US Hostility Toward the Island was Never Really About the Cold War: America’s Cuba [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

December 22, 2014

US Hostility Toward the Island was Never Really About the Cold War

America’s Cuba

by CHRIS LEWIS


President Barack Obama announced on December 17th that the United States would begin normalizing relations with the island, as both governments agreed to a prisoner swap: Cuba released imprisoned USAID contractor Alan Gross and a US intelligence operative, while the United States released three Cuban intelligence agents arrested in the 1990s while spying on militant Cuban exile groups. The countries will begin talks with the goal of opening embassies, Obama will ease travel and financial restrictions for American citizens, and Cuba will release a group of detainees that the US has designated political prisoners. The US trade embargo remains in place, and requires Congressional action to repeal.

“U.S. to Restore Full Relations With Cuba, Erasing a Last Trace of Cold War Hostility,” the New York Times proclaimed. The notion that the US embargo is a Cold War relic that has outlived its usefulness has long been a common assertion among American critics of Cuba policy. Democratic Senators, the editor of The Nation, progressive NGOs, and even Forbes columnists and the Cato Institute have framed the conflict in these terms.

US-Cuban relations have undoubtedly been shaped by the Cold War, but the narrative of Cold War conflict between the two countries is a historically dubious rendering, obfuscating a long record of US intervention in Cuba and the rest of Latin America.

The Cuban revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in January 1959 was led by a group of liberal-minded young nationalists, united by their opposition to military dictator Fulgencio Batista. They displayed few socialist tendencies and no open hostility toward the United States. Far from demonizing the revolutionaries, the United States immediately recognized the new government when it took power.

The amity didn’t last long. In May 1959, Fidel Castro unveiled the revolution’s land reform program, which called for breaking up holdings larger than 1,000 acres and distributing them to small farmers. It also specified that only Cubans would be allowed to own land, and promised compensation for confiscated lands. In an era of worldwide land reform this was hardly radical, but US officials perceived the move as a threat to the vast property owned by American companies in Cuba. According to historian Richard Gott, a June 1959 meeting of the National Security Council concluded that Castro couldn’t be allowed to stay in power. By October, the CIA had drafted a program that “authorized us to support elements in Cuba opposed to the Castro government, while making Castro’s downfall seem to be the result of his own mistakes.” The Eisenhower administration began plotting with Cuban exiles in Florida.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/22/americas-cuba/