Yahoo! January 1, 2001
Diplomat Recalls Cuba Break in 1961
By George Gedda, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON, 1 (AP) - As President Dwight Eisenhower saw it, Cuban leader
Fidel Castro (news - web sites) had provoked him once too often.
"There is a limit to what the United States in self-respect can endure.
That limit has now been reached,'' Eisenhower said in breaking diplomatic
relations with Cuba.
The date was Jan. 3, 1961,
"Everyone thought that this would be overcome with time,'' recalls
Wayne Smith, then a 28-year old political officer at the embassy.
Smith and a lot of others were wrong. Wednesday is the 40th anniversary of
the break, and the two countries are still not close to a resumption of normal
relations. Virtually the only item on the official agenda these days is
migration. There has not been an exchange of views on political issues in years.
When relations broke off, the United States was going through a presidential
transition. Eisenhower was on the way out and John F. Kennedy was in line to
replace him in less than three weeks.
Relations with Cuba had been heading downhill for months. Over the summer,
Cuba took over, without compensation, American businesses worth hundreds of
millions of dollars. In October, the United States imposed stiff economic
sanctions against the island. Cuba was cozying up to the Soviet Union.
Triggering the break was a speech by Castro, who contended that the U.S.
embassy was a nest of spies and demanded that the staff be reduced from 87 to
11. Eisenhower decided to sever relations the following morning.
Castro biographer Robert E. Quirk wrote that as news of the break spread
through Havana, "hundreds of Cubans gathered around entrances to the
embassy, still hoping for visas. Some, waving their passports and appointment
slips, pounded frantically on the glass doors. It was too late.''
Any hopes for an early accommodation were dashed just over 100 days later
when the U.S.-backed effort to topple Castro with an invasion at the Bay of Pigs
ended in disaster.
Smith, now 68, said tensions were so high during the months preceding the
break in relations that family members of U.S. diplomats had long since been
evacuated.
"All the furniture had been shipped back to the states. Everyone in the
embassy was down to two suitcases,'' Smith recalled.
On Jan. 4, a car ferry with the American team on board set sail for south
Florida. As the vessel began the crossing, Smith looked back and saw the embassy
lights blinking. He assumed that this was a good-bye signal from a Cuban
attendant at the embassy.
Smith, who always has felt a strong kinship with Cubans, said that when
political conditions permitted a resumption of U.S.-Cuban contacts, he wanted to
be part of the first group back in. He got his wish in April 1977 when the
Carter administration sent a delegation of diplomats to Cuba for talks. Smith
confirmed with the attendants that the blinking lights were indeed meant to say
"adios.''
The embassy, located a few yards from a seaside roadway, reopened for
business on September 1, 1977, not as an embassy per se but as an "interests
section,'' a status which implies that diplomatic ties are not fully
established.
Simultaneously, Cubans diplomats regained possession of their embassy on
16th St., in Washington, about two miles north of the White House. Smith served
as chief of the U.S. mission in Havana from 1979-82.
Little has changed since the interests sections opened.
Smith, who favors normal ties with Cuba and is a frequent visitor to the
island, says Castro in the early days of the revolution "wanted to free
Cuba of U.S. economic domination. He wanted to be a new Jose Marti and a new
Simon Bolivar rolled into one.
"In carrying out those objectives, he was inevitably going to clash
with the U.S. Neither government was really interested in an accommodation or of
finding a middle way.''
Smith said Philip Bonsal, the last U.S. ambassador to Cuba, often said early
animosity was inevitable. But Bonsal was hopeful that "at some point we can
get down to a reasoned dialogue.'' It still hasn't happened.
Dennis Hays, a former State Department Cuba hand who is now a leader of the
anti-Castro Cuban-American National Foundation, opposes an accommodation with
Castro.
Castro, he says, "continues to imprison, torture, exile and kill anyone
who speaks up for freedom or human dignity ... Our policy should stand.''
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Cuba To Mark Anniversary, Millennium
HAVANA, 29 (AP) - Cuba will celebrate the 42nd anniversary of its revolution
Sunday night as well as what communist officials say is the true start of the
third millennium.
"All of Cuba will celebrate the victorious entrance of the revolution
in a new millennium,'' the Communist Party daily Granma declared on its front
page Friday.
Most of the world celebrated the start of the millennium last year.
The newspaper said that a series of public celebrations would be held. The
events this year differ from most years in the past, when the start of the new
year and the revolution's anniversary were quietly celebrated in private homes,
generally with a late night dinner with family and friends.
There was no word on whether President Fidel Castro (news - web sites), now
74, would hold any official acts to coincide with the celebrations.
Castro led the revolutionary battle that ended on Jan. 1, 1959 when
then-President Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba and Castro's bearded guerrillas
marched into Havana.
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