Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives on Cuba, the United States, and the World

8. The Eisenhower-Castro Years: The United States, Cuba, and the Challenges of Change

8 The Eisenhower-Castro Years The United States, Cuba, and the Challenges of Change Francisca López Civeira Translation assistance by Lyse Hébert The aftermath of World War II brought changes in international relations that would continue until the end of the twentieth century. The 1940s and 1950s saw the United States emerge as a power focused on building and consolidating its hegemony on a global scale, implementing new models and mechanisms for formulating its foreign policy. New forces also influenced decision making, including the creation of international organizations to regulate political, trade, and financial relations, the emergence of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe, a measure of preoccupation with tensions arising from the East-West conflict, and the cold war discourse that permeated U.S. domestic policies and its relations with the rest of the world. It was at this time that the United States came to see the entire Western Hemisphere as a higher priority in foreign policy planning—and sought to devise institutions and organizations that would allow the region to function as a bloc. Pan-Americanism, a long-standing design feature of hemispheric policy, moved towards solid institutionalization. The end of the war and the new U.S. position as a world power allowed for the creation of organizations to regulate the continental bloc, the most salient examples of which were the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (IATRA) in 1947 and the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1948. These were used as instruments to support what policy discourse described as the “defense of the free world” against “totalitarian regimes.” 168 · Francisca López Civeira In these new international organizations Latin America generally acted as a bloc aligned with U.S. policy and echoing its cold war rhetoric. Within this bloc, as well, Cuba maintained especially close relations with powerful U.S. political and economic forces, preserving ties that had been established in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It was against this backdrop that the revolutionary struggle in Cuba evolved—and the success of the revolutionary forces produced a significant change in both bilateral Cuban-U.S. relations and U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere as a whole. This chapter examines how the United States perceived the Cuban process and what its definitions were with respect to the Cuban Revolution during the period immediately preceding its triumph and in the first years of the revolutionary government. This examination is based on the view that both a perception of Cuba as a client state and an adherence to cold war rhetoric were essential components in the calculations of U.S. decision makers. This perspective was also shared by the traditional political elite in Cuba—an elite that had internalized dependence as a basic component of its own practices and assumed that the United States would, as it had throughout the twentieth century, resolve this new struggle for power on the island. * * * The revolutionary situation was maturing rapidly in Cuba while the Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower was busy with other priorities around the world—in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. With the exception of special instances, such as the case of Guatemala in 1954, Latin America was not at the forefront of Washington’s foreign relations priorities . Even the Cuban coup of 1952, headed by Fulgencio Batista, apparently transpired without causing great complications for the United States—and neither the events of July 26, 1953, nor the beginning of the insurgent struggle in the Sierra Maestra in December 1956 were perceived as dangerous. It was not until the end of 1957 that U.S. attentiveness to Cuba intensified. For some in Cuba, the mid-1957 replacement of U.S. Ambassador Arthur Gardner by Earl E. T. Smith was an omen of a new direction in American policy—although one might have wondered why increasing concerns would have led to the appointment of a businessman rather than a professional diplomat. Smith, to be sure, was anxious to change the public image left by Gardner.1 A hint of new concerns can be found in a September 16 telegram from Daniel M. Braddock, counselor at the embassy in Havana to the State Department, observing that the Cuban government was not The Eisenhower-Castro Years · 169 capable of putting an end to the rebellion in the Sierra Maestra.2 Further evidence can be found in a memorandum dated December 19, written by...