When Castro Became A Communist : The Impact on US-Cuba Policy

The fundamental question of when Fidel Castro became a communist has had a profound and enduring impact on the foreign policy of the United States . From December 1956, the time Castro landed his armed expedition from Mexico against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista; to Batista's downfall on January 1, 1959; to President Eisenhower's approval of covert action against the Castro regime in March of 1960;⁽¹⁾ the U.S. ostensibly pursued a policy of non-intervention in the Caribbean area and the Western Hemisphere as a whole. Conceivably, the U.S. could have invoked the Rio Treaty⁽²⁾ at any point during this time period given the information available to official Washington concerning Castro's involvement with international communism and the threat it posed to the national security interests of the United States.⁽³⁾

During this post-World War II period commonly referred to as the Cold War, the Soviet Union had become America's principal adversary. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's (1924-1953) adverse reaction to U.S. economic aid to Europe also known as the Marshall Plan (1947); Stalin's coup in Czechoslovakia (1948); the Soviet blockade of Berlin's Allied sectors (1948); and, the Soviet arming of North Korean troops before the invasion of the South ultimately leading to the Korean War (1950-1953); all of these events helped to shape U.S. foreign policy toward the inter-American region.

In an effort to secure hemispheric unity and mutual defense against the threat of Soviet expansion, the Ninth Inter-American Conference was held in Bogota, Colombia in April 1948, leading to the creation of the Organization of American States (OAS).⁽⁴⁾ The strategic importance of Cuba, therefore, with regard to the Gulf-Atlantic-Caribbean shipping lanes, the Panama Canal, and the Guantanamo Naval Base, could not have been more compelling.

It is in this setting in May of 1960 in Washington that Salvador Diaz-Verson presented corroborative testimony of Castro's early links with the growing anti-Americanism of the Soviet Union before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security.⁽⁵⁾ Diaz-Verson testified about the destruction by the Castro forces⁽⁶⁾ of the files he had created and meticulously maintained on Cuban communists throughout Latin America on behalf of the Anti-Communist League of Cuba.⁽⁷⁾ This criminal act, which was widely reported by foreign newspaper correspondents in Havana the following day on January 27, 1959,⁽⁸⁾ revealed the destruction of the Diaz-Verson archives more than one year before President Eisenhower's directive approving covert action against the Castro regime in March of 1960. Justifiably in fear of his life, Diaz-Verson fled into exile on March 19, 1959.⁽⁹⁾

Whether or not Fidel Castro was a "card carrying" member of the Communist Party⁽¹⁰⁾ became the litmus test by which U.S. actions toward Cuba were determined. Castro's communist affiliations with the Third International for Latin America were not unknown; ⁽¹¹⁾ in the events of the so-called Bogotazo, ⁽¹²⁾ ample evidence was readily available providing proof that Castro was an enemy agent of the Soviet Union intent on defeating the United States.⁽¹³⁾ As early as mid-1957, former Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs, Spruille Braden, who also served as U.S. ambassador to Cuba from 1943 to 1945, gave an interview to the Washington weekly, Human Events, citing Fidel Castro's communist activities.⁽¹⁴⁾

Contrary to America's security interests in Latin America,⁽¹⁵⁾ it became U.S. policy to: abandon a friendly government in Cuba,⁽¹⁶⁾ fail to support a viable alternative to Castro,⁽¹⁷⁾ and to prematurely recognize the Castro government⁽¹⁸⁾ which was widely portrayed as a non-communist product of a democratic revolution.⁽¹⁹⁾ Vice President Richard M. Nixon had expressed his concern over Castro's communism in a confidential memorandum distributed to the CIA, the State Department, and the White House following a three hour meeting with Castro during his visit to Washington in April 1959.⁽²⁰⁾ Castro's trip had been arranged by Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, Roy Rubottom,⁽²¹⁾ who was fully aware of Castro's communist leanings and affiliations having been posted in Bogota, Colombia at the time of the Ninth Inter-American Conference in 1948,⁽²²⁾ scene of the infamous Bogotazo.⁽²³⁾

By the time Castro formally declared Cuba a socialist state on May 1, 1961⁽²⁴⁾ and proclaimed himself a "Marxist-Leninist" in a televised speech on December 2, 1961,⁽²⁵⁾ communist power in Cuba had been consolidated.⁽²⁶⁾ Cuba would not only provide a base for anti-American activities in the Western Hemisphere but the island would also serve to project Moscow's influence throughout the Third World further exacerbating Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In a 1987 book review entitled "Cuba and Its Critics," Saul Landau⁽²⁷⁾ referred to an interview he had had with Castro revealing his early dedication to communism. According to Landau, "Fidel Castro in 1968 explained to me that he had become a Marxist from the very time that he read the Communist Manifesto in his student days, (emphasis added) and a Leninist from the period when he read Lenin while in prison on the Isle of Pines in 1954."⁽²⁸⁾ This account coincides with Diaz-Verson's iteration of the destruction of the archival proof "of Fidel's disloyalty from his schooldays (emphasis added) onward."⁽²⁹⁾

Scholars throughout the years unceasingly have debated Castro's communism;⁽³⁰⁾ the question of when Castro became a communist;⁽³¹⁾ or, for that matter, if he ever truly was a committed communist suggesting Castro became a communist only out of pragmatism. Arguments have been presented contending that the United States forced Castro into the arms of the Soviet Union⁽³²⁾ and onto the path of international communism. Now, with the collapse of the Soviet system and the end of the Cold War, comes the opening of the archives of the former Soviet Union.⁽³³⁾

Throughout this debate, Landau's highly credible account of his 1968 interview with Castro has been ignored. Even Castro's televised admission on December 2, 1961⁽³⁴⁾ of his own communist roots has been dismissed as "assertions" and described as "after-the-fact," and as "self-serving."⁽³⁵⁾ While Diaz-Verson's account of when Castro became a communist has been conveniently dismissed,⁽³⁶⁾ it has never been disputed or denied. Notwithstanding the destruction of Diaz-Verson's files, Castro's so-called "student days" or "schooldays" clearly span from high-school-to-university encompassing the 1943 period⁽³⁷⁾ designated by Diaz-Verson as the time when "the Cuban youth who had already entered into the Soviet Union's service and who received a monthly sum of money to cover their expenses began visiting agent Bashirov's residence" in Havana included "Fidel Castro Ruz."

Diaz-Verson, a distinguished Cuban journalist and intelligence officer, gathered evidence of Castro's connection with the Soviet Union dating back to 1943. His account of when Castro became a communist is of importance from a U.S. policy perspective; it is both historically significant and contextually accurate. Cuba established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in October 1942 with Maxim Litvinov having presented his credentials in April 1943.⁽³⁸⁾ Given that Cuba had the strongest Communist Party in Latin America at the time "regarded as a sort of Caribbean regional headquarters"⁽³⁹⁾ in which the "Soviet government placed a high value,"⁽⁴⁰⁾ it is not unthinkable that Castro did indeed come under the influence of Gumer W. Bashirov in the early months of 1943 as Diaz-Verson has described in his seminal paper reprinted below entitled "When Castro Became A Communist."

There is every indication that Castro would have been thwarted long before Batista's downfall on January 1, 1959. America's policy of non-intervention would have become inoperative had President Eisenhower discerned the extent of the communist threat that a Castro-led Cuba posed to the United States⁽⁴¹⁾ as eventually was made clear by the Eisenhower-Khrushchev exchange of July 9, 1960. At that time, President Eisenhower justifiably evoked the Rio Treaty and declared, "I affirm in the most emphatic terms that the United States will not be deterred from its responsibilities by the threats Mr. Khrushchev is making. Nor will the United States, in conformity with its treaty obligations, permit the establishment of a regime dominated by international communism in the Western Hemisphere." (Department of State Bulletin, July 25, 1960, pages 139-140).⁽⁴²⁾ Had the Castro communist revolution been viewed less as a rebellion from within or as an insurrection against the established order as it was portrayed and more for what it really was, a Trojan horse attack by the forces of international communism led by Fidel Castro, then U.S. policy makers would have dealt with it as such and Castro, disguised as a democrat, would never have been successful in taking over Cuba. Instead, Castro's unhindered rise to power made U.S. policy appear indecisive and paralyzed. Diaz-Verson's paper provides the key in helping to understand when Fidel Castro became a communist; in its entirety it shows how the U.S. policy process collapsed from within and how Cuba was lost to Soviet-Russian influence for nearly four decades.

* In January 1959, he destroyed the evidence of his connections with the Soviet Union.

As soon as Fidel Castro Ruz learned that file "A-943" in our records contained irrefutable evidence of his connection with the Soviet Union and that those records also contained data which proved the communist militancy of his closest colleagues, he ordered their seizure. Those documents were seized on the evening of January 24, 1959 at the Vedado neighborhood of Havana. Fidel had just entered Havana surrounded by demagoguery, falsehood and lies and he needed to cover up, for the time being, his treacherous purposes. We knew and had the proof that Fidel Castro was one of Moscow's agents. We had been able to gather photographs, documents and reports indicating he was an agent for the Soviet Union although he was not a regular member of the Communist Party. And it was natural that the traitor would worry about neutralizing whatever could translate into evidence of his wickedness at the time of revolutionary and blind excitement.

Since founding the Third International, the Soviet Union divided its worldwide organization into two large sectors. On the one part, there appeared the Communist Parties, "facade organizations." On the other part, there were those agents directly linked to the Moscow regime who never were registered with the red groups in their countries of origin. The former were comprised of those who had to intervene in national politics, vote, run for elective offices and agitate their respective peoples through press, radio, meetings, civic and patriotic organizations. The latter were formed by foreigners, who never were meant to function as activists, as well as those who performed espionage, subversion and acts of deceit under different "covers." Those were the cases of Lombardo Toledano in Mexico and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. These persons, who acted on behalf of the Soviet Union, never appeared on the rosters of any Communist Party. Their work was directly with the Soviet government well above the communist parties or delegates. And Fidel Castro is one of those agents.

During the time we have been in exile, we have been gathering data, reconstructing reports, and recalling details. We are therefore able to offer a summary about Fidel Castro's activities as an agent for the Soviet Union since 1943 when he was only 17 years old.

In 1943 while the battle for Stalingrad was raging and North Africa was being invaded by British and American troops, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR convened in Moscow to consider and try to stifle U.S. prestige which had been on the rise because of its heroic deeds in World War II. That entity discussed the need for Soviet Russia to extinguish that popularity and to help to continue the internal struggle against the United States. Several resolutions were adopted in that meeting. Aside from Communist Parties was the creation of youth groups, intellectuals, and artists in every country of the Western Hemisphere to act within a new political strategy.

In accordance with these plans, on April 7, 1943, Maxim Litvinov arrived in Havana and was accredited as Ambassador from the USSR. He was replaced by Andrei A. Gromiko a few months later who was charged with the implementation of Moscow's new strategy including the accreditation of 150 Soviet officials in Havana.

Among the officials who arrived from abroad was Gumer W. Bashirov. An agent in charge of recruiting youth for the USSR, he had lived in Spain during the Civil War and spoke Spanish fluently. He then became the agent in charge of recruiting Cuban youth for the USSR. Bashirov settled not at the Soviet Embassy compound in Vedado but took residence alone at number 6 Second Avenue between First and Third Streets in the Miramar subdivision of Marianao (a city east of Havana).

In the first months of 1943, the Cuban youth who had already entered into the Soviet Union's service and who received a monthly sum of money to cover their expenses began visiting agent Bashirov's residence. The list recorded then the following names:

Fidel Castro Ruz, Manuel Corrales, Luis Mas Martin, Baudilio Castellanos, Eduardo Corona, Antonio Carneado, Jaime Grabalosa, Juan Bradman, Jorge Quintana, Flavio Ortega, Arquimedes Poveda, Agustin Clavijo, Raul Valdes Vivo, Antonio Nunez Jimenez, Alicia Alonso, Oscar Camps, Walterio Carbonell, Alfredo Guevara Valdes, Adan Garcia and Baldomero Alvarez Rios.

Some of these youth, such as Luis Mas Martin and Abelardo Adan, were chosen to be sent to Czechoslovakia for training. Others departed with bogus passports to Mexico, Venezuela, and Guatemala; some visited Moscow. The Soviet Embassy in Havana had already become the center of red operations for Latin America. The propaganda distributed throughout the region was printed in the embassy and all subversive problems on the Continent were taken care of there as well. Meanwhile, at the beautiful Miramar residence, Bashirov continued to train Cuban youth sending them on various missions. But militant anti-communists were taking photographs of these visits, identifying the Soviet agents and obtaining copies of letters, bogus passports, and documents that corroborated these clandestine activities.

By mid-1944, Bashirov had traveled to Moscow having returned to Havana with instructions to modify his work. Several of the Cuban-born youth who worked under his command would join the Socialist Youth or the bourgeoisie political parties, that is, the non-communist political parties, in order to operate within them in accordance with the instructions that they would gradually receive.

However, some names, for the time being, were reserved for the future. Among those names were Fidel Castro, Antonio Nunez Jimenez and Alicia Alonso. These agents had to remain as a reserve. That was Moscow's wish.

In the post-World War II era, the international situation was taking a new course. Havana had become the center for red operations in all of Latin America. The announcement that a conference would take place in Bogota, Colombia to adopt resolutions against communist activities in the Western Hemisphere attracted a great deal of interest within the Soviet camp. Frances Demont, the treasurer of the "World Federation of Democratic Youth" arrived in Havana on February 2, 1948, carrying $70,000 in her luggage for propaganda against the Bogota Conference. Interviews took place at Bashirov's residence in Miramar. On February 25, Basily Bogarev, the chairman of the Soviet Youth; Jarolov Boucet, a Czech; Luis Fernandez, a young Spaniard communist; Eugene Karbul, a Frenchman; Ivan Mischine, a Russian; and Mirorat Pesis, a Yugoslavian; arrived in Havana and quickly met to agree upon their plan to thwart the Bogota Conference.

While meetings continued in Havana, Luis Fernandez, the Spaniard communist visitor who resided in Moscow, was sent to Bogota to gather information about the prevailing conditions there. Upon returning to Havana, he submitted his report in which he stressed that the election held in Colombia in March 1947 had pointed out a fissure in the political work of the Colombian Communist Party which had been left with no representation in the parliament. Augusto Duran, the Secretary General of the Colombian Communist Party, was accused of negligence. Later, in a Communist Congress held on July 24, 1947, it was agreed to divide the Communist Party into two parts. One would act in the future under the name of the "Workers' Party" (Partido do los Trabajadores) led by Duran while the other, the "Colombian Communist Party" under the control of Gilberto Vieira, would proceed with its operations. This weakened communist action in Colombia and required, as Bashirov explained, that agents be sent from the outside to act on that matter.

While they were still meeting to discuss the plans which were to be developed, an order arrived in Havana from Moscow that contained the manner in which actions should be executed in Colombia. Lázaro Pena, a communist labor union leader, would go to that nation to organize groups of workers to promote strikes, demonstrations, conduct sabotage and foment disruptions in Bogota on April 9, 1948 to prevent the international meeting from taking place. Fidel Castro Ruz and Alfredo [Guevara] Valdes would travel as students to subvert Colombian youth. At the "Claridge Hotel" in Bogota, they would receive arms intended to attack priests, churches and nuns to stir the Catholic spirit of the Colombian people and force them to take to the streets in protest of those events.

Fidel Castro and Alfredo Guevara faithfully fulfilled their mission and attacked several priests and nuns as well as many Colombians with the purpose of disrupting the Bogota Conference where measures were going to be considered to counter the progress of communism in the Americas.

Castro and Guevara, who took asylum in the Cuban Embassy in Bogota, departed for Havana and reported to their boss, Bashirov, about the results of their actions for which they were highly congratulated.

In trying to take advantage of the opportunity, Castro and Guevara requested to be sent to Czechoslovakia to take a course in sabotage. But, the Kremlin only authorized Guevara's trip and denied it for Fidel Castro. Castro wrote a letter to Abelardo Adan Garcia who was in Prague, that was intercepted by us, in which he told Adan: "Our friend has told me that he is keeping me in reserve for greater endeavors and that I should not get `burned' by traveling now. They have a plan in which I will be the axis that will be implemented very soon. It is possible that we will see each other then without fear of Yankee imperialism..."

In 1952, when Cuba broke relations with the USSR, Bashirov departed for Mexico. On July 14 of the same year, Fidel Castro Ruz, with a counterfeit Cuban passport in the name of Federico Castillo Ramirez, flew to Mexico on a Mexican airliner returning a month later with the subversive plans that he would implement afterwards inside Cuba with the decisive help of the Soviet Union.

As part of the Soviet strategy, Fidel Castro had run for a seat in the Cuban House of Representatives from the Orthodox Party (Party of the Cuban People -- Orthodox) in the thwarted election scheduled for June 1, 1952. The Soviet Union had infiltrated several figures of his private organization in that new political entity among whom were Vicentina Antuna, Eduardo Corona and Fidel Castro. That permitted Castro to begin meeting at the party's premises, located at 109 Paseo de Martí Avenue in Havana, with groups of communist youth to deliver Leninist conferences, since he always was a passionate reader of Lenin's works.

There, one afternoon at the Orthodox Party's place, Fidel Castro received Basily Bogarev, a young Russian who had been in Havana in 1948. Bogarev urged Castro to launch his revolutionary activities as soon as possible to stir the nation. In order to do things correctly, the money needed for that armed movement should be sought inside Cuba. Just in case anything went wrong, there would not be any evidence that could show the Soviet Union's intervention.

At that time, Raul Castro was in Prague taking a course in communist political indoctrination. Fidel, who wrote to him frequently, gave him the news that we were gradually obtaining.

A faithful executor of Moscow's orders, Fidel Castro launched a search for money in Cuba and carried out numerous swindles, gyppings and extortions. With that cunningly-obtained money, Castro deceived a group of youngsters by taking them to Santiago de Cuba where 80 of them were slaughtered in the illogical and absurd attack against the Moncada Barracks. Numerically overwhelmed, this assault was performed with .22 caliber revolvers and .12-gauge shotguns against soldiers equipped with machine-guns and modern rifles. Castro took those 80 Cubans to their deaths with the sole purpose of destabilizing life in Cuba as he had already done in Bogota.

Once in prison, Fidel Castro continued to receive assistance from the Soviet Union. His contact was a young woman who called herself Caridad Mercado. From the time she arrived from Mexico with that mission, she went to live in a small house at Lomas de San Vicente, Santiago de Cuba. Later on when Castro was pardoned by the Batista government and departed for Mexico, he continued to receive financial aid from the Soviet Union while in exile. Following his pilgrimage to the United States and upon his return to the City of Palaces (Mexico City), the Soviets had already prepared the ship and armaments that he would take to Cuba with the addition of "Che" Guevara another agent of the Soviet Union whom Castro had not previously met, but who imposed Soviet imperialism upon him.

The above material was, in summation, what the 269 pages contained that made up the secret files labeled "A-943" located in our archives. They were stolen by hordes of armed bearded communists complying with direct orders from Fidel Castro. He learned about the existence of those secret files and his personal dossier filled with irrefutable evidence through the treason of a youngster -- the son of a journalist with the Informacion newspaper -- who had worked in our offices and skillfully managed to inspect the dossier. On January 19, 1959, he had a secret meeting with Castro at the Hilton Hotel in Havana and told him all he had learned.

Fidel Castro met on that same night with Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, Luis Mas Martin, Luis Fajardo Escalona and Jorge Quintana to prepare the attack on our offices. It was urgently necessary for him to have those documents in his possession since they showed him to be an agent for Moscow. It was also necessary for him later to cut our life so that we would not be able to reveal that information as we are doing now with God's favor.

The files, containing his photograph and those of his companions entering and leaving Bashirov's house in Miramar and the photocopies of letters and other documents as well as the details of his bogus passport, were in Castro's possession at his residence in Cojimar (a small town east of Havana) to where all these documents must naturally have disappeared. But the faithful recollection of all these treacherous deeds committed by the traitor who was the Soviet Union's agent in Cuba since 1943 has not disappeared from our mind. We have thus been able to reconstruct that which Fidel Castro believed would be lost forever.

The current ruler of Cuba became a Soviet agent in 1943. He became a Soviet official not a Cuban one. He is the most repugnant and cynical traitor that the history of the Americas has recorded because he has sold his country, his family, and his fellow Cubans to an international enslaving power which has already erased from Cuba all vestiges of freedom, dignity and sovereignty, converting a rich and joyful country into a miserable and terrorized piece of land.

Fidel Castro, the most outstanding Soviet agent in the Americas, must not be seen as "one more Cuban," but as an enemy of Cuba and as an executioner for the Americas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Salvador Diaz-Verson was born in 1905 on November 3rd in Matanzas, Cuba, and became a journalist early in life immediately following the untimely death of his father in July of 1918. He began his newspaper career as a cub reporter working for El Imparcial later going on to write for the Heraldo de Cuba in 1921 and El Pais in 1930.

Diaz-Verson dedicated himself to the study of communism and communist activities in the Americas. Shortly after the creation of the Communist Party (Popular Socialist Party - PSP), he founded the Anti-Communist League of Cuba which was inaugurated at the University of Havana on May 14, 1925. In 1934, he became Chief of the Cuban National Police.

Throughout World War II, Diaz-Verson served as secretary of the Committee for the Defense of Democracy formally created in 1940. Described as an underground organization that worked with Allied governments in tracing and closing off Nazi submarine refueling stations in the Caribbean, the Committee also identified and destroyed Nazi informational broadcasting facilities; by 1947, Diaz-Verson had become the Committee's president. From 1948 until March 10, 1952, he served as Cuba's Chief of Military Intelligence during the government of Dr. Carlos Prio Socarras (deposed by Batista in 1952). Beginning in May 1954, he participated in the First through Fourth Congress Against Soviet Intervention in Latin America and was present at the creation of the Inter-American Organization of Anti-Communist Newspapermen on April 10, 1957. Prior to Castro's takeover, while working for the newspaper Excelsior, Diaz-Verson also served as the organization's first president.

Diaz-Verson published works on Cuban culture, art, and literature. He authored numerous books including: Nazism in Cuba (1944), Communism and Cowardice (1947), The Tzarist's Movement Dressed in Red (1958), History of an Archive (1961), The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (1963), and One Man, One Battle (1980). While living in exile in Miami, Diaz-Verson, was a frequent contributor to Diario de las Americas (Miami), La Nacion (Miami), The 20th of May (Los Angeles), La Tribuna (New Jersey), Hola (Spain), and La Cronica (Puerto Rico). Salvador Diaz-Verson died in exile in Miami on February 15, 1982.

I think so, I have a couple of articles tagged on the net that talks about that.

What I found interesting, and I didn't know this, was Fidel's involvement with communism as early as the early 1940's!

The liberals tell us that Castro became a communist as a reaction to US foreign policies. This article (the writer was a very respected newsman in Cuba, prior to Castro), debunks all the claims made by Castros' apologists.

Castro has always been a communist, and an enemy to the US.

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