Page 3
WORTH 20 OF OURS--Members of the Cuban militia, one of the most well-equipped in Latin
America. Raul Castro once boasted each one "is worth 20 Americans."
C. Wright Mills Seeks
(Continued from page 2)
litically with the Soviet bloc, as against assuming a genuinely neutralist and hence peaceful world orientation. In fact, these policies are making it very difficult indeed for Cubans even to discuss such an orientation. More than any other single factor, these U.S. policies are forcing the Cuban Government to become 'harder,' to become more restrictive of freedom of expression inside Cuba. In brief, they are forcing Cubans to identify all 'minority views' with 'counterrevolution.' And they are forcing the Cuban Government to identify 'anticommunism' with 'counterrevolution.'
"Let me say, as flatly as I am able to say, that were I a Cuban, acting in the Cuban revolution today, I too should feel it necessary to make this latter identification. For the plain truth is that the kind of ignorant and hysterical 'anticommunism' that is now the mood, the tone, and the view of many of the highest governmental officials of the United States of America is the McCarthy type. And I am just as opposed to this as I am to Stalinist practice and proclamation. Surely our aim, in the U.S.A. and in the U.S.S.R., should be to go beyond both.
"The Cuban Government, as of mid-1960, is not 'Communist' in any of the senses legitimately given to this word. The Communist party of Cuba, as a party, does not pose any serious threat to Cuba's political future. The leading men of Cuba's Government are not 'Communist,' or even Communist-type, as I have experienced communism in Latin America and in research work in the Soviet Union. . .
"The Cuban revolutionary is a new and distinct type of left-wing thinker and actor. He is neither capitalist nor Communist. He is socialist in a manner, I believe, both practical and humane. And if Cuba is let alone, I believe that Cubans have a good chance to keep the socialist society they are building practical and humane. If Cubans are properly helped—economically, technically and culturally—I believe they would have a very good chance. . . .
"My worries for Cuba—like those of knowledgeable Cuban revolutionaries—have to do, first, with problems of politics. The Government of Cuba is a revolutionary dictatorship of the peasants and workers of Cuba. It is legally arbitrary. It is legitimized by the enthusiastic support of an overwhelming majority of the people of Cuba. . . .
"I do not like such dependence upon one man as exists in Cuba today, nor the virtually absolute power that this one man possesses. Yet I believe it is not enough either to approve or to disapprove this fact about Cuba. . . . One must understand the conditions that have made it so, and that are continuing to make it so."
University Daily Kansan
No one can make up his mind about something like the Cuban revolution, or about U.S.-Cuban relations, without answering two questions:
"1. Is it possible today to have a society that is economically just and sensible and at the same time politically fluent and free? This is an old question, an ultimate question, a continuing question—and no one knows the answer to it. Despite the burden of the Cuban past, and the consequences of U.S. policies—past and present—I believe that Cuba does now represent a real chance for the development of one form of such a society. (There are, of course, many possible forms.)
"2. Is it politically possible, economically viable, and militarily realistic for a country such as Cuba to achieve a thoroughly neutralist and genuinely independent orientation in world affairs? Despite the systematic myopia of U.S. policies towards Cuba, and the astuteness of Soviet policy, I believe there is still a chance. To increase that chance, I believe, is the only realistic goal the United States can now take up in her Cuban policy. . . We must answer—with fact, with reason, and with civilized policies—the argument of these revolutionaries of the hungry-nation bloc."
("Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba")
Tuesday, April 18. 1961
It is the considered judgment of the Government of the United States of America that the Castro regime in Cuba offers a clear and present danger to the authentic and autonomous revolution of the Americas — to the whole concept of spreading political liberty, economic development, and social progress through all the republics of the hemisphere.
U.S. Considers Fidel Dangerous
U.S. WHITE PAPER
The North American Government issued a 'call' for Cubans to break off relations with the Socialist countries. The Government of the millionaire Kennedy may continue plotting defamation campaigns against Cuba, may continue arming mercenaries and preparing war criminals, may continue threatening and insulting, but all it can achieve is this dirty pamphlet $ * * * $ It is a worthy product of the imperialistic sewer.—Revolution, Havana.
CUBA'S REPLY
Cubans for Fidel
(Continued from page 2)
The Government, however, picked up this bombing incident immediately and within an hour was blaring over the radio that the violence was the work of "Yankee imperialists." I heard this on the radio of a cab in which I was riding. When the broadcast was over I asked the cab driver. "How can they be sure so quickly that the bombing was done by 'Yankee imperialists?' After thinking for a moment or two, he shrugged his shoulders and replied, "I suppose everyone is a 'Yanquil imperialist.'"
THIS SHRUG OF THE shoulders also characterized the attitude of the proprietor of a specialty shop with whom I talked. I asked him if he had seen the day's headlines-announcing that a U.S. invasion was imminent. He said that he had. I then asked if he had also read the details of the story. "How often can they tell me the same thing and expect me to read it?" he answered.
IT MUST BE STRESSED, of course, that the man-on-the-street in Cuba today bears little resemblance to the Cuban who has left the country. Chances are that the average Cuban previously was a have-not or have-little. Now he may not have more, but he lost nothing in the revolution and has been promised everything in the future.
Of course, there were those who were anti-Castro also. Those that I met were so taken up with their anti-Government feelings that there seemed to be little room left for either pro- or anti-Americanism.
ONE EXCEPTION WAS the cab driver who gave me a free trip around Havana at 4 a.m. He showed me the lines of Cubahs in front of the American embassy waiting for visas (they were still being issued then) which would not be good until November 1961. He showed me other lines in front of the DIER, the Army intelligence office, made up of people waiting to get their military travel pass from the Government.
AS A GROUP, it was the young people whom I found to be most affected by Government propaganda. If anti-Yankeeism ever does take hold in Cuba, it will capture the youth before all others. On two occasions, youngsters playing in the street looked up at me and whispered to one another, "Americano." The second time, I stopped to talk with them, three between the ages of 12 and 15. When they found I spoke their language, they thought that perhaps I was Russian or Polish. As soon as I told them that I was an American they became reticent and embarrassed.
The young people appear to be much taken by the Russians. A young man about 17 years old, working behind a lunch counter, attempted to debate with me the superiority of the Russians over Americans. He argued that they were better engineers, scientists, etc. Though he had been educated in a church school, he had recently left the church. He wanted me to know that he was living the best of all possible lives, and that things would be great for him and for his country from now on. Clearly, Fidel (who, he claimed, had eaten at his counter that very day) is his hero. But his over-insistence and over-enthusiasm made one wonder. "The Russians are also better tippers," was his parting shot as I left the counter.
(Excerpted from "Cuba's Man-on-the-Street," by Herbert J. Teison in the February 6, 1961 issue of The New Leader.)
Professor Reviews 'Listen, Yankee'
(Continued from page 2)
Mills. Of the three items listed, the first is often considered the best book to date on the Cuban revolution, the second may have helped its author land a top Latin American area position in the Kennedy administration, and the last is most widely read. Mills' book was published in both a hard cover and a paperback edition.
The "outspoken" and "controversial" book, "Listen, Yankee," was produced with the greatest possible haste. Mills spent only two weeks in Cuba to research this book. Consequences of this haste are seen, for instance, in the lack of an index and in the failure to include among the bibliographical materials any of the articles on Cuba written by Herbert L. Matthews, who "discovered" Fidel Castro. Matthew's lengthy and important "Commentary on the Cuban Revolution" appeared in Stanford University's "Hispanic American Report" (August, 1960). None of the Cuban revolutionary publications are included in Mills' compilation. Some of the Spanish words used are misspelled. But Mills and others interested in Cuban affairs realize how rapidly statements made about that Island of Paradox become outdated.
MILLS PRESENTS his speedy findings to the reader as letters from Cubans. "My major aim in this book is to present the voice of the Cuban revolutionary," he
writes. It is a one-sided presentation, albeit the side that has not been given by the mass media in this country. However, American readers should be familiar with the Cuban revolutionary point of view in order to compare areas of conflict.
Mills, in an epilogue, lashes out at past and present U.S. policies that are "very real factors in FORCING the Government of Cuba to align itself politically with the Soviet bloc, as against assuming a genuinely neutralist, and hence a peaceful world orientation." Mills charges that Washington has sought to maintain political stability among the American nations, irrespective of their forms of government, in order that business might continue as usual. "The job of the U.S. Government has been to promote trade and protect investment." United States trade with Latin America is larger than U.S. trade with any other world region. United States private investment to the South, now about nine million dollars, is larger than our investment in any other area of the world except Canada.
THE AUTHOR DECLARES that unless the United States changes these policies for civilized ones, democracy will remain "a fraud, a farce, a ceremony."
"Listen, Yankee," then, is a product of the clash between an anti-capitalist, revolutionary Cuba and a capitalist, "reactionary" United States. It is ironical that this country is unable to tolerate an anti-capitalist Cuba in the Hemisphere at a time when it is generously pumping millions of dollars into the revolutionary anticapitalist government of Bolivia. Aid and grants to that mineral rich country since its 1952 land-expropriating and mine-nationalizing social revolution, are approaching $200 million. In some of the years since 1952 U.S. contributions have accounted for about 20 per cent of the Bolivian national budget.
"FIDELISMO" IS AN infection which has spread throughout a Latin America that is in a revolutionary mood; Castro is only a manifestation of that mood. His removal is no antidote for future social revolutions. There is a potential Castro in each Latin American country. Castroism is an internal problem as well as an external problem in the part of the Americas that is in serious trouble.
This book should become required "listening" for all State Department "Yankees" involved in Latin American area policy planning, in order that the shortsightedness of the past be remedied in new hemispheric policies and programs. Instead, "Listen, Yankee" is condemned at State and its author's image is placed in the departmental rogue's gallery.
1