American complicity in the Cuban “Revolution” 1958-1960, our role in toppling the Batista government, and our installation of Castro and his gang of Communist murderers, is a story not widely reported. My primary source is “American Policy Failures in Cuba” by Mario Lazo. Incredibly, our government, particularly the Eisenhower State Department along with the New York Times and other major media outlets, assisted Castro and ousted Batista. This meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state resulted in the murder, by the communists, of tens of thousands of innocent people and the enslavement of an entire population which, to this day, chafes under the steel tipped jackboot of a left wing Communist dictatorship.
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar, while no saint, was a far cry from the monstrous apparition portrayed in the “liberal” American media. The truth is that Batista, while tolerating a level of corruption, abolished the death penalty, granted amnesty to his political opponents including Castro, and presided over the most prosperous economy in Latin America in the 1950’s. Cuba had developed these enormous centros, or clubs with memberships ranging from ten to ninety thousand people. For around three dollars a month, members enjoyed health, educational, and recreational benefits. In fact, according to the U.S.Dept. Of Commerce, Cuba had developed excellent healthcare and high educational standards including literacy. Castro would take credit for these advancements after the fact and his American robots would repeat his “statistics”, Hitler style, and continue to do so. What good is literacy, for that matter, if the State decides what you’re allowed to read and not read?
January 1957 found Castro and his 18-man group hiding out in the Sierra Maestre Mountains of Cuba’s eastern Oriente province. At a time when Castro had no support and was near starvation, he was able to make contact with New York Times Latin American specialist Herbert L. Matthews. Matthews had a proven track record of support for Communist causes and was the type of leftist who thought it a virtue to bend the truth to help the cause. He had been reprimanded by the Times for this in his reportage of the Spanish Civil War of 1938-1939. Matthews’s mendacious series, appearing on the Times front page, falsely described Castro’s force as powerful and well armed and also not Communist. Matthews was more than just a Castro lapdog, he actively conspired with State Dept. officials to depose Batista and helped Castro at every opportunity during his tenure in Havana 1957-1958. American media, following Matthews lead, jumped on the pro Castro bandwagon, including Edward R. Murrow. This alone, legitimized and, in a sense, created Castro.
William A. Wieland, director of the office of Middle American Affairs and Roy R. Rubottom, Asst. Sec. Of State for Inter-American Affairs, according to Senate testimony conspired to install Castro. Both men had been present at the “Bogatozo”1948, in which the Conference of American States was interrupted by Communist guerillas including the Castro brothers and Che Guevara. The ensuing riots resulted in over a thousand murders and the burning of most of Bogata Columbia.
A letter from Castro to other leftist groups in Cuba, in which he explicitly states his intention to proclaim himself as the “source of law”, and his intention to abolish the legislature and judiciary, and to ban political parties other than his own, left no doubt as to whether or not Castro was a Communist. This letter was in the possession of Wieland and Rubottom. The “Bogatozo”, the Castro letter, and a steady stream of information concerning Castro’s political orientation leave no doubt that Wieland, Rubottom, and Matthews knew Castro was a Communist, and yet they actively supported him every step of the way. Their motivation is an unanswered question.
Wieland and Rubottom were greatly assisted in their pro Castro activities by Dr. Milton Eisenhower, President Eisenhower’s brother and chief advisor. Dr. Eisenhower could be described as entirely sympathetic to the pro Castro cause. Needless to say, there was little opposition to the plan concerning Castro.
January of 1958, Wieland, after visiting Havana in his new capacity of Acting Special Ambassador to Latin America, issued a false report concerning Cuba’s “crumbling” economy with the recommended solution being the removal of Batista. This was one of the best periods economically in Cuba’s history.
March 14, 1958, the State Dept., on Wieland’s recommendation, placed an arms embargo on Cuba. This sent a clear signal to Castro that the US Government was abandoning Batista and undermined Batista’s generally strong support from the Cuban people. Meanwhile, arms, finances, and adoring press reports continued to flow to Castro from American sources and with the tacit approval of the Justice Dept. and the INS. The State Dept. also made assurances that no other Latin American government would help Batista. This was obviously direct intervention, on behalf of Castro, by our Government.
During the period immediately preceding Batista’s departure from the country, Wieland and Rubottom maintained almost daily contact with Castro’s representative, Ernesto Betancourt, and with Herbert Matthews of the Times. Many plans, including one from the Vatican, were presented to solve the Cuban crisis. These suggestions would involve supervised elections and would remove both Batista and Castro from the scene. Wieland and company undermined all of these plans, including one from Eisenhower’s personal envoy, William D. Pawley.
General elections were held on November 3, 1958. Castro, from his mountainous retreat, called for the assassination of all candidates and threatened to machine gun anyone showing up at the polling places. The election was generally viewed as rigged in favor of the government’s candidate, Dr. Andres Rivero Aguero.
On December 14, 1958 Wieland, speaking for the State Dept. instructed the American Ambassador to Cuba, Earl E.T.Smith, to inform Batista that he no longer had the support of the US government and that he should leave Cuba at once. This interview brought about the fall of the Batista government. Castro could not have accomplished this without the help of the State Dept. William D. Pawley, after Batista’s departure, stated the following:
“I believe that the deliberate overthrow of Batista by Wieland and Matthews, assisted by Rubottom, is almost as great a tragedy as the surrendering of China to the Communists by a similar group of Dept. of State officials fifteen or sixteen years ago and we will not see the end in cost of American lives and American recourses for these tragic errors”.