Word: cuba
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Administration, Secretary of State Dean Rusk was last week's chief spokesman. At an "informal'' Washington meeting, he earnestly urged 19 Latin American foreign ministers and representatives to recommend that their countries cut off all remaining trade with Cuba, take self-defense measures to combat Communist aggression or subversion from Cuba, restrict travel of their own citizens to Cuba for possible Communist indoctrination, and encourage "Cuban national liberation'' groups in their nations...
...White House luncheon, President Kennedy added to the argument. Said he to the Latin American ministers: "The American republics must act now to contain the expansion of Communism from Cuba, and also take those steps which will lead to the liberation of Cuba. The Communist Party seeks to establish a springboard for an attack on the entire hemisphere by subversion, by infiltration, by all the other rather obvious apparatus that the Communist system uses so effectively. Communism can be the death of this hemisphere...
After the luncheon, the ministers promptly plunged into their own debate-not over what they really should or could do about Cuba, but mainly over whether or not they should try to issue a communique. Although one was finally produced, it was hardly calculated to cause even one grey hair in Castro's beard. It recognized the obvious-that "the Sino-Soviet intervention in Cuba is an attempt to convert the island into an armed base for Communist penetration of the Americas and subversion of the democratic institutions of the hemisphere...
...Piece of Paper. What to do about it? The most the ministers could agree on was to intensify surveillance of arms shipments to Cuba "to prevent the secret accumulation in the island of arms that can be used for offensive purposes against the hemisphere." There were vague phrases about combating subversion. And there was outright rejection of direct action: "A military intervention of Communist powers in Cuba cannot be justified as a situation analogous to the defensive measures adopted in other parts of the free world in order to face Soviet imperialism." One U.S. aide summed it all up: "They...
Rusk turned briefly, and perhaps more profitably, from a debate to a monologue. He told the ministers that the U.S. will close its ports to any ships-including those of its NATO allies-which carry cargoes of any type to Cuba, then seek return payloads from the U.S. Neither will the U.S. open its harbors to any government cargo, such as surplus food, to be carried on any ship owned by a firm engaged in Soviet-Cuba traffic. This, too, would make it difficult for ships to pick up transatlantic loads in both directions-and one-way loads...