Word: castros
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Wither on the Vine. Looking on, the U.S., exactly a year after the Bay of Pigs, is following a conspicuous game of "look, no hands." The Kennedy Administration, once burned on Cuba, puts little faith in the wishful theories that Castro might be helped in his fight with the Communists, or converted into a Caribbean Tito. Maverick expeditions to Castroland from Florida are headed off; the exile counter-plotters have dispersed-the CIA seeks them out occasionally to see what they are up to, but offers no real help. A few two-and three-man CIA expeditions land in Cuba...
...alarm Cubans, Castro loudly proclaimed that "this revolution is not Red, but olive green." Behind the scenes, Roca's men quietly took over indoctrination of the army, and set up the G-2 security force. The original 26th of July rebels, many of them anti-Batista and anti-Yanqiii but Cuban nationalists all the way, bitterly protested the intrusion. In October 1959, a bearded leader of Castro's rebel army, Huber Mates, resigned, saying that "the hour is coming when anyone who does not commune with Communism has to leave or be accused of being a traitor." Castro...
...O.R.I., there would now be a five-man secretariat headed by himself; Roca, listed No. 5, was the only old Communist named. Cuba would now have a Vice Premier to take over in case anything happened to the Maximum Leader himself: he would be Raul Castro, Fidel's brother. Then Castro went on TV to denounce the Reds and reassert his own leadership. He could not lambaste Roca (he was too strong), but he lashed out at Roca's lieutenant, Anibal Escalante, purged him from O.R.I, and drove him into exile in Czechoslovakia. Bias Roca himself dropped...
Spurt Up, Trend Down. In any struggle for power between Castro and the Communists, each side has strengths and weaknesses, and very likely there is currently an unsentimental and unresolved alliance. Castro's blunders and the hardships that have resulted have undoubtedly tarnished his hero's image. But he alone still has the charismatic name, the voice, the face, the popular appeal. For their part, the professional Reds have the organizational techniques, the indoctrination textbooks, and a more patient spirit (Roca wanted Castro to lay off the Catholic Church longer, and not to alienate prematurely the technicians needed...
...emphasis is on letting Castro wither on the vine, while other Latino nations are helped through the Alliance for Progress. The U.S.-imposed economic embargo and the U.S. diplomatic offensive to isolate Cuba from the rest of the hemisphere have had some effects. But it is Castro's own violent behavior more than U.S. propaganda that turns the hemisphere from him, and it is Cuban mismanagement more than U.S. starving-out that is wrecking the economy...