Lechuga served as Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations during the U.S. government-instigated "missile crisis" 40 years ago (see box below).

Also speaking on February 3 were Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder, and Iraida Aguirrechu, current affairs editor of Editora Política, who chaired the event. Coverage of the meeting, which drew nearly 100 people, appeared in the March 10 Militant.

The event, which was part of the annual Havana International Book Fair, also launched the new title Marianas in Combat: Teté Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Platoon in Cuba’s Revolutionary War, published by Pathfinder in English and Spanish. The translation and subheadings are by the Militant.
 

This youthful experience, combined with his extensive academic and historical investigations, gives this work great value, because it enables him to analyze the crisis from the Cuban point of view. Such an analysis is of particular interest for knowing what actually happened, without distortions or doctoring.

The book contains a wealth of new information extracted from the Cuban archives, as well as from interviews with direct participants in those events. He also cites declassified U.S. documents that clarify many aspects of the conflict.

For a long time--and still today--attempts have been made to distort the true cause of that dramatic turning point, which, simply put, was the U.S. policy of aggression against Cuba going back to the first days of the revolution. That policy developed along two well-defined paths. One, the clandestine approach, was carried out through the Central Intelligence Agency. The other path involved the Organization of American States as an instrument to politically isolate Cuba and thus facilitate a military attack, which had already been prepared when the crisis arose.  
 
Washington seeks to isolate Cuba
On a hemispheric level, Washington resorted to every means to make the Latin American governments bend to their wishes with the aim of punishing Cuba. Eight months after the revolutionary triumph, a meeting was held of foreign ministers. Such meetings had been held four times in 20 years. But after January 1, 1959, in the course of just 24 months, there were four of them, all with the aim of destroying the revolution. At the last one [in January 1962], the Americans obtained the votes necessary to expel Cuba from the OAS.

This was an illegal violation of the regional organization’s charter, which did not provide for expelling any member. It also violated the United Nations Charter, which supersedes the OAS charter and does not discriminate against any country on the basis of its socioeconomic system. In fact, the OAS also played an important role in the October Crisis, inasmuch as its Council aided Washington by hurriedly adopting a resolution endorsing a naval blockade of the island. This decision was made at the request of the U.S. State Department, and its legality was also highly questionable.

At the time Cuba was expelled from the OAS, the country was already reinforcing its military capacity, as the book details. It was impossible to keep Washington’s intentions hidden.

The subversive activities, which had never stopped, were stepped up and organized better, under the watchful eye of the highest authorities in Washington. The plans for sabotage and the assassination of leaders, Fidel Castro in particular, did not stop. The book contains an account of those facts, as well as the contingency plans to invade Cuba.

[Soviet premier Nikita] Khrushchev’s idea of proposing to Cuba the installation of nuclear missiles is told in detail in Tomás Diez’s book. The idea was prompted by the threat to the security of his country by the installation of U.S. "Jupiter" missiles in Turkey and Italy, and by the imminent danger of an attack on Cuba. Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s secretary of defense, has revealed that, during the time of the October 1962 crisis, the United States possessed 5,000 nuclear missiles while the Soviet Union had 300. That meant a 17 to 1 ratio, in addition to a large disparity as regards bombers and other strategic weapons.

It’s interesting to read in the book about all the military aspects of the operation involving the installation of the missiles, the errors committed by the Soviet leadership, and Cuba’s clarity and foresight throughout the entire process. The book also takes up the main reason why Cuba accepted the strategic weapons as well as the evolution of the diplomatic negotiations.

We get a clear view of the gigantic effort involved in preparing all the troops and military equipment in the USSR, transferring them to Cuba, and installing them in our territory. The troops and military equipment docked in seven ports and it took 185 sea journeys to transport them. The details of the operation in this book read like scenes of a great work of drama, with the added interest that everything was taking place amid a climate of dangerous confrontation on a world scale. We likewise learn of the locations on the island where the different types of troops and missile systems were placed, as well as the reasons they could be discovered by U.S. planes. It should be said, however, that despite all its efforts, the enemy’s intelligence never found out the number of Soviet troops that were in Cuba.

The book faithfully reflects the political and diplomatic side of the crisis, which played a noteworthy role. It recounts the positions of Havana, Washington, and Moscow in all their various nuances.

The United Nations attempted to be the center of the negotiations. Many countries expected that as soon as the conflict was over and war averted, the Security Council would meet and come up with a long-term agreement to solve the differences between Cuba and the United States, thus ending the tensions in the Caribbean and eliminating a point of friction that endangered world peace. Washington refused to consider the question in that form, and rejected Cuba’s participation in its negotiations with the Soviets, pushing aside in fact the conciliatory efforts by the United Nations secretary-general.

In the end, the Security Council was unable to meet despite the fact that the crisis was on its agenda. The Soviets and the Americans came to an agreement and sent a note to the UN’s highest body saying that no discussion on this point was necessary since the crisis had already been resolved. Cuba sent another note, but with the opposite conclusion. The Cubans and Soviets had prepared an agreement that reflected the positions of the three countries, to be presented to the Council. But Washington did not agree to it.  
 
U.S. gov’t refuses to end aggression
The discussions were very tense. The Cuban leadership found out about the Soviet agreement to remove the missiles in Cuba through a broadcast over Radio Moscow. What happened was that Kennedy made continual demands on the Soviets that were always accepted without much debate. Kennedy’s promise not to invade Cuba, which Khrushchev agreed to even though he had no guarantees, was rejected by Cuba. The fact that Washington refused to agree to end the economic war against Cuba, discontinue subversive activities and acts of piracy, and stop violating our territorial air space and waters demonstrated that there was absolutely no basis to such an offer. Nor did they accept the additional guarantee demanded by Cuba: the withdrawal of the Guantánamo naval base. None of these conditions--acceptance of which would have given Kennedy’s promise a solid foundation--was agreed to by Washington. As it says in the book, Cuba already had a long and bitter experience with Washington’s lack of sincerity.

The book reviews all aspects of the crisis, presenting the viewpoints of the three parties to the conflict. In addition the book contains an extensive section of Cuban documents of great historical value.

One of the propaganda weapons that the United States utilized very effectively was the fact that the missiles were installed in our territory in a clandestine way, covertly, and not as the result of a legitimate military agreement between two sovereign nations, such as those the United States signs with its allies. Fidel Castro warned the Soviets that it was necessary, as a normal procedure, to make the agreement public, but Khrushchev didn’t see it that way. This opened up the USSR and Cuba to the charge of deceiving world public opinion.

Cuba’s position was always based on principle, on defending its sovereignty, on defending its right to have all the weapons it deemed necessary to respond to the attacks against it. Cuba did not surrender its right to refuse inspections and it did not agree to negotiate any undermining of its independence.  
 
Cuban outrage at Soviet leaders’ conduct
When reading the book, it’s instructive to follow all those discussions, which were taking place in a very tense atmosphere, when the world was often on the verge of nuclear war.

Moscow and Washington, each for their own reasons, kept the outcome a secret: an agreement to withdraw the missiles from Cuba in exchange for the withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey and Italy. This crude truth became known later on, but the U.S. plans to destroy the revolution continued. The negotiations over the crisis did not disrupt U.S. intentions of making Cuba submit to its control. The outcome of the crisis did not offer any guarantee to Cuba.

When the nuclear missiles were withdrawn, the Cuban people expressed great indignation. We should also not forget the response to this move by the Soviet troops, who were willing to defend us against all dangers. That human aspect of the crisis should not be forgotten.

In analyzing how the crisis ended, the book states that for the revolutionary leadership it became clear that the country’s security depends above all on the courage, determination, and willingness of the people to be part of its defense. Any outside support would always be subject to conjunctural factors of international policy, even though solidarity will always play a significant role.

Undoubtedly the events of those days left a sense of disillusionment and bitterness owing to the poor political role played by the Soviet Union in accepting all the U.S. demands.

On the other hand, internationally the situation did not improve. The conflicts that endangered world peace did not end. The arms race continued its accelerated course, with an enormous waste of resources. The economic situation of the underdeveloped countries continued to get worse. But, as the book states, these realities should not feed pessimism about the future. History, the author correctly states, shows that just and noble causes always triumph, regardless of the power of the forces standing in their way.

On Jan. 1, 1959, the Cuban workers and farmers had overthrown a U.S.-backed dictatorship and begun a deep-going revolution. From that point on, Washington took increasingly aggressive actions to try to undermine and overthrow the new revolutionary power. In April 1961, Cuba’s revolutionary militias and armed forces crushed a U.S.-organized mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs. In subsequent months, the Kennedy administration launched "Operation Mongoose" and other campaigns of counterrevolutionary terror and sabotage.

In the spring and summer of 1962, in face of escalating preparations by Washington for a full-scale invasion of Cuba, the revolutionary government signed a mutual defense pact with the Soviet Union, including the deployment of Soviet missiles on the island. In October of that year U.S. president John F. Kennedy demanded removal of the Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba. Washington imposed a naval blockade of Cuba, stepped up preparations for an armed assault, and placed its armed forces on nuclear alert.

In face of the mobilization of Cuban workers and farmers to defend their national sovereignty and revolutionary gains, the U.S. government backed off its invasion plans. Following an exchange of communications between Washington and Moscow, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, without consulting Havana, publicly announced his decision to remove the missiles on October 28. A few days after the Soviet announcement, the U.S. government demanded that Cuba accept "inspectors" to "verify" the removal of the missiles. UN secretary-general U Thant went to Cuba to try to persuade Havana to accept such a group of "inspectors." The revolutionary government rejected this demand as a blatant violation of Cuba’s national sovereignty.  
 
 
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