The challenge of Fidelismo.pdf

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extracted text: THE CHALLENGE OF FIDELISMO Hernando Abaya Tt is now about six months A since the CIA-trained Cu ban “freedom fighters” land ed on the Bay of Pigs. In the agonizing post-mortem on what is now known as the Cuban fiasco, all the bones have been dug up with pain staking thoroughness by the American and the rest of the world press. Yet the confu sion and ignorance over Cu ba has continued to hound us, and the implications of jidelismo on the vast under developed areas of Asia, Af rica and Latin America have remained vague and incom prehensible to most of us. It is little surprising that a Ma nila newspaper of vast pre tensions can still refer to the 26th of July Movement as “the biggest hoax and crud est betrayal yet perpetrated on the Cuban people” without so much as drawing a line of perceptive comment from any of its readers. Yet this “hoax” of the Cu ban social revolution is such a reality that President Ken nedy has been compelled to launch in mid-August his $20 billion “Alliance for Pro gress” program of aid to La tin America, precisely to wean away the perenially poor and largely illiterate Latin American campesinos from the enticing winds of fidelismo blowing from the Carribean. For Mr. Kennedy sees radical social reform as the best hope of economic progress and political stabili ty, not only in Latin Amer OCTOBEB 1961 33 ica, but in the other under developed areas of Asia and Africa, where the United States must face the relent less Soviet challenge to ride the crest of a surging social revolution. Speh political solutions, however, are anathema to the privileged landed gentry and. their foreign backers who have exploited the underdev eloped areas of the world. And, as in the case of Latin America, in the apt words of a New Statesman editorial, “a skin of capitalism has been grafted onto a feudal framework, and this ugly and inefficient hybrid — kept alive indeed only by constant injections of dollars and arms — has cannibalised democ racy in order to live. The peasants have got neither bread nor votes.” Land reform must come if there is to be any social pro gress. There is the immediate challenge that faces the Ken nedy Administration. In ef fect, how to counter the lure of fidelismo. “It is an image with many faces,” writes The Economist in a special issue on the Latin American Fu ture. “At its simplest, it means to millions of Latin Americans that in a remoter but still a sister, country, a man as glamorous as any film star has given land to the poor, rooked the rich, and put gringos in their place. It is a concept that pleases them. The young President and his ebullient corps of Harvard dons now realize only too well that so many Latin Americans are irresisti bly drawn towards the lights of fidelismo. And they must offer the Latin Americans a third option which is, in the words of Walter Lippmann, “economic development and social improvement without the totalitarian discipline of Communism”. It is a picture of fidelismo in action that the eminent sociologist, C. Wright Mills, etches in his book Listen, Yankee in an earnest pl§a to his fellow Americans to wake up and listen to the “angry voice” of Castro’s Cuba so that they may not commit “disastrous mistakes of ig norance.” This plea, it would seem, was unheeded. About a year later came the Cuban blunder. There were similar pleas from no less eminent sources. Besides Lippmann: Herbert Matthews, Ray Brennen, Jules Dubois, Fred J. Cook, and the liberal weeklies, among others. And there were also the consistently ob jective and penetrating stu dies in British journals and 34 PANORAMA newspapers like The Econo mist, The Manchester Guard ian, The Observer, The New Statesman, and the staid Lon don Times. By and large, however, the American press simply reneged on its jobs. “In my 30 years on the New York Times,” Matthews told the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 21, 1960, “I have never seen a big story so misunderstood, so badly handled, and so mis interpreted as the Cuban re volution.” Mills tries to capture the collective voice of Cuban re volutionaries and to express something of their reasons for the revolution and how they feel. about it. He pens his chapters in the form of letters from the Cubans to the Yanqui and spells out the Cuban mood as gleaned from his discussions and in terviews with Cubans, from Castro and the intellectuals to the rebel soldier and the lowly peasant, during his month’s stay in Cuba in Au gust, 1960. A sociologist, he applies the same searching analysis and uncanny insight that he uses in his now clas sic The Power Elite to the story of the Cuban social re volution. He delves into the long his tory of the colonial exploita tion of Cuba, its place in the American dream as a slaver’s haven, the repeated inter vention by American Marines on behalf- of the “‘Yankee bankers,” the old order that went out with the “butcher” Batista — “an order of po lice terror and grief and po verty and disease and illite racy and the corrupted poli tics of the thief and the ca pitalism of the robber.” He tells of the revolution, its be ginnings, its leaders, its trials and problems, its ends, its meaning. And he recounts its gains in terms of social reform and political stability — higher literacy, more em ployment, rising production, new schools, better homes, lower rents, better food, low er prices, and other benefits of an agrarian revolution. The Cubans admit, says Mills, they are influenced by the Soviet Union, just like other peoples in under-developed areas, but they deny they are “under Communist orders.” Their economic deals with the Sino-Soviet block are bu siness deals. “We are going to take the help we need from whoever will give it to us.” It is pure McCarthyism, as serts Mills, to call Castro and his revolutionaries Khrush chev’s stooges. He stresses the fact that the Cubans’ “on ly real fear,” their “only real worry,” is the “menace” of October 1961 35 the United States to all their efforts. (The Cuban invasion merely confirms this fear.) He sums up what Cubans want from the United States: “Just let us alone.” Or, sim ply: “Nothing.” He under scores the problem of Latin America vis-a-vis the United States: So long as U.S. cor porations own Latin Amer ica’s riches they will control its politics. The beneficiaries of U.S. aid have all been the feudal oligarchies. “Inside Latin America, the U.S. Gov ernment has supported reac tionary circles and do-noth ing ruling strata,” writes Mills. “Its role has generally been and continues to be that of stabilizing their dominion and so the continued sloth. Its aid has been largely to give them arms and other military support, in the name of ‘Hemispheric Defense,’ which has meant defense against their own people.” Harper's Magazine in a re view of Listen, Yankee says the message Mills put in the mouth of the Cuban is, in effect, “a piece of propagan da — uncritical, emotional, oblivious of the faults of the Castro regime.” This is per haps true. Yet it is not so easy to dismiss his document ed testimony. For his conclu sions are reflected in the main by other competent writers and observers, Amer ican and British, in many ar ticles and studies written be fore and since the Cuban fiasco. Moreover, there is lit tle about Castro’s Cuba that has reached us through the American press and other news media that has not turned out to be- propaganda. This explains the failure of intelligence all around on the Cuban fiasco — of the press, of the ICA and other intelligence services, of the diplomatic corps. All these men, to quote The Nation, “seemed to have been fet tered by ideological blinkers of the kind that obscure so cial, economic and political realities.” The Cuban fiasco was the aftermath of the Big Decep tion. Even Mr. Kennedy and his intellectual coterie were taken in. Castro had ranted as early as last December that the United States was preparing an invasion, and he kept at it right up to the eve of the landings, the while beefing up his defenses. The U.S. press ridiculed this claim as a figment of the La tin imagination. Yet, from scattered sources had come reports of feverish prepara tions in Guatemala and Flo rida under the CIA. (These preparations clearly had “the knowledge and consent of 36 Panorama the American government.”) A few other sources may be mentioned. The Hispanic Am erican Report described in detail such preparations by Cuban exiles under the CIA in its issue of October, 1960. On information supplied by its editor, The Nation report ed on November 19, 1960 the existence in Guatemala of a training base for anti-Castro guerrillas. British journals with competent observers ab road similarly sounded the alert. In February, two months before the invasion, The Observer reported: “It is now officially and widely believed by the Cubans that the United States intends to destroy their revolution. They believe that the Central In telligence Agency (CIA) in Washington is financing a counter-revolution based on Miami to repeat their Gautemala success of 1954.” The Economist and The New Statesman carried similar re ports on the eve of the inva sion. For the first time, writes The Economist, in a percep tive comment two days be fore the invasion, there seem to be grounds for Castro’s re peated assertions that Cuba is about to be invaded by counter-revolutionary forces supported by the United States. It notes the publica tion of the State Depart ment’s White Paper of April 3, 1961 denouncing Cuba “bell, book and candle,” fol lowed by the Cuban exiles’ call to arms in New York, and then Mr. Kennedy’s warning a week before the invasion that Castro “would grow more dangerous unless action were taken against him.” So lemnly, The Economist says: “If Mr. Kennedy has decided to encourage an attack by the exiles, the United States is entering an extremely dan gerous period in its relations with Latin America.” And it adds: “If the invasion (still) fails, it will be a major disaster for the reputation of the United States.” And so it came to pass. The debacle was swift. Without an air umbrella, the invaders did not have a chance. The simultaneous “popular rising” the CIA was sure the land ings would touch off simply did not materialize. The Am erican failure, and ignominy, was no more sharply drawn than by the unhappy figure of the respected Adlai Ste venson denying categorically before the United Nations, in reply to the Cuban delegate’s charges of U.S. intervention, that the United States had had any hand — any hand at all — in the attempt to overthrow Castro! Such October 1961 37 charges, he said, were a tis sue of lies delivered “in the jargon of Communism.” Ap parently, even he had not been told the truth! The disenchantment among thinking Americans that fol lowed in the wake of this de bacle is perhaps best express ed in what the American stu dents at Oxford, including 14 Rhodes scholars, wrote in a letter to the White House: “We had hoped that under the new Adminis tration the United States foreign policy would reach a new level of ho nesty and good will. We did not expect that our Ambassador to the Unit ed Nations would have to resort to deception and evasion; and that our ac tions would have to be justified by balancing them against Soviet sup pression in Budapest; and that consequently world opinion would turn against them.” A group of Harvard profes sors bought a half-page ad in the New York Times to pour out their anger and dis appointment over the Amer ican involvement in the Cu ban affair. Manila’s newspapers for the most part felt let down, after the first day’s flurry of screaming headlines of new landings, new beach heads, thousands of freed prisoners joining invaders, a reign of terror in Havana, and all the wildest claims of the anti-Castro forces. Taking the cake was a scary one: REBS MISS FIDEL, BAG RAUL. Correspondents burn ed the wires of the Associat ed Press and the United Press International, and the Agence France Presse. Fact and propaganda were never so happily, so recklessly blended. An American writer who was in Havana at the time of the invasion, said an AP story of street fighting in Havana and a UPI story that the Hotel Havana Libre had been “totally destroyed” af ter an air attack on Havana were only typical of 25 “com pletely false dispatches” by the two major U. S. news agencies he had seen. “I rode and walked through the streets of Havana from the evening of April 14 when I arrived, until the afternoon of April 26 I left,” he said. “There was no fighting any where, any time. I lived in the Havana Libre that entire period — quite a trick, isn’t it, to eat and sleep in a hotel that has been ‘totally des troyed.’ ” But when the big story of the CIA’s complicity in the 38 Panorama invasion was carried on the AP wire, only one Manila newspaper printed it. The rest of the morning dailies, which had played up every anti-Castro claim no matter how fantastic, were silent. They gingerly picked up the story only after Washington had made grudging admis sions. Yet, this was the one big story about Cuba: who plotted the invasion and why it failed. Only a week later, when the whole story of the CIA’s ignominious role had been exposed, did one paper feel it necessary to ex press “the people’s sympathy” to the United States for its patience and forebearance in the face of Castro’s provoca tions. “Such sympathy, how ever, is tinged with regret (sic!) that the U.S. has fum bled in its chosen task,” it said. The American intervention in Cuba raised questions and issues that found the United States and its Western allies, notably Britain, in sharp dis agreement. One big issue was the Monroe Doctrine. Was the United States justified in intervening in Cuba in the interest of hemispheric secu rity? Even if Castro were a Communist? / The London Times: raps Mr. KennedijI d)rrrtl;erknubkles.,fOy &riitchiBg Orths'J McwMFoe Thwt trine to mean that in the last resort the United States “uni laterally reserves the right to use force” to reverse a re gime in a neighboring coun try where the regime might be considered to rely on or encourage “outside Commu nist penetration.” Who could “unerringly draw the line between indigenous Commu nism and outside influences”' asks the journal. Even.mqre open to question, it says, wag Mr. Kennedy’s point- that; were the United States to intervene in a neighboring country, it would have,.after, the suppression of the 'Hun garian revolt, no lessons to receive from Moscow. “If the leader among the free na tions of the West is going to justify its conduct by the ex ample of its opponents, then there will be nothing left but naked self- interest as the mainspring for action.” Even more pointedly writes The Manchester Guardian, “No one outside the United States sees anything sacro sanct in the Monroe Doctrine. Even if Dr. Castro has be come a Communist stooge, that is no justification for trying to remove him by force. Rhetoric about an ideo logy ‘alien to the Western hemisphere’ will cut no ice iw Africa or’. Asia, or even ini ,’iM li r ,‘(3OTaBKRcJ1961 “To the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America,” comments The Observer, “the United States is not a revo lutionary power, but — al though Americans can never believe this — the greatest and most powerful fulfill ment of Western imperialism. To them. Castro is not a communist dictator, but the heroic champion of an op pressed people or (at worst) a rather muddled man who has been forced to rely on Russian aid because of Am erican hostility. In their eyes Cuba may be a Russian ally but is certainly not a Russian satellite, or a mili tary danger to the United States.” (At the height of the de bate on Cuba in the U.S. Congress, Congressman Frank Kowalski (D-Conn) said: “Castro may be an unpleas ant irritant, a thorn in our side, but I certainly hope no one believes Cuba is a serious challenge to the United States.” This was what Lipp mann referred to when he said: “They need to cool off. They might ponder the wisest remark which was uttered during the debates about Cuba—that Castro is a thorn in our flesh, but he is not a dagger in our hearts.” But adds The Observer, even if Mr. Kennedy’s pic ture of the situation were true and were seen to be true, “it would still be doubt ful if his tactics were right.” These “dangerous tactics” ig nore the long-term diploma tic interests of the West, which are to build up the international order. “The aim should not be to play Mr. Khurshchev’s game,” it stres ses, “but to press him to ac cept new rules.” American power “cannot be used to im pose an American anti-Communist ideology on other na tions.” A week later, The Observ er castigated the Americans even more sharply. Com menting on Mr. Kennedy’s speeches and actions since the fiasco, and the reactions of the American press, The Observer says the Cuban ad venture appears to be “not an isolated blunder,” but the result of an “anti-Communist blindness,” which seems al most universal in the United States. “To a far greater ex tent than they would like to admit our American friends are the prisoners of an ideo logy almost as narrow as that of the Communists and just as fervently believed.” The American ideology “equates capialism not only with free dom but very nearly with virtue.” Saying that Mr. Ken nedy seems to believe that 40 Panorama destiny has chosen him to lead the forces of freedom in a desperate attempt to stop the rot by using the same, (i.e., Communist) methods, The Observer soberly con cludes: “It would be a gro tesque and disabling conse quence of an emotional anti Communism if the West, which ought to be the pio neer of tolerance, came to ap pear almost as intolerant and blinkered as those it opposes.” John Douglas Pringle, the brilliant deputy editor of The Observer, analyzed this “anti-Communist blindness” can didly in a series of on-thespot studies of the basis of Mr. Kennedy’s foreign policy. “Except in a lunatic fringe,” he writes, “ this anti-Communism cannot be called hys teria; it is a dogma deeply held and sincerely believed.” The great majority of the Americans could not see that there was anything wrong with the invasion. The fail ure was humiliating, but the fact that Mr. Kennedy had tried at all “proved that he was sound of heart.” Mr. Kennedy “exploited” this feeling with “consum mate skill to turn the crisis from a Suez into a Dunkirk.” The response was overwhelm ing. A Gallup poll showed that Mr. Kennedy, elected last autumn by the barest majority, now had the sup port of 84 per cent of the na tion. The President (remarks Pringle) must have reflected ironically that “nothing suc ceeds like failure.” Therein lies the danger. The United States is now in “a dangerous mood of frus tration which would not easi ly accept another defeat.” Says The Economist: “Frus trated by their failure to get the first man into space, and Dr. Castro out of Cuba, they (some Americans) are temp ted to conclude that the time for negotiation is over and the moment for blunter measures is at hand.” It notes that Time magazine has expressed this mood. Say ing that Mr. Kennedy had come into office with some naive notions about the pos sibilities of easing cold war tensions by negotiations, Time magazine declared that the events in Cuba had brought his three- month pursuit of this “will o’the wisp” to an end. More bluntly, the colum nist Stewart Alsop wrote that one lesson Cuba taught the Americans is summed up in the old adage: “If you strike a king you must strike to kill.” The implica tion is plain. “Some day, one way or another,” says Alsop, “the American commitment October 1961 41 to bring Castro down will have to be honored. The commitment can only be ho nored if the American gov ernment is willing, if neces sary, to strike to kill, even if that risks the shedding of American blood” (Under scoring supplied) Those who hold this view, The Economist points out, misunderstand both the na ture of the cold war and the causes of its recent frosting over. The only thing the Cu ban fiasco proved, says the financial journal, is that “there will be a sharp heigh tening of tension in the world (and a sharp drop in respect for the United States) if the Americans cofnbine an attempt to or ganize the overthrow of a foreign government with an incapacity to do the job pro perly.” And it reminds the Americans that they “can never be in a position of exact equality” in the com petition with Communism. In this situation, there is the danger, as John Pringle points out in his study of cold war issues, mentioned in an earlier paragraph, that, if Mr. Khrushchev proves un willing to discuss cold war solutions, Mr. Kennedy “may decide too quickly that the tough school is right” and that the only practical poli cy to meet Communism is to “fight fire with fire”—which means the use of subversion, guerilla warfare and even, if necessary, direct intervention. “The Administration does not seem to have considered,” re marks Pringle, “whether it can reconcile such a policy, which must in some cases mean breaking international law (as it did in the. Cuban invasion), with the support of the United Nations against Communist transgression, which is at present one of the great strengths of the West.” This was why the revela tion of the CIA’s role as the chief instigator of the Cuban invasion wsa so shocking to America’s allies. The histo rian Arnold Toynbee termed the CIA actions in the inva sion attempt “another ex ample of governmental gang sterism.” If intelligence agen cies are made responsible for policy as well, as the CIA was in the Cuban interven tion, “the information they get will be coloured to fit their policies.” The Observer therefore suggests: “Govern ments should reflect that if their under-cover activities are not compatible with a democratic open society, it is not the open society which is at fault but their activities. The first duty of a free press 4*2 RAKORAl^A everywhere is to stop its gov ernment doing silly and sha dy things by reporting all the news that’s fit to print.” Clearly a dig at the Amer ican press for its sins of omis sion in the Cuban fiasco. More succinctly, Walter Lippmann comments: “In a free society like America’s, a policy is bound to fail which deliberately violates her pledges and her principles, her treaties and her laws. It is not possible for a free and open society to organize suc cessfully a spectacular cons piracy ... In the great strug gle with Communism, Am erica must find her strength by developing and applying her own principles, not in abandoning them, x x x The only real alternative to Com munism is a liberal and pro gressive society.” On a similar vein, The Na tion writes: “If we believe in democracy and support its adherents everywhere, if we abhor dictatorship and op pose it everywhere, we may not triumph, but no one will despise us. All that is certain is that our present course of expediency will convict us of hypocrisy and, as Cuba shows, will not even prevail militarily.” The change must come. In the final analysis, the Am erican attitude towards Cuba remains a decisive factor. In Latin America, the battle is now joined. For Mr. Kenne dy must realize that in Latin America, as it is in Asia and Africa, the race is, as John Pringle has noted in The Observer, between a social democratic revolution, help ed by the United States, and a Communist revolution, helped by Russia. But there is again the question: How will the United States con gress, whose support he must have, react to the change he envisages in his “Alliance for Progress” for Latin America? Will it in terpret land reform as “sub sidising socialism”? A socialdemocratic policy is a policy of the Left, “but the United States is a country of the Right. Americans are conser vative because they are wealthy and see no reason for change.” Can such a country, asks Pringle, “real ly conduct a policy of social revolution abroad with any hope of success.”? The Economist poses the problem more concretely: To what extent is America wil ling to let capitalism be blended with socialism in La tin America? Decisions must be made in three fields: land reform, capital formation, and trade expansion. How far will the United States October 1961 44support land reform? The raising of capital for rapid economic growth is a “harsh business” for backward coun tries. If the processes of ca pitalism strike them as slug gish, “they will experiment with Marxism.” How will Mr. Kennedy react? Trade should flow where the price and the service are best rath er than along channels mark ed out by ideologies. This means more trade with the Communist countries. How far will the United States agree to let the Latin Am ericans expand their trade with the Communist world? There is as yet no evidence that the Kennedy Adminis tration has thought its way through these three questions. Until it does, the Latin Am ericans are in a difficult po sition. “They are tempted,” says The Economist, “to imi tate many of the measures of the Cuban revolution.” But here again they are up against the stubborn Amer ican attitude towards fidelis mo. What has been attacked in Cuba (according to The Economist) is not Russian in fluence but an “indigenous revolutionary movement.” But Americans do not believe that fidelismo, with its vir tues and its vices, is a native Cuban product. They there fore insist on applying the Monroe Doctrine to Commu nism in Latin America. And indications are that they will not back down on this issue. For one thing, it has become clear in the wake of the Cuban fiasco that Mr. Kennedy is even more vigor ously hostile to Castro than Eisenhower was. The Amer icans are still interventionist at heart because they cannot see that intervention is “im perialism.” In so doing, they justify to some extent Rus sian policy in Eastern Eu rope. Pringle makes this point in his discussion of U. S. foreign policy. “If Mr. Kennedy can say that Com munism is ‘not negotiable’ in Cuba,” he says, “why should not Mr. Khruschev continue to say that democracy is ‘not negotiable’ in Hungary or Po land or East Germany?” Clearly Mr. Kennedy labors under a big handicap. “With all its fearful faults Mr. Khruschev's Communism is a reality which all can recog nise. President Kennedy’s social democracy is still but words.” How will this race end? The sombre words of The Ob server commend themselves to our conscience: “One will begin to believe in the possi bility of ending the cold war by negotiation only when the two leaders tell their peoples 44 Panorama WORLD'S LARGEST SUN TELESCOPE Construction work is now under way on a new astronomical observatory which, when com pleted early in 1963, will house the largest solar telescope in the world. The observatory is on a mountain in Arizona, a state in the southwestern part of the United States. It will be known as the Kitt Peak National Observatory. The telescope will be housed in a ten-story high tower near a sheer mountain cliff. Its top most part will be a two-ton flat mirror, 80 inches (203 centimeters) in diameter, known as a he liostat. Moving automatically, the heliostat will fol low the sun as it travels across the sky. The sun light that strikes it will be reflected to a 60-inch (152-centimeter) parabolic mirror located 480 feet (144 meters) away, at the bottom of a shaft drill ed into the mountain. From this mirror, the sun light again will be reflected to a 48-inch (122centimeter) mirror. This mirror, in turn, will re flect the sunlight to an underground observing room. There a 34-inch (86-centimeter) image of the sun, several times larger and more brilliantly il luminated than images obtained with any other existing telescope, will' appear on a sheet of white-painted metal mounted on a table top. Scientists will be able to study the image through dark glasses, and will be able to photograph it, and direct its light to spectroscopes. ♦ ♦ ♦ that the cold war is not go-, ing to be won by anybody, that it is much too danger ous to go on fighting it at all and that the only sane object for human beings in the twentieth century is to cooperate in building up an international order under which Cuba can choose Com munism or Hungary democ racy, or India some system of her own, without upsetting the balance of power and endangering the lives of eve ryone else in the world.” October 1961 45
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