Some days ago Carlos Lechuga, one of the shining lights of Cuban journalism and diplomacy, died in Havana at the age of 91. He was already an acclaimed journalist when he joined the clandestine ranks of the July 26th Revolutionary Movement led by Fidel Castro and he remained very active in his country’s international relations until his final breath.
Among the highpoints of his popularity and well-earned prestige were his having been the journalist who announced in front of the television cameras that the tyrant Fulgencio Batista had fled and that the people’s arms had triumphed, as well as his having been the Cuban ambassador to the Organization of American States when the island was expelled from that forum in 1962 at Washington’s demand.
That US action, which was the culmination of a long period of maneuvers aimed at isolating Cuba in the international arena, is considered, paradoxically, a triumph for Cuban diplomacy which, after that, was able to spread its wings with greater freedom and brilliance.
The arbitrary expulsion of Cuba from the hemispheric organization, which was completely under Washington’s thumb, ended up isolating the superpower itself, not just on the continent, but also on a global level, even damaging it in its ties with its strategic allies.
The disgraceful maneuver was carried out in Punta del Este, Uruguay, which is where the White House convened the then 21 members of the OAS on January 22, 1962.
Barely ten months earlier there had been the failure of the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, an invasion organized by the US Central Intelligence Agency, using Cuban mercenaries recruited among ex-collaborators of the Batista tyranny and other emigre counterrevolutionaries. The defeat on the sands of Playa Girón was humiliating for the United States government, which was accustomed to ruling unchallenged in the hemisphere.
A January 18, 1962 report by journalist Guillermo Almacauri, distributed by the Spanish news agency EFE, told a story that included the following several paragraphs:
“Diplomats from 21 republics in the Western Hemisphere will meet next Monday to address the situation in Cuba.
“The Organization of American States, which until very recently prided itself on the fact that all its decisions had always been reached unanimously, has had differences regarding the Cuban question. When its 21 delegates met in Washington on December 4 to decide to hold the conference in Punta del Este, two countries, Cuba and Mexico, voted against and six abstained: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Ecuador.
“Only two big countries, Venezuela and Colombia, and the small republics of Central America, voted with the United States in favor of the conference, which has been called to consider the possible imposition of collective sanctions against Cuba.
“Brazil... seems disposed to maintain its position of coexistence..., To varying degrees Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico are opposed to imposing collective sanctions against Cuba and uphold the principle of nonintervention and self-determination. The other 13 republics, led by the United States, are all in favor not only of imposing sanctions, but also of giving Cuba an ultimatum to change its posture if it does not want to be expelled from the Organization of American States...”
Despite these clear indications of reluctance, Washington relied on its typical methods to win the approval and subsequent implementation of the agreements to collectively break off relations with Cuba by all the countries that then made up the OAS, with the sole exception of Mexico, whose government at that time bravely resisted the onslaught. Canada and the countries of the Anglophone Caribbean were not part of the OAS at that time.
Forty-seven years later, the nations that today are a part of what some years ago was dubbed “the Yankee ministry of colonies,” are involved in one way or another in a process of recovering their sovereignty and many have governments brought to power by popular will as a result of their independence-minded pronouncements.
This is the context in which the Fifth Hemispheric Summit of the Americas will take place from April 17 to 19 in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago.
The setting gets complicated because there is a new president in the United States who is committed to a program of changes that gives him great authority among his country’s citizens and institutions, but whose viability cannot be guaranteed because it conflicts with corporate interests and those of the military complex who have traditionally established the limits in the superpower’s policies.
The specter of an absent Cuba will haunt the chamber in which the Hemispheric Summit takes place.
My friend, Professor Carlos Lechuga Hevia, would have so enjoyed speculating on the happenings and results of this conclave!
--A CubaNews translation by Will Reissner. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
