(Fidel Castro arrives MATS Terminal, Washington, D.C., c. 1959, [Public
Domain] via Creative Commons)
In December, 1956, Fidel Castro
and more than eighty armed guerrilla fighters disembarked their ship, the Granma, and landed in a swampy area of
Cuba near the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Despite their subtlety, Castro’s
landing did not go unnoticed—military forces loyal to Cuba’s military dictator,
Gen. Fulgencio Batista, were already there to intercept the guerrillas. In the
intense firefight that followed, around fifty of Castro’s men were killed. The
rest of the survivors fled to the mountains, where they regrouped, reorganized
and began recruiting.
After the initial bloody
skirmish, the Cuban military pumped out heaps of propaganda claiming that Fidel
Castro and other revolutionary leader were all dead. One United States
reporter, however, would soon disprove the military’s claims after an interview
with Castro, face-to-face.
On February 24, 1957, The New York Times published the first
of Herbert L. Matthews’ three articles about the situation in Cuba. The first
article was given huge coverage—it was the headline on the newspaper’s front
page. With modern hindsight, the observations and descriptions given by the
reporter about Castro are endlessly ironic and even humorous.
Before describing his meeting
with Castro, Matthews gave a brief description of Fidel Castro’s revolutionary
26th of July Movement. He described the rebels as a youthful socialist and
nationalist group that, while not very warm to the United Sates, was also
anti-communist. Their goal, he claimed, was to topple Gen. Batista and
reinstitute a constitutional democracy. At the time of Matthews’ article, this
was actually a fairly accurate description for portions of the movement. Many
revolutionaries were solely focused on ousting Batista and restoring
democracy—only after Fidel Castro was in power would the more democratic
revolutionaries be arrested, made to mysteriously disappear, forced into exile, or simply massacred. Yet,
that is a digression from this particular story.
Along with his wife, Matthews
worked with the Cuban revolutionary network near the Sierra Maestra Mountains
to gain an audience with Fidel Castro. The rebels advised Matthews to bring his
wife along for the journey, so that the military roadblocks would find the
reporter less suspicious. After they passed the checkpoints, Matthew’s wife was
left at the home of a warm and hospitable Castro sympathizer. From there the
reporter posed as an American sugarcane plantation owner, with a rebel acting
as his interpreter. Together, they trudged through flooded fields until they
reached the mountains, where they searched for Castro’s scouts. Matthew’s guide
repeatedly signaled with two low whistles, until two responding notes were
heard in the distance. The scouts then led Matthews to an outpost where the
Castro brothers soon arrived for their interview.
In his article, the reporter
lavished the rebels with an abundance of praise. He appreciated their generous hospitality.
He enjoyed their simple, but delicious, food and drink. Even a blanket he was
given by the rebels was praised as luxurious. To top it all off, Fidel Castro brought
Cuban cigars to the interview. In these accommodations, Matthews and Castro sat
down for a hopeful conversation about the future of Cuba. Unfortunately, many of
Castro’s responses turned out to be misleading propaganda.
In his interview with
Matthews, Castro commented that he had no ill will toward the United States or
its people. His only verbal attack against the U.S. in the interview was
criticism over United States weapon shipments to Gen. Batista, a practice that
the U.S. ended in 1958. Castro and his men went on to claim that they always
paid for any materials that they commandeered from the countryside. The rebels
even reported to Matthews that their policy toward captured soldiers was to
simply disarm and release them.
Matthews challenged very
little, if any, of Castro’s claims in his article, and the United States people,
at that time, had a fairly positive attitude toward Fidel Castro—he was seen by
many at as a modern Robin Hood figure, a man who used disreputable tactics to
achieve honorable goals. United States respect for Castro would eventually
plummet, however, as the dictator allied himself closer and closer to the
Soviet Union as the Cold War continued to rise in tension.
Written by C. Keith Hansley.
- The Cuba Libre Story. Documentary series published by Netflix, 2016.
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fidel-Castro
- http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/matthews/matthews022457.pdf#page=2&zoom=auto,-65,417
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