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We need to talk about Cuba


maarsen

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23 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Just ask Guatemala.

Somebody refresh my memory about Guatemala, but wasn't the guy that was running the place a rather moderate left of center sort, and the US government still freaked out and considered it "communist".

I guess my point is that if you were even a rather a moderate sort, Guatemala had to make you nervous that Washington would see you as "communist", even if you weren't.

It seems to me that Guatemala and Iran in the 1950s have to be some of the biggest screw ups in American Foreign policy that likely has bitten the US in the ass for a very long time.

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2 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Somebody refresh my memory about Guatemala, but wasn't the guy that was running the place a rather moderate left of center sort, and the US government still freaked out and considered it "communist".

This was in large part due to the overwhelming influence of the United Fruit Company, which made a full court press on the government and pretty much undertook a propaganda campaign. Ugly, horrible stuff. UFCO had some interests in Cuba as well, but not as significant as in Guatemala, and I've never read anything that suggested they wielded the same influence in policymaking as they did with the Guatemalan situation.

You are absolutely right that Arévalo was pretty moderate, and in fact was anti-communist. It was his successor that really led the U.S. turning hostile, though -- Arévalo and his reforms went uncontested for half a decade (well, uncontested by the U.S. -- he had domestic issues with the military and others that led to a lot of coup attempts internally), but then Árbenz came in and started seizing and redistributing land, UFCO got pissy, and the rest is a sad, sordid history.

 

2 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

 

2 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

It seems to me that Guatemala and Iran in the 1950s have to be some of the biggest screw ups in American Foreign policy that likely has bitten the US in the ass for a very long time.

Think this is true. Chile, Argentina, Vietnam... the U.S. did a lot of terrible things. Still does, to an extent.

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33 minutes ago, Ran said:

A different approach would have entailed paying fair value for seized lands, with deferred payments. A kind of national emininent domain. The U.S. was not necessarily opposed to this under Eisenhower -- the talks never got there. Same with Kennedy -- he was willing to work out some means of accommodation. You act as if the U.S. basically just sat there twirling its mustache plotting evil things when in fact there were occasions where hostilities and acrimony were not primary interests and another path might have been found.

Don't know much about Cuba so I have to ask, how did foreign interests end up in control of 75% of the arable land. Since it would be insane to allow such a thing I have a feeling it wasn't exactly above board.

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3 hours ago, Galactus said:

Much as I detest Castro and think the US position during the Cold War was at least understandable, keeping the embargo up after the fall of the Wall has likely backfired in terms of the regime's longevity. 

The Soviet Union supported him economically and many countries did not  join the US Economic Embargo.  

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12 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Don't know much about Cuba so I have to ask, how did foreign interests end up in control of 75% of the arable land. Since it would be insane to allow such a thing I have a feeling it wasn't exactly above board.

Digging around revealed two things: according to the sources I could find, Americans held 25% of the land in Cuba, not 75%... and my idea of offering fair value was not new; all land taken over by the revolutionaries was given an assessed value which was given in the form of bonds with a 4.5% interest rate and 20 year maturation. I suspect the hard turn towards Communism and clear signs that those bonds were going to be worthless so far as the Castro regime was concerned was a factor in the U.S. calculus.

There's more than land, of course, to think of. Mills for processing sugar, mines, etc. American businesses did have outsized involvement in most of this, generally to the tune of controlling interests in 50% of various industrial sectors. But to be fair, a lot of this was welcomed by the Cuban governments of the past as post-colonial Cuba had a great need of wealth coming in and development of infrastructure and so on. One can't deny there was corruption and graft along the way -- there was corruption and graft pretty much everywhere in the late 19th and early 20th century! -- but I don't think one can see the U.S. influence here as intentionally malignant or conspiratorial. It obviously led to serious imbalance, an imbalance abetted by those in Cuba who facilitated and benefited from backing American business interest over those of the Cuban people.

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45 minutes ago, Ran said:

Castro did return to corrupt ways. Just different corrupt ways. 

I'm not sure that's actually true of what the U.S. expected. As you yourself noted, the U.S. had its issues with Batista as well.

A different approach would have entailed paying fair value for seized lands, with deferred payments. A kind of national emininent domain. The U.S. was not necessarily opposed to this under Eisenhower -- the talks never got there. Same with Kennedy -- he was willing to work out some means of accommodation. You act as if the U.S. basically just sat there twirling its mustache plotting evil things when in fact there were occasions where hostilities and acrimony were not primary interests and another path might have been found.

 

Sure. Executing hundreds of people, cozying up to the Soviets, and dropping any pretense of democratic reform were not calculated to make the U.S. friendly.

It was a concern, of course. But you can see that Eisenhower treated Cuba quite differently than it did Guatemala, where Eisenhower immediately authorized operations to overthrow the government and formented a civil war.

I suspect Cuba could have been rather more like Puerto Rico than any of those others. I know GDP per capita isn't a perfect figure, for reasons noted, but you could do a lot worse than be in Puerto Rico under normal circumstances. Puerto Rico is substantially wealthier than the Central Americans country.

It's been estimated that Castro's wealth as somewhere between a few hundred million (per a former member of his inner circles) and a billion dollar (per Forbes), and there have been many accounts of the luxuries he was afforded or afforded himself. Did he gold plate everything or make a great public show of that wealth? Nope, it'd clash with the image. But he and his family were very well taken care of.

Look at the sources you are relying on.  Forbes even gets the Castro Brothers' father's assets wrong -- he was by no means at all a very wealthy man.  He was better off than his laborers, among whom he lived and ate, but not rich, like say the family that owned Bacardi Rum, or the family of Desi Arnez.

The Castro family's assets are known, and are measly compared to even a lot US mayors.  They surely are a lot better off the average black family of Seguara Grande, but --  there are no off shore accounts, no investments in foreign real estate, etc., unlike the former Soviets and present Russians or corporate and political figures here.  People have been looking for this for years.  Not to mention the sorts of sanctions the US has put on anyone who does business with Cuba or Cuban politicos like that.

Houses are their primary expense -- Fidel tended not to sleep in the same house more than one night and kept deliberately an erratic itinerary, which only his most trusted few people knew, due to the constant threat of US assassination.  Fidel had a Caribbean resort-like retreat among these houses, because he loved deep sea diving, snorkling and viewing the sea life in the reef.  Then there was his security detail.

Raul's daughter takes the bus to work everyday. We've been on the bus with her.  One of our friend's sons works in an office with one of Fidel's youngest sons from a late life romance  -- and worked with him for more than two years before realizing who he was -- he's a clerk.

If these people went to other countries to whoop it up with an extreme, lavish, lifeystyle of throwing money around, don't you all realize it would be splattered all over the global media?

It's also pretty damned hard to hide this stuff within Cuba too -- it is an island and everybody is all up in everybody's business.

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25 minutes ago, Zorral said:

 

If these people went to other countries to whoop it up with an extreme, lavish, lifeystyle of throwing money around, don't you all realize it would be splattered all over the global media?

I guess Antonio Castro arriving in Bodrum from Mykonos on a 150-foot yacht and staying in 5 star hotel suites is a triumph of the proletariat...

I suspect the Castro wealth will become much more evident in a couple of decades as the economy liberalizes and allows more outside investment.

 

ETA: How could I forget the Panama Papers? Though widely accepted that many of the shell corporations were created to get around the embargo, it’s worth noting that a few members of the Castro extended family appear in the papers...

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2 hours ago, Ran said:

Digging around revealed two things: according to the sources I could find, Americans held 25% of the land in Cuba, not 75%... and my idea of offering fair value was not new; all land taken over by the revolutionaries was given an assessed value which was given in the form of bonds with a 4.5% interest rate and 20 year maturation. I suspect the hard turn towards Communism and clear signs that those bonds were going to be worthless so far as the Castro regime was concerned was a factor in the U.S. calculus.

No one claimed they owned 75% of the land in Cuba Ran, it was 75% of the arable land. IE land that can be used for farming.

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There's more than land, of course, to think of. Mills for processing sugar, mines, etc. American businesses did have outsized involvement in most of this, generally to the tune of controlling interests in 50% of various industrial sectors. But to be fair, a lot of this was welcomed by the Cuban governments of the past as post-colonial Cuba had a great need of wealth coming in and development of infrastructure and so on. One can't deny there was corruption and graft along the way -- there was corruption and graft pretty much everywhere in the late 19th and early 20th century! -- but I don't think one can see the U.S. influence here as intentionally malignant or conspiratorial. It obviously led to serious imbalance, an imbalance abetted by those in Cuba who facilitated and benefited from backing American business interest over those of the Cuban people.

The post-colonial government, which involved the US immediately occupying Cuba, running it's government, and setting things up to favour the US.

As I read through some Cuban history my response to the idea of paying people for the land they took is basically the same as my response would be if Native tribes took back the land they are owed by treaty and people demanded payment for that land. "Go fuck yourself."

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13 hours ago, Ran said:

And then had the VP, Nixon, speak with him for over 3 hours. 

During which Nixon tried his best to have Castro abandon much of what his revolution stood for, while plans were being drawn by the NSC to undermine said revolution. 

I think one needs a balanced assessment here. Castro had apparently already made his mind before going to the US. But the US was also determined not to accept the Cuban revolution. What Nixon hoped to achieve was clearly to turn Castro into another Batista, albeit more moderate toward the Cubans - and thus more popular.  

I think it would be naive to claim the US was ready to accept a truly leftist regime in Cuba. And Castro, for all his failings, was a true believer, as Nixon himself famously reported after their meeting.

Generally speaking I think one needs to look at the history of Cuba with a balanced perspective. Castro was no angel. But it's not like the US was ever going to leave him that much leeway either. Fact is, during the Cold War the US undermined or even overthrew almost all governments that were even slightly socialist. To this day it probably still does (whenever it's easy at least). 

I'm tempted to say the reason people overlook much of Castro's worse doings is because he remained true to his beliefs even though it was choosing the hard path. It's precisely because the US could have offered him so much that his decisions (and his endurance) get some kind of respect.

As for the Cubans they didn't get much say in the matter and never had much chance of getting a "democratic" government that wouldn't end up being a lackey of the US and its interests. But the revolution was popular in 1959 which means that Castro's decisions were as well. And was it really for the worst ? Looking at what happened in other Latin American countries I think that Castro at least did what he thought best for his people. He certainly wasn't kinder than other dictators to dissenters but at least he stood for something. 

So to sum up I think it's possible to say Castro was a tyrant and a sob and still recognize that unlike so many others in his situation he didn't betray his ideals despite the fact that it would have made his life much easier, to say the least. 

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I was trying to find a source for the claim Americans only owned 25% of the arable land in Cuba, and I did find that Americans used to own about 70% of the sugar cane operations in the 20s but by the revolution that had fallen to about 40%. That suggests ownership of much more than just 25% of the arable land. But they also owned almost all of the telephone utility and electrical utilities, and they would come with lots of land as well. And the mines.

However, I also found out that Castro had, in fact, offered to pay for seized American property with 20 year notes at 4 1/2%, but Eisenhower rejected this and demanded immediate repayment for all seized property. Like that was reasonable, right?

And Castro did not seize the 3 oil refineries on the island when he came into power (2 American owned, 1 European). Russians were going to buy sugar and pay with crude, to be delivered to the oil refineries for processing. All 3 refused to refine Russian crude. That's when the oil refineries were nationalised, not surprising. Eisenhower then slashed the sugar quota, basically destroying a huge chunk of the Cuban economy.

I found these facts in this paper from The Rand Corporation, written in 1964, entitled U.S. Business Interests in Cuba and the Rise of Castro. It's a damn good read, even with it's corporate bias. It's a bit hard to read since it's a copy of a typed paper. One of it's conclusions is that if US investment in Cuba had been structured slightly differently, the conditions that gave rise to a person like Castro might never have happened, since benefits and wealth might have been more broadly distributed among the population. But, they say, the investments were structured the way they were to maximize profits to US investors. No surprise there.

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/P2923.pdf

eta: I just wanted to add that this paper points out the US media made much of the execution by Castro of the war criminals and torturers at the start of the revolution, but never reported the horrible murders and crimes of Batista. One such being that after an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Batista, Battista personally ordered the murder of the leader of the popular opposition group, a well respected Havana lawyer. He then granted a big increase in rates to the American owned Telephone utility, which cemented the idea of Batista's corruption and the complicity of American business interests.

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23 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

One of it's conclusions is that if US investment in Cuba had been structured slightly differently, the conditions that gave rise to a person like Castro might never have happened, since benefits and wealth might have been more broadly distributed among the population. But, they say, the investments were structured the way they were to maximize profits to US investors. No surprise there.

Well, it looks like the libertarian overlords just couldn't help themselves and killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

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21 hours ago, Ran said:

All of those are possiblities, but they're probably a pretty forseeable reaction to having overthrown the government of Cuba and nationalized American businesses.

Despite everything that had happened well before Kennedy, Kennedy opened up a back channel to try and reach an accommodation with Castro and Cuba. He was willing to work out something even given Castro having enforced a dictatorial, one-party rule, cozied up the Soviets, etc. Kennedy's assassination put an end to that. But imagine if Castro had been more proactive and _followed through_ on his stated intentions of returning Cuba to an open, free society without dictators -- it seems those talks and the chance for normalization could have happened sooner, more openly, and with real results.

I didn't even go into the more unusual, and unprecedented, route of Castro _stepping away_ from power as a way of getting out of the way of said stated goals, which he could very well have done if he wanted. His narcissism was an active impediment to normalization of relations with the U.S., and it was no one's decision but his own.

ETA: I mean, f'r instance: I was just reminded when Googling that EISENHOWER officially recognized the revolutionary government in the immediate aftermath of its overthrow of Batista's regime. I think the CIA plots were largely after Castro's role as a dictator, and the revolution's turn towards communism, were in the bag. Before that, while there was hope of a more open and free government, the U.S. had been willing to engage.

I know it’s an annoying habit of mine, but if you read up I had edited my post before or while you were writing yours, to point out exactly how rigging elections wasn’t something  that ‘could’ happen, it was in fact the thing the CIA specialized in for a few decades. There are entire books on the subject; in one, an ex-operative who helped ensure Italy went 20+ years without a communist winning the election in spite of often majority support talks about it likea game, and that it got to the point where getting their targets...who knew all about the CIA gameplan...to commit to one-sided ‘free elections’ was basically getting them to a place where they were raising the white flag and looking for a way out without overtly giving up. He talked about going up against the CIA’s machine, which included not only endless funds (he talks about walking into day one of the 48 Italian election with a million in cash in a bag as ‘starting up’ money, in 1948 remember) but also the use of black ops and an unprecedented propoganda machine; like getting not one but 2 Time Magazine cover articles denouncing the Italian communist party in the run up to the election, just as one for instance.

He compared getting ‘tin pot’ leaders to publicly agree to ‘free’ elections like getting a town to bet their future on their rec team beating the ‘27 Yankees, with the added caveat that the Umps were already bought. And he says that the only chance these guys ever had was to go to ‘the other side’, which meant them getting money and operational tools to at least compete, but which also served the CIA because they could then immediately denounce the elections as rigged in the unlikely event they lost.

I could go on, but I think the crux of our fundamental disagreement in in the bolded; I am astonished that anyone with access to Wikipedia can think of the Cold War US foreign policy as one wherein being ‘dictatorial’ was some kind of obstacle to US support. Run down a list of the endless number of leaders the US essentially put or kept in place contrary to the will of the actual citizens of the country, and it seems much more likely that being ‘dictatorial’ was almost a pre-rec, and if we’re in a place where you can look at the lists from the Shah to Saddam and think that US overtures were made extraordinary by overcoming idealogical distaste for authoritarianism, i’m not sure where our middle ground is. We’re looking at the same history and seeing completely different things.

Edit: sorry, reading on I just noticed that your family are ex-pats, which gives me more context for your stance, so I understand where/why we differ more. 

But one more try to distill my argument about Castro, which is not that he never did wrong, or was a saint, etc. It’s simply this: take away EVERYTHING else...his personality, his politics, the specifics of Cuba’s history, the US’ colonial past, etc. Take it all away and tell me only that a tiny poor next door neighbour to a military/industrial power with a formula for overthrowing those kinds of states, which was constantly seeking the death of that tiny nation’s leader, the overthrow and/or reconquest of that nation and was spending more per annum in pursuit of same than that nation could bring to the table for anything , and I will tell you without knowing anything else that the story ended one of three ways:

1) the tiny nation’s leader assassinated and the superpower reasserted control.

2) the tiny nation’s government overthrown and the superpower reasserted control.

3) the tiny nation adopted police-state measures to try and mitigate the chances of 1 and 2.

That’s literally all that was required. It’s all that history has shown to be needed. Every government...including again, democracy in France...turns authoritarian in the face of constant external aggression and externally implemented insurgencies. Or it dies.

Think about how the US reacted to 9-11, then multiply 9-11 by a factor of thousands in terms of the reality scale of the threat. 

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Edit 2, separate, just noticed that you think that US support of/funding for operations came as a result of Castro’s authoritarianism, but that’s simply not true. Escambra followed the Revolution almost immediately, with in some cases cells just picking up where and how they left off fighting Batiste and turning it onto Castro without ever even leaving their operation centres, only now with more financial support from the US/ex-pats and industry. The US didn’t discontinue this direct support until after the Bay of Pigs, so I can’t see how it was a ‘response’ to Castro’s actions/behaviour/narcissism. Especially in the context of the Cold War dynamic where we see, repeatedly case after case after case examples where the one and only qualifier needed to motivate the Dulles Blueprint was which way you leaned politically with emphasis on how that affects US/Western industrial control.

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58 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

I know it’s an annoying habit of mine, but if you read up I had edited my post before or while you were writing yours, to point out exactly how rigging elections wasn’t something  that ‘could’ happen, it was in fact the thing the CIA specialized in for a few decades. There are entire books on the subject; in one, an ex-operative who helped ensure Italy went 20+ years without a communist winning the election in spite of often majority support talks about it likea game, and that it got to the point where getting their targets...who knew all about the CIA gameplan...to commit to one-sided ‘free elections’ was basically getting them to a place where they were raising the white flag and looking for a way out without overtly giving up. He talked about going up against the CIA’s machine, which included not only endless funds (he talks about walking into day one of the 48 Italian election with a million in cash in a bag as ‘starting up’ money, in 1948 remember) but also the use of black ops and an unprecedented propoganda machine; like getting not one but 2 Time Magazine cover articles denouncing the Italian communist party in the run up to the election, just as one for instance.

 

 

If you can remember the author or title I would like to read it. Actually I might try googling.

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9 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

 

As I read through some Cuban history my response to the idea of paying people for the land they took is basically the same as my response would be if Native tribes took back the land they are owed by treaty and people demanded payment for that land. "Go fuck yourself."

You're getting into a "What did the Romans ever do for us" situation. There was a time when the U.S. was very welcome to bring financing and infrastructure. That this became imbalanced is true enough, but the idea that the investments made deserved no recompense strikes me as silly on the face, not least because the revolutionary government itself proposed the "Agrarian Reform Bonds" which were supposed to be at 4.5% for 20 years (as noted below).... and then shortly after were changed to 2% with a 30 year maturity, and I'm going to assume that few, if any, were actually ever paid out by the government.

 

What's silly is that there's only about $7 billion in outstanding claims against Cuba on American books. That's a substantial part of the Cuban GDP -- almost 10%, per Google -- but if they'd broken that up over a few decades one of the largest sticking points for rapproachment with the U.S. would have been dealt with. I suppose running your economy into the ground makes that hard.

8 hours ago, Rippounet said:

During which Nixon tried his best to have Castro abandon much of what his revolution stood for, while plans were being drawn by the NSC to undermine said revolution. 

I don't think that's a fair read. He certainly urged Castro away from communism, and believed him (to quote the sources on it) either naive about it or under Soviet direction (he guessed rightly that it was the former), but he also urged him to restore elections and various other things aimed at strengthening the trust of the people in the government. I  know for a fact that the revolution did _not_ stand for the establishment of a dictatorship, but it seems people are happy to pretend otherwise. 

 

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I think one needs a balanced assessment here. Castro had apparently already made his mind before going to the US. But the US was also determined not to accept the Cuban revolution.

The U.S. ended up supporting the revolution! Its arms embargo was a blow to Batista and helped marked the end of his dictatorship. It was opposed to the revolution leading to a full-blown Communist state, which I think history shows was not a wrong feeling in and of itself. So to act as if your picture is "balanced" while failing to recognize that the U.S. relationship with Batista and the revolutionaries was actually quite complicated and not simply one long string of the U.S. always being in the wrong, I don't know what to say. 

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What Nixon hoped to achieve was clearly to turn Castro into another Batista, albeit more moderate toward the Cubans - and thus more popular.  

Or Nixon was hoping that Castro would establish a democracy that wasn't communist, and he didn't necessarily care whether he was a Batista or not. But what's wrong with a Batista, per se?

It's worth remembering that Batista began his political career as a popular figure, a reformer from the minority who led labor reforms and unionization and land reform. He wasn't necessarily the U.S.'s man -- hell, the communists in Cuba supported him initially as well! Then he became corrupt and greedy for more power and personal wealth, something which (shamefully) the U.S. initially supported on the theory that if it was going to be open season on the Cuban economy, they may as well benefit. So he did become a dictator, he did become fascistic, and the U.S. didn't initially do anything about it. That was wrong. The revolution had a just cause. The U.S. eventually came to provide tacit support, and within a week of Batista's overthrow the revolutionary government received official recognition from the U.S.

So if we're going to agree that Castro was not an angel and made any number of bad choices out of a genuine belief that they were good, is it not possible to say that the U.S. had similar beliefs?

 

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I think it would be naive to claim the US was ready to accept a truly leftist regime in Cuba.

I don't know what "truly" means. A communist regime would not be accepted, no.

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Generally speaking I think one needs to look at the history of Cuba with a balanced perspective. Castro was no angel. But it's not like the US was ever going to leave him that much leeway either. Fact is, during the Cold War the US undermined or even overthrew almost all governments that were even slightly socialist.

Not true. The Arévalo government in Guatemala had no real problems  with the U.S. despite being moderately socialist.

 

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To this day it probably still does (whenever it's easy at least). 

I'm tempted to say the reason people overlook much of Castro's worse doings is because he remained true to his beliefs even though it was choosing the hard path. It's precisely because the US could have offered him so much that his decisions (and his endurance) get some kind of respect.

That's fair enough. He was a very charismatic figure. Alpert's interactions with him in the Netflix documentary I mentioned earlier were really something to see.

8 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

 

However, I also found out that Castro had, in fact, offered to pay for seized American property with 20 year notes at 4 1/2%, but Eisenhower rejected this and demanded immediate repayment for all seized property. Like that was reasonable, right?

I suspect it's no more unreasonable than seizing lands unilaterally, but bear in mind Eisenhower's views were shaped by the fact that Castro had betrayed his allies in the revolution and began imposing a communist regime which certainly raised questions of his trustworthiness (those bonds were downgraded to 30 year notes at 2% almost immediately, for example).

 

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And Castro did not seize the 3 oil refineries on the island when he came into power (2 American owned, 1 European). Russians were going to buy sugar and pay with crude, to be delivered to the oil refineries for processing. All 3 refused to refine Russian crude. That's when the oil refineries were nationalised, not surprising. Eisenhower then slashed the sugar quota, basically destroying a huge chunk of the Cuban economy.

I found these facts in this paper from The Rand Corporation, written in 1964, entitled U.S. Business Interests in Cuba and the Rise of Castro. It's a damn good read, even with it's corporate bias. It's a bit hard to read since it's a copy of a typed paper. One of it's conclusions is that if US investment in Cuba had been structured slightly differently, the conditions that gave rise to a person like Castro might never have happened, since benefits and wealth might have been more broadly distributed among the population.

 

I think this is absolutely true. This is why Castro wanted the U.S. government to invest in Cuba, rather than private businesses, when he spoke with Nixon. Nixon didn't get why, and apparently Castro couldn't really explain himself, but essentially Castro trusted the U.S. government to invest on the basis of building the Cuban economy whereas U.S. businesses invested on the basis of increasing their profitability and improvement of the Cuban economy was merely a side-effect.

The revolution had a just cause, as I said. Communism was an over-reaction.

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eta: I just wanted to add that this paper points out the US media made much of the execution by Castro of the war criminals and torturers at the start of the revolution, but never reported the horrible murders and crimes of Batista. One such being that after an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Batista, Battista personally ordered the murder of the leader of the popular opposition group, a well respected Havana lawyer. He then granted a big increase in rates to the American owned Telephone utility, which cemented the idea of Batista's corruption and the complicity of American business interests.

Oh, Batista became terrible.

1 hour ago, James Arryn said:

Edit 2, separate, just noticed that you think that US support of/funding for operations came as a result of Castro’s authoritarianism, but that’s simply not true. Escambra followed the Revolution almost immediately, with in some cases cells just picking up where and how they left off fighting Batiste and turning it onto Castro without ever even leaving their operation centres, only now with more financial support from the US/ex-pats and industry.

Are you talking about the DRE? They didn't start attacking Cuba until 1962, and while they left Cuba in the dispute over Castro's communism in 1960 is when they first started having known contacts from the CIA, that's still over a year after the success of the revolution. In fact, all the U.S. influence against Castro that I can find largely dates from after his visit to the U.S., after the show trials and the increasing signs that he was aiming to make a communist government. The period from January 1959 to mid-to-late 1959, the U.S. was cautiously supportive of the Cuban government but that quickly turned thanks to Castro's actions. It's 1960 when Eisenhower authorizes funding for the Bay of Pigs, as well.

Huber Matos was part of the government until late 1959, but had started speaking out against the communists taking leadership positions at Castro's and Guevara's direction in mid-1959.

 

In any case, I definitely think the U.S. did not provide support to anti-revolutionary rebels until at least after April 1959 (when Castro visited the U.S.), and from what I can find it's nearer to late 1959 or early 1960. If you've sources that say otherwise, please point them out. (That said, spent over an hour on this post, and I've too much going on to get so wrapped up in a conversation right now! So my last post, but still, would be interested in any sources suggesting the U.S. was immediately backing anti-Castro people as early as Batista's flight from Cuba.)

 

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3 hours ago, Ran said:

I don't know what "truly" means. A communist regime would not be accepted, no.

It [the US] was opposed to the revolution leading to a full-blown Communist state, which I think history shows was not a wrong feeling in and of itself.

The revolution had a just cause, as I said. Communism was an over-reaction.

Except land reform is not communism. Redistributing land from US corporations and wealthy Cubans to poor peasants is many things, but it is not per se communism. It's what I mean by "truly leftist" though.
And yet this is precisely what the US would never have tolerated and no doubt what Nixon tried to convince Castro not to do. I think it's safe to assume that Nixon was trying to protect the interests of US corporations in Cuba. If only because it was his job as VP of the US.

I think you are adopting the very position that the US government adopted throughout the Cold War and to this day: that any form of wealth redistribution is "socialist" or "communist," bad, and can be legitimately opposed by the US.

Notwithstanding the fact that you are showing strong bias right there, I strongly disagree with such a view. In an ideal world, dictatorships shouldn't exist. But in an ideal world, the US should not have a say in what kind of government the peoples of neighboring countries choose.
At the root of our disagreement is the fact that I support the right of a people to own their land, even if that means taking it back from foreign corporations by force. Democracy is not always compatible with economic liberty (Madison seemed to understand that).

To sum up: Castro was a dictator, which is bad. But then, the US had no legitimacy in preventing communism from arising in Cuba if it was the people's will, and its continuous interference is also bad.
And land reform was immensely popular in Cuba.

The reason people forgive Castro for so much is because they assume that only a strongman could resist the enormous US influence because any elections would have been rigged by a flow of CIA money and other kinds of interference.
The historical record would tend to support such a view.

3 hours ago, Ran said:

I  know for a fact that the revolution did _not_ stand for the establishment of a dictatorship, but it seems people are happy to pretend otherwise.

People don't pretend anything. They simply recognize the fact that as soon as the US decided to oppose Castro with all possible means, organizing elections became near impossible ; it would have amounted to political -at least- suicide. Just look at the way American officials were discussing Cuba before Castro even visited the US:
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d188
These people were never going to support a leftist government in Cuba, period.

That being said I have no illusions about Castro either. I'm quite confident that such a situation suited him just fine. It allowed him to stay true to his ideals AND gave him an excuse to become Cuba's leader for life.

3 hours ago, Ran said:

The U.S. ended up supporting the revolution! Its arms embargo was a blow to Batista and helped marked the end of his dictatorship.

The US ditched Batista when it became clear that he was unpopular. The chronology is quite clear.

And because I don't view US foreign policy through rose-tinted glasses I assume the US did that because it was hoping to influence the political process after Batista's fall.
Which it did try to do.

I don't see this as "supporting the revolution." I think the US had a strategy, and that it failed, because Castro turned out to not be very pliable.
There are many other cases when this strategy worked.

Generally speaking it seems to me you're somehow assuming the US sometimes acts in the defense of lofty ideals like democracy, liberty, or whatever.
In reality it almost only does so when it can serve its own interests. Whenever US interests and US values are mutually exclusive, US administrations choose US interests.
Such is the nature of geopolitics.

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Then he became corrupt and greedy for more power and personal wealth, something which (shamefully) the U.S. initially supported on the theory that if it was going to be open season on the Cuban economy, they may as well benefit. So he did become a dictator, he did become fascistic, and the U.S. didn't initially do anything about it.

So Batista became corrupt and greedy on his own and the US only took advantage of it?
That's a rather bold perspective you know. Anyone looking for a balanced perspective on this would wonder whether Batista didn't become corrupt and greedy because of what he was being offered... ;)

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Not true. The Arévalo government in Guatemala had no real problems  with the U.S. despite being moderately socialist.

Only if you believe that the CIA only started interfering in Guatemala around 1952 and had nothing to do with the twenty-five coup attempts against Arévalo...

Mind you, I was careful to say "almost all" because I'm sure if you dig deep enough you could find a counter-example or two. Or rather, a case where the CIA's implication has not been clearly established yet. After all, perhaps the conservative forces in Guatemala were so active against Arévalo that the CIA didn't need to involve itself before 1952, what do I know...

But to claim that the US would have ever left Cuba choose its own destiny without interference... Is amazingly naive. It flies in the face of all the historical record. It's based on nothing but an irrational belief in the fundamental "goodness" of America.
Or perhaps it comes from anti-communism... ;)

 

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5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

 

But to claim that the US would have ever left Cuba choose its own destiny without interference... Is amazingly naive. It flies in the face of all the historical record. It's based on nothing but an irrational belief in the fundamental "goodness" of America.
Or perhaps it comes from anti-communism... ;)

 

I agree with your view.

"Guatemala's "Not so Magical Realism"- https://lab.org.uk/guatemala-not-so-magical-realism/

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