Vol. 80/No. 39      October 17, 2016

 
(Books of the Month column)

Oct. 1962: How Cuba blocked US threat of
nuclear attack

 
October 1962: The ‘Missile’ Crisis as Seen From Cuba by Tomás Diez Acosta is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for October. The excerpt below is from the preface to the English-language edition by Socialist Workers Party leader Mary-Alice Waters. This month marks the 54th anniversary of these momentous events, told for the first time from the perspective of the Cuban people and their revolutionary government that pushed Washington back from the precipice of nuclear war. Copyright © 2002 by Tomás Diez Acosta, Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY MARY-ALICE WATERS  
In October 1962, during what is widely known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, Washington pushed the world to the precipice of nuclear war. Scores of books on the subject have been written by partisans of Washington and of Moscow. Here, for the first time, the story of that historic moment is told in full from the perspective of the central protagonist, the Cuban people and their revolutionary government.

The author, Tomás Diez Acosta, joined the ranks of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba in 1961 as a literacy worker, one of the three hundred thousand young Cubans who mobilized to the mountains, factories, fields, barrios, barracks, and fishing villages during Cuba’s Year of Education to teach every Cuban how to read and write. He was fourteen years old. In the midst of an exploding revolutionary struggle there was no “minimum age” for combatants, Diez says with a laugh. When he retired from active military service thirty-seven years later he held the rank of lieutenant colonel. … Diez details:

• the determination and readiness of Cuba’s working people to defend the country’s newly won sovereignty and the achievements of their unfolding socialist revolution against the increasingly aggressive designs of U.S. imperialism, including the full-scale bombing and invasion it was preparing during the October Crisis;

• the decision by Cuba’s revolutionary leadership to allow Soviet missiles to be stationed on the island, not because they thought such weapons were needed to defend Cuba from U.S. military assault, but as an act of international solidarity as the USSR was being ringed by U.S. strategic nuclear arms;

• the carrying out of Operation Anadyr, the code name for the eventual deployment of some 42,000 Soviet troops and missile units in Cuba between August and November 1962;

• the day-by-day unfolding of what Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto Che Guevara called the “brilliant yet sad days” of the October Crisis, and the course followed by the revolutionary government as it worked simultaneously to defend Cuba’s sovereignty and move Washington back from the brink. …

On April 19, 1961, after fewer than seventy-two hours of hard-fought combat, the Cuban armed forces, national militias, revolutionary police, and fledgling air force had dealt a stunning defeat to a U.S.-trained, -organized, and -financed mercenary invasion force of some 1,500 at Playa Girón close by the Bay of Pigs on Cuba’s southern coast. From that day on, as the pages that follow amply attest, U.S. policy makers at the highest levels acted on the conclusion that the revolutionary government of Cuba could be overthrown only by direct U.S. military action. And they marshaled seemingly limitless resources to prepare for that moment. Under the personal guidance of the president’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, “Operation Mongoose,” with its multifaceted plans for sabotage, subversion, and assassination of Cuba’s revolutionary leaders, was unleashed to pave the way. …

Kennedy’s acceptance of Khrushchev’s offer to withdraw the missiles — an offer broadcast worldwide over Radio Moscow without even informing the Cuban government — was how the stand-down of the two strategic nuclear powers was announced. But it was the armed mobilization and political clarity of the Cuban people, and the capacities of their revolutionary leadership, that stayed Washington’s hand, saving humanity from the consequences of a nuclear holocaust.

Divergent political courses pursued by the Cuban and Soviet governments marked each step. The Soviet leadership, seeking a way to enhance its strategic military position and to counter the Jupiter missiles the U.S. had recently installed in Turkey and Italy, insisted on secrecy and attempted deception. Cuba took the moral high ground, arguing from the beginning for the public announcement of the mutual assistance pact and the right of the Cuban people to defend themselves against U.S. aggression.

The defeat of the invasion force at the Bay of Pigs had bought precious time for Cuba to organize, train, and equip its Revolutionary Armed Forces. Even more decisive, the people of Cuba used that time to consolidate the agrarian reform; win the battle of the literacy campaign; build schools, homes, and hospitals; extend electrification; advance social equality among Cuba’s working people; and strengthen the worker-farmer alliance that was the bedrock of the revolution and of the respect Cuba had earned among the world’s toilers. As they navigated the contradictory dialectic of the greatly appreciated aid they received from the USSR, the Cuban people were not only defending themselves against the Yankee predator. They stood for the future of humanity, as they stood down the power of U.S. imperialism.

And despite all odds they prevailed.

On October 26, at a decisive moment in the unfolding crisis, John F. Kennedy asked the Pentagon for an estimate of the U.S. casualties that would be incurred during the invasion they were weighing. He was informed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff expected 18,500 casualties in the first ten days alone—greater than the casualties U.S. troops would suffer in the entire first five years of fighting in Vietnam. And knowledgeable Cuban military personnel say U.S. casualties would have been far greater. From that moment on, Kennedy turned White House strategists away from their well-advanced plans to use U.S. military forces in an attempt to overthrow the revolution. The political price such body counts would entail continues to this day to hold off any direct U.S. military attack against Cuba.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home