The character of Cuba's new government.
By NR's Editors, February 14, 1959.
National Review. NRO Weekend,
December 22, 2000 to January 1, 2001
From the point of view of the security of the United States, the primary
issue posed by the Cuban revolution is the extent of Communist — i.e.,
Soviet — infiltration of Fidel Castro's movement and regime. We may hail or
denounce Castro's late Roman style of rule, according to our personal criteria
in politics and morality. But no one who retains a minimum loyalty to the
government of the United States could judge as anything less than catastrophic a
Communist takeover of the strategic key to the Caribbean.
Early indications are not good.
By available evidence Castro is not himself a Communist, although he often
talks like one (as at Caracas last week) and acts like one (as in his guerilla
methods or his post-victory purges). But on his road to power Castro has given
so many hostages to Communism that it becomes doubtful whether he can shake
himself loose, even if in his own mind he wishes to do so.
Fidel's brother and intimate colleague, Raul Castro, who engineered the
kidnapping of Americans in Oriente Province, completed his political education
behind the Iron Curtain, and was greeted as "Comrade Communist" by the
Communist radio station that began broadcasting two days before Fidel's victory.
Fidel Castro's principal aide for some years, now in charge of "internal
security" and, as commander of La Cabaña prison, supervisor of the
executions, is an Argentine doctor named Ernesto Guevara, known as "Che."
Guevara worked for the pro-Communist Arbenz regime in Guatemala, and was praised
by that same Communist radio as an "outstanding Communist leader of the
country." Under Che's inspiration, Castro welcomed back the Communist
exiles and accepted the hitherto outlawed Communists as a legitimate Cuban
political party (using the name of Popular Socialist Party").
On January 1, within hours of Batista's flight, the Communists in every
major city of Cuba were seizing control of the trade-union organizations and
headquarters. Simultaneously, known anti-Communists such as Ernesto de la Fe, of
the Inter-American Federation for the Defense of the Continent, were being
arrested.
The United States Communist Party, hailing the Castro revolt as a triumph of
liberty, boasted of the decisive role of the Cuban Communists. This was echoed
in Moscow, where a Cuban Communist delegate, Sivero Aguirre, told the 21st
Congress of the Russian Party that the comrades had been "in the first
ranks of the insurgent masses" and had won "the respect of the
insurgent comrades-in-arms."
Meanwhile the unrestrained demagogy and wild fanaticism of Castro's
post-victory conduct tend to thrust the unbridled Cuban masses into the arms of
the Communists, who constitute the only disciplined and purposeful force on the
scene. | 