Re: US Not Responsible for Castro

[SusanG1400@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/9/2003 9:28:09 AM Eastern Standard Time, jsq@quarterman.org writes:

> >I believe the US government supported Batista and didn't understand that
> >Castro was the voice of Cuba's future.


Ho Chi Min applied to Truman rather FDR for assistance but Truman declined because of pressure from French leader Charles de Gaulle.  France was more vital to us in the inchoate Cold War, NATO, the Marshall Plan, etc. than was Viet Nam.  Of course, the State Dept. got blamed for Truman decision.

There is no historical basis for the oft repeated charge that the US was responsible for creating Castro.  This has been repeated not only by Baby Doctor Spock but leftist American scholars as well.  The Latins blamed the US rather than themselves for everything that went bad in Latin America and many US scholars went along with the same idea, and still do.  

The charge was made that when Castro visited Washington right after he came to power that Eisenhower snubbed him by not receiving him and that this made Castro turned to the USSR and \or Communism, anyway, to be anti-US. In fact, Castro had not been invited at that point to Washington by the U.S. government, but by the National Press Association.  Moreover, Castro was not head of state then as he had a figurehead President.  According to international custom and usage Castro should have been received at a slightly lower level and he was. Vice President Nixon  received Castro.

The State Dept. scrambled to put together an extensive new aid package for the incoming new Castro regime while Castro was in Washington, but Castro refused to ask for aid or to have it.  The Eisenhower administration immediately withdrew the politically appointed Ambassador we had to Batista and named instead a career ambassador, Bonsel, fluent in Spanish, who had worked with the leftist revolution in Boliva.  The purpose was to go out of our way to get along with the new Castro regime.  Why would we not?  But our new Ambasador had to wait six weeks at a time even to get an appointment with Castro, unheard of anywhere and especially in Latin America.  It is all laid out in Ambassador Philip Bonsel's memoirs, available in any large library.