical Political Freedom as well. Tens of thousands of cubans became known as refugees. Three ideas. Those human rights we could establish. No oratorical harangue would dispel what their faces told of the real cuba as they went into exile. Where once castro had promised a new life to the cuban people, he chose instead to restock his arsenal. In 1962, he boasted of having 350 medium and heavy tanks 300,000 machine guns, rifles and pistols, more than 100 jet fighters all at a cost that would be enough to feed, close clothes and shelter every newborn cuban baby for the rest of its life. What manner of men is this former revolutionary . What works in the mind of a man who in april 1959 said im not a communist. I am not agreed with communist. And just two years later at earlier agreed i will be a marxistleninist and will be to the end of my life. What kind of consciousness does this man own . The man who told the man who works the land must own it. Those who work the land must have some. Three years later, he told the same people, why should we give land to the peasant . Soon, he would want more and more and he would become a large land owner. A man of many faces. Surely these are questions that will intrigue the historian and analyst for years to come. At this moment now, not as quickly as some, but not as slowly as others, we have realized castro is not following the right path. He had not called for elections in cuba. He rather consulted the people in open plaza to support the reject policies interject support or reject his policies naturally imply certain number of risks. We in latin america have long experience dictatorships and know full well when the people if consulted in the open plaza is because there is a dictatorship and we know a dictatorship always rings about jailing of groups, suppression of public freedoms stop from that moment on, we can no longer support the castro regime. In october of 1962, the world was not only disillusioned with the human revolution but cuban revolution but outraged with the discovery of 10 missile bases in cuba. Aerial photos discovered their menace. The missiles could reach and conceivably destroy washington or lima, peru. Now, your leaders are no longer cuban Leaders Inspired by cuban ideals. They are puppets and agents of an International Conspiracy which has turned cuba against your friends and neighbors in the americas and turned it into the first latin American Country to become a target for nuclear war. We know your lives in land being used as pawns are those who deny your freedom. The president of the United States announced the nations intentions will stop among the decisions, and insistence upon immediate dismantling and withdrawal of the missiles will a quarantine not all offensive military equipment on shipment to cuba and continued increased surveillance of the military buildup. Hemisphere support was quick. The organization of american states by a vote of 22 nothing approved the resolution. Some nations offered active military assistance. Surveillance did continue in the air as planes made passes to photograph missile installations despite cuban antiaircraft stop antiaircraft. And on the sea as the u. S. Navy task force 136 steamed to a fateful rendezvous with cuban ships. All cuban bound ships would be commanded to heed to two heded through to be searched. One week later khrushchev who had never once consulted castro issued a new order calling for the return of the weapons to russia. Then, like a penitent rigler caught in the act, he wrote to president kennedy after all, you and i understand what kind of weapons they are. Editorial cartoonists around the world expressed their scorn. But even though the missiles left and the world released a sigh for the first time in days the fact is this million cubans remain imprisoned on their island and more than 250,000 are without a country. Each without their displacement was only temporary, that they would return to create a free cuba. The news arriving from cuba is very encouraging to us. The workers have not gone over to communism. The peasants have not gone over to communism. The students have not gone over to communism. The regime exists today because of two reasons because of the apparatus of betrayal and espionage and because of the military apparatus set up and handled by the muscovites. The world awaits the next act of history with millions of people in cuba and throughout the world directly affected by the next turn of castros ambition. The world now awaits with anxiety and content. This is their verdict. The deputy Prime Minister of thailand, prince one. The subversive attempt to bring cuba under communism has been done tortuously in the manner of a snake. It is only right that the United States has taken out the snakes fangs. As shakespeare said, the snake is not killed. Castro is more dangerous than a snake. We see cuba moving in an opposite direction. When it joined the communist lock, it turned matters worse. From that moment on, it had no longer our support. Tomorrow, cuban correspondent, without a doubt at the end of four years, fidel castro has converted the country into a concentration camp everyone in cuba can see. Its a depressing factor to me because we know a country to believe in democratic principles. I deplore that 6 million cubans have been swindled i by a revolution which promised them freedom and democracy and gave them death and slavery. We also regret cuban workers have not been granted the rights and we regret theres no freedom of press and a country. In that country. We believe the freedom of press as fundamental as we consider the press to be the lungs through which we breathe. The cuban revolution was at first a local revolution but later it was utilized as a total one by the communist in their attack against the free world. Communists have been taking advantages of contradictions in the country to stir up trouble to further their aggressive designs. For the purpose of seizing power, the communist revolutionaries found it to their advantage to be on the side of the people at the beginning. But once victory was secured they did not hesitate to turn their guns on the people. From our own bitter experience people in the chinese mainland have come to rely for fate in realize the fate in store for the cubans cant be any different from what has befallen the chinese people. This is a living example which should be studied carefully by all latin american countries because of the lesson which can be derived from it. 100 years ago, the great cuban liberator wrote among the dreams of men, there is one that is most beautiful, to overcome darkness. Perhaps one day, cuba will overcome the darkness and truly know freedom and peace. Here are some of our future programs or this weekend. On book tvs afterwardords sunday afternoon at 1 00, we talk with recently published professors at Johns Hopkins university. The governments efforts to cure malaria during world war ii. Tonight at 8 00, Anderson University professor uses abraham lincolns life to understand the use of White American dish views of White Americans on slavery. A discussion on birth control. The impact race, find our full schedule on www. Cspan. Org. Let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. Call us, email us or send us a tweet. Join the cspan conversation. Like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. Join American History tv on sunday for our look at historical roles the house of the house speaker. We feature the opening day remarks of Newt Gingrich and nancy pelosi. We will hear from the former house historian who explains the speakers constitutional role and offers profiles of the congressional leaders. That is sunday at noon on cspan3s American History tv. Next, look at the book insurrections of the mind. The book was published four new republics centenary anniversary. Jeffrey rosen of the National Constitution center speaks with mr. Foer about the book and the magazines vision. This was filmed two days before Franklin Foer resigned as editor. He left because he and the ceo had different plans for the future of the magazine. This is one hour and 20 minutes. [applause] welcome to the National Constitution center. Im jeffrey rosen. Im the president of this wonderful institution. Lets recited together this is the only institution in america chartered by congress to disseminate information about the u. S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis. Beautiful. [applause] that is our inspiring congressional motto. Its a cult. It is a constitutional cult and its such a thrill to be here in this wonderful place
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