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University_Daily Kansan Tuesday, April 18, 1961
The Invasion Begins
The invasion of Cuba has begun, and the thought that immediately comes to the minds of Americans is this: Will the anti-Castro forces succeed in liberating the island and the Cuban people?
PERHAPS—BUT THE BATTLE FOR CUBA, strictly speaking, is not being fought entirely with Russian, Czech or American arms left over from pre-Castro days. The people of Cuba are fighting the battle with passions that thirst for a nation strong and a nation respected. This is the goal of any struggle anywhere—to build a nation where people may live in happiness and
peace. Although the United States has branded Castro's Cuba a Communist nation, it must be remembered that his ideals were clear and respectful at first. Castro wanted this kind of Cuba. But other interests robbed him of his reason and his ideals.
Some of the Cubans still believe in Castro and his revolution. Other Cubans believe the Castro regime must be overthrown. Now the struggle for control of the island country has grown from a battle of propaganda to a battle of bloodshed. But it is being fought by people with passions—as all battles are.
- The Editors
Cubans for Fidel, Not Anti-Yank
The Government-controlled radio and television programs and newspapers in this former Caribbean playground were all concentrating on one theme when I arrived last month: "Yankee Invasion Imminent." "Bomb Factory Confiscated; Yankee Dynamite Found." And on posters, billboards, bus-fare receipts and match boxes direct or implied anti-Yankee propaganda was the order of the day.
BUT WHILE TALKING to more than 100 Cubans—in homes, shops, cabs, and bars—I found that this campaign is failing to instill in them a hatred for North Americans. In fact, the man-on-the-street is bewildered. He finds it hard to reconcile the taloned beast in the political cartoons with Americans whom he met when they came down here to gamble and take the sun. He cannot envision as diabolical the sport-shirted tourist who would waste hours photographing the Mora Castle.
NOR CAN THE AVERAGE Cuban understand why Fidel Castro, who he feels is doing so many positive things, is at the same time trying to create this unrest and hate. One example is Anita—a Latin version of Elizabeth Taylor—who under the previous government had tried unsuccessfully to get a teaching license. Now she has a license and teaches secondary school in a cooperative in Oriente Province. She is con Fidel 100 per cent.
An avid newspaper reader and radio listener, Anita has absorbed a full measure of anti-American propaganda. Despite this, she was as warm and as friendly with me as she is with her own people. She was talkative to the point of verbosity about politics and about her personal problems. Anita, like the others with whom I spoke, knew Americans only as friends.
AT ONE POINT in my visit to Cuba. I found myself in the middle of a spontaneous demonstration of some 1,000 Cubans in downtown Havana. It had been triggered by a bombing a half-hour earlier in which a dozen or so citizens had been hurt. There was much chanting of "Cuba si, Yanqui no!," accompanied by hand-clapping in unison in the best traditions of mass hysteria. Though I was right in the middle of the crowd, did not chant or clap my hands and clearly look like a North American, I received only questioning looks from a few of the people around me. The emotions of the crowd were essentially pro-Cuban rather than anti-Yankee.
(Continued on page 3)
A UDK
Focus On Cuba
The 1958 visit of then Vice President Richard M. Nixon to Latin America and his reception, especially in Peru and in Venezuela, marked the beginning of a second "Great Age of Discovery." The American reading public has been provided with a gush of books and articles since those disturbing events occurred. That enormous and vital area to the south of us had been largely neglected by the United States during World War II and its aftermath.
PUBLICATIONS CONCERNING Cuba since 1959 make up a large share of this new Latin American bibliography. These contributions on Cuba include: "Cuba: The Anatomy of a Revolution," coauthored by Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy; "The Cuban Crisis," in "Foreign Affairs" (October, 1960), by Adolph A. Berle, Jr.; and "Listen, Yankee," by C. Wright
Professor Gives Critical Review - 'Listen, Yankee'
By Larry Pippin
(Continued on page 3)
UNIT UNIVERSITY
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
trilweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York, NY 10014. Represented by Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except spring and summer holidays and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT John Peterson ... Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Frank Morgan and
Dan Felger Co-Editorial Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
John Massa             Business Manager
"Say, that thing does have two edges!"
C. Wright Mills Seeks To Clarify Cuban Issue
(Dr. Mills, author of "The Power Elite," is professor of sociology at Columbia University.)
The specific combination of features in the Cuban revolution "is historically unique. . . Like Mexico's revolution of forty years ago, Cuba's is based upon the peasantry, but the land reform in Cuba is far more thorough, rapid, and successful than Mexico's or Bolivia's. . ."
"In at least six Latin-American nations, the vicious role of the traditional military apparatus in political, social and economic life has been destroyed. In Cuba, this apparatus has been totally and almost suddenly smashed—and with it the dominant economic powers.
"The Cuban revolution has swiftly destroyed the economic basis of capitalism—both foreign and Cuban. Most of this power was foreign—in fact, North American. It has now been destroyed with a thoroughness unique in Latin-American history.
"Moreover, Cuba's economic success—due primarily to her successful and intelligent agrarian reform, and helped at a decisive juncture by her economic agreements and trading with Soviet-bloc countries—makes Cuba impregnable to effective economic blockade or pressure from U.S. interests.
There are, of course, other features of this revolution, but it is this combination that is unique in Latin America. And it is this combination, with various modifications and additions, that in my judgment is now a major alternative to continued misery elsewhere in Latin America. One thing that might stop it from becoming the most probable alternative is a drastic change in U.S. policy. But given the character of the political economy of the U.S. today, I do not think it reasonable to expect a change of the sort that would be needed: The United States Government would have to actively help Latin Americans destroy the vested interests inside their own countries as well as the vested interests of U.S. corporations now operating in these countries. For it is this alliance of U.S. capital with local interests that now rules much of Latin America today—and so helps to keep it in the condition that it is in.
"Without the destruction of these interests—both Latin and North American—no real economic changes can reasonably be expected, certainly not at a sufficiently rapid rate. And without such structural economic changes, 'democracy' will remain what it now is in most of this continent: A farce, a fraud, a ceremony.
"And that is why I am for the Cuban revolution. I do not worry about it, I worry for it and with it. Like most Cubans, I too believe that this revolution is a moment of truth, and like some Cuban revolutionaries, I too believe that such truth, like all revolutionary truth, is perilous. Any moment of such military and economic truth might become an epoch of political and cultural lies. It might harden into any one of several kinds of dictatorial tyranny. But I do not believe that this is at all inevitable in Cuba. And I do believe that should it happen it would be due, in very large part, to the role the Government of the United States has been and is continuing to play in Cuban affairs. . . .
"The policies of the United States has pursued and is pursuing against Cuba are based upon a profound ignorance, and are shot through with hysteria. I believe that if they are continued they will result in more disgrace and more disaster for the image of my country before Cuba, before Latin America, and before the world.
"Moreover, I think that U.S. policies and lack of policies are very real factors in forcing the Government of Cuba to align itself po (Continued on page 3)
4.2.2.1