We didn’t always hate Castro

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As America embarks on a more friendly relationship with Cuba, it is interesting to recall a peculiar moment in our history when Fidel Castro was seen as a Robin Hood figure by many Americans, including a fair number of conservatives. Historian Van Gosse says: “Since the dawn of the Cold War, few Third World figures of any sort have received such sustained, sympathetic coverage from the journalistic establishment in the U.S. as did Fidel Castro in the two years before Batista fell.” U.S. reporters in 1957-58 emphasized his elite landowning origins, his status as a lawyer and intellectual and his Spanish — racially pure — parentage.

Underneath this enthusiasm for Castro was a sense of guilt. Batista’s U.S.-supported dictatorship was at odds with the Cold War narrative of a “Free World” battling tyranny. U.S. corporations and the Mafia dominated the island.

Castro talked about liberty and humanism in a vague manner. In October 1955, he undertook a sevenweek tour of Cuban communities in the U.S. from Tampa, Key West and Miami to New York City, Bridgeport, Conn. and Union City, N.J.

In February 1957, Herbert Matthews of The New York Times travelled to Cuba to interview Castro and his guerrillas in the mountains. In May, there was a primetime TV CBS Special Report called “Rebels of the Sierra Maestra: The Story of Cuba’s Jungle Fighters.” The documentary featured three teenaged American recruits. They were sons of U.S. soldiers at the Guantanamo base. Henry Luce, the fervent anti-Communist publisher of Time and Life magazines, was quite pro- Castro. Gosse notes that Time ran 31 stories on the rebellion in Cuba in the last two years of Batista’s reign. All of them focused on Castro as a guy Americans could like. He was “the well-born, well-todo daredevil”; “the swashbuckling young lawyer” and “the strapping, bearded leader of the never-say-die band of anti-Batista rebels who strike and run.”

In April 1959 (only a few months after the revolutionary victory), Life magazine reported that a U.S. toy manufacturer had produced 100,000 Fidel cap-and-beard sets. The accompanying photos showed a gang of little boys playing in the New Jersey woods pretending to shoot at each other. Instead of plastic G.I. Joe helmets, they wore khaki fatigue hats with a 26th of July movement logo and the legend “El Libertador.” The caps’ chinstraps were covered in thick, black hair.

Also in April, Castro visited the U.S. at the invitation of the National Press Club. He hired a prestigious U.S. public relations firm, which arranged his public appearances. He was presented with the keys to New York City in Central Park. He toured the Bronx Zoo and ate a hot dog and ice cream. He laid a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial. He spoke at Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton. In Washington, D.C., he spoke for two hours before some 1,500 newspaper editors. “We are not Communists,” he insisted. He received a prolonged standing ovation.

After that, things went downhill fast. In order to escape U.S. domination, Castro chose to ally with the Soviet Union and to adopt a “Communist” topdown planned economy, which produced “big thumbs and small fingers” — the capacity to effectively carry out mechanical and repetitive operations (mass inoculations, hurricane evacuations), but not operations that require flexibility and innovation (the development and introduction of sophisticated labor-saving techniques). This produced serious problems and, in response, the regime zigzagged between hyper-centralized planning and market liberalization.

Meanwhile, the U.S. would invade Cuba, carry on a long terrorist war and launch numerous assassination plots. As President Obama has acknowledged, this bullying policy was a big failure. His move toward normalization of diplomatic relations was long overdue. But that is not enough. The inhumane trade embargo needs to end.

This can be a time for reflection in both countries. America needs a more humble foreign policy. Cubans need the right to dissent and to form free political associations and parties.

Today’s Latin America has changed significantly since the 1959 Cuban Revolution. A “pink tide” of democratically elected, left-leaning governments have come to power in Venezuela, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay and Ecuador.

This can be a new beginning for America’s relationship with not only Cuba, but all of Latin America.

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This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.