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Cuba and the Fifteenth un General Assembly: A Case Study in Regional Disassociation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Edward B. Glick
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Extract

“Cuba is a small planet travelling in its own orbit.”

—Foreign Minister Raúl Roa

The fifteenth United Nations General Assembly was an exciting one. It met during the cold aftermath of the U-2 affair. It attracted the largest group of world leaders, including Castro, Tito, Nasser, Nehru, Sukarno, Nkrumah, Touré, and Khrushchev, ever to assemble at the UN site. It accelerated the “Africanization” of the UN by admitting during its first part 17 members, 16 from Africa. It was rocked, politically, militarily, and financially, by the Congo crisis, which led to the demand for the ouster of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and then to his death. It debated Cuban charges against the United States and the embarrassing Bay of Pigs invasion. In a lighter vein, it produced the first public banging of shoes on a UN table by a head of government.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , April 1964 , pp. 235 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1964

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Footnotes

*

I am indebted to Manning J. Dauer of the University of Florida at Gainesville for some insights and to Judith Dawidoff and Stephen Lancaster of the United States Mission to the United Nations for supplying me with the relevant UN documents.

References

1 The first part of the fifteenth Assembly met from September 20 to December 20, 1960, and the second from March 7 to April 21, 1961.

2 For example, a week before the Assembly's opening, Foreign Minister Raúl Roa told an audience at Havana University that Cuba was going to support Algerian independence from France and the admission of Communist China to the UN. The New York Times, September 14, 1960, p. 1.

3 UN Doc. A/PV. 895 (October 8, 1960), pp. 44-45. (The ‘TV.’ series contains mimeographed verbatim accounts of the plenary and of certain committees of the Assembly. Mainly for the use of delegations, they appear almost immediately after the meetings they refer to and long before the Official Records, which are often “corrected.” An “A” before ‘TV.” means that the meeting was of the full Assembly; the number after “PV.” refer to the meeting in question. Unless otherwise stated, all document citations in this paper refer to UN documents.)

4 A/PV. 898 (October 10, I960), p. 53-55 and A/PV. 894 (October 8, 1960), p. 3. (For reasons unknown, a single page of a mimeographed UN document may be numbered in series, e.g., p. 53-55.)

5 See my Latin America and the Palestine Problem (New York: Theodor Herzl Foundation, 1958), pp. 9-11, 134-135, 167.

6 A/BUR/SR. 129 (September 27, 1960), p. 9.

7 A/PV. 894 (October 8, 1960), p. 7.

8 The New York Times, October 12, 1960, p. 1.

9 A/C.l/PV. 1098 (November 1, 1960), pp. 41, 43-46, 48-50.

10 A/PV. 898 (October 10, 1960), p. 71.

11 For the details and voting record of these positions, see A/C.l/PV. 1146 (April 12, 1961), pp. 36, 61, and A/PV. 1148 (April 14, 1961), pp. 33, 71, 86, 157.

12 A/PV. 904 (October 13, 1960), p. 41. A number of times during this Assembly session, the Russians tried hard to have items discussed directly in the full Assembly, bypassing the usual procedure of prior debate in committee. Their apparent purpose was to ascribe to a particular issue a sense of urgency not felt by most of the other delegations.

13 A/PV. 947 (December 14, 1960), pp. 11-12, and A/PV. 937 (December 6, 1960), p. 83.

14 A/PV. 872 (September 26, 1960), pp. 127, 131, and A/PV. 977 (April 7, 1961), p. 29-30.

15 A/PV. 924 (November 22, 1960), p. 101 and A/PV. 979 (April 7, 1961), p. 27. Venezuela abstained on this credentials question.

16 A/PV. 958 (December 20, 1960), p. 57-60. This resolution failed to achieve the two-thirds vote required in the General Assembly. Of the 20 Latin-American countries, Cuba opposed it and Mexico, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic abstained.

17 See The New York Times, February 14, 1961, p. 16; February 15, 1961, p. 16; February 16, 1961, p. 10; February 17, 1961, p. 3; February 19, 1961, p. E 1.

18 Quoted in The Record (Hackensack, New Jersey), February 16, 1961, p. 13.

19 According to The New York Times, February 19, 1961, p. 18.

20 For example, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, and Haiti.

21 Somewhat flamboyantly but not unexpectedly, Haiti beat everyone else to the punch. On the third day of the Assembly, her UN delegate, Dr. Aurele Joseph, published a “Declaration” in The New York Times in which he took “the utmost pride in conveying the most cordial greetings of the little Black Republic of the Americas to … the Sister Nations of the African Continent who have recently joined the ranks of sovereign peoples.” He continued: “American by her geographical position, active member of the Organization of American States, still African by race and culture and rightful member of the future Organization of African States, Haiti will not fail in her historic mission as a bridge between two worlds …” (September 22, 1960, p. 6; italics added). For Haitian statements in the UN itself, see A/PV. 899 (October 11, 1960) pp. 21-22 and A/PV. 922 (November 21, 1960), pp. 16, 23-25.

22 For descriptions of Castro's contacts with Tito, Nasser, Nkrumah, and Nehru during the session, see The New York Times, September 22, 1960, p. 1; September 23, 1960, p. 17; September 24, 1960, p. 3; September 26, 1960, pp. 1, 16; September 28, 1960, pp. 18-19; September 29, 1960, p. 15; and May 5, 1961, pp. 1, 11.

For a discussion of Castro's courting of Africa and Asia prior to this Assembly, see my “Castro and the Neutrals,” The Commonweal, LXXIII (October 21, 1960), 87-89.

23 Sulzberger, C. L. in The New York Times, October 1, 1960, p. 18.Google Scholar

24 A/PV. 879 (September 30, 1960), p. 37.

25 A/PV. 872 (September 26, 1960), pp. 136-137.

26 A/PV. 937 (December 6, 1960), p. 73.

27 A/SPC/SR. 244 (April 7, 1961), p. 7. Almost 25 percent of the Cubans are Negroes or of mixed (mostly mulatto) blood. Center of Latin American Studies, Statistical Abstract of Latin America, 1962 (Los Angeles: University of California, 1963) p. 23.Google Scholar

28 A/SPC/SR. 245 (April 10, 1961), p. 92. Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Uruguay abstained; Nicaragua and Paraguay were absent. The rest opposed it.

29 The New York Times, April 14, 1961, pp. 1, 4.

30 A/PV. 989 (April 19, 1961), p. 62-65. For Moroccan press comment favorable to Castro and Cuba, see The New York Times, April 30, 1961, p. 20.

31 A/PV. 956 (December 19, 1960), p. 101-105. Algerian Nationalist leaders met with Castro in New York and were pleased with his support of their cause. Perhaps Premier Ben Bella's present endorsement of Castro is in the nature of a quid pro quo.

32 The New York Times, October 9, 1960, p. E3.

33 Ibid., August 28, 1961, p. 4; “Cuba Acusa,” Obra Revolucionaria, No. 18 (July 18, 1960), p. 19.

34 Quoted in A/C.l/PV. 1159 (April 20, 1961), p. 77. Williams later fled to Cuba, asking for political asylum, in order to escape prosecution in connection with racial strife in North Carolina. (See The New York Times, September 30, 1961, p. 16 and October 1, 1961, p. 50). For a confused linking of neutralism, fidelismo, hopes for the fifteenth Assembly, and racial oppression in North Carolina, see Fair, Play, II (September 16, 1960), 1–2.Google Scholar This is the organ of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee here in the United States. Many of its leaders have been Negroes.

Castro's propaganda among U. S. Negroes continues. Among the means are two powerfully-beamed English-language radio programs, Radio Free Dixie and The Friendly Voice of Cuba. U. S. State Department, Statement by Assistant Secretary Edivin M. Martin before the Latin American Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Subject of Communist Subversion in the Hemisphere (Mimeographed), February 18, 1963; The New York Times, October 8, 1962, pp. 1,15.

35 U. S. State Department, Our Southern Neighbors: The Story of Inter-American Cooperation. Publication No. 7404 (Washington: Government Printing Office, November, 1962), p. 35.Google Scholar

36 Consider the statement of the Bolivian delegate who argued that to redistribute existing Council seats would be “unjust because it would deprive some countries of seats to which they had acquired a right… . The Latin American countries would never give up their seats.” (A/SPC/SR. 195 [November 9, 1960], p. 2. Italics added.) Ecuador, Peru, Haiti, Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Paraguay, and Venezuela echoed this view with no more or less equal depth of feeling.

37 Unless otherwise indicated, the material in this discussion of the Councils was developed from my “The Cuban Cauldron,” Midstream, VII (Winter, 1961), 81-82, and A/SPC/SR. 218. (December 6, 1960), p. 10.

38 A/SPC/SR. 217 (December 8, I960), p. 2. See also A/SPC/SR. 108 (November 2, 1960), p. 12.

39 For example, a half year (almost to the day) before the Bay of Pigs invasion, Roa proclaimed: “Future events will prove my words true. Cuba is not the one that is going to attack; it is the one that is going to be attacked. We know it well … Calmly we await the enemies, … who try to destroy us, sure that we shall be victorious.” A/PV. 904 (October 13, 1960), p. 96.

40 Cuba's request for a plenary Assembly debate having been denied.

41 The text of this resolution and of the Latin-American and Mexican ones is in The New York Times, April 19, 1961, p. 16 and April 22, 1961, p. 5.

42 This paragraph is based largely on a speech by Luis Padilla Ñervo in A/C.l/SR. 1154 (April 18, 1961), pp. 6, 10.

43 At first, the United States insisted that no Assembly action be taken on the Cuban charges. Then she tried, unsuccessfully, to induce the Latin-American caucus to include a reference to the “tyranny” of the Castro government. Finally, she backed the Latin-American draft when she began to fear that some African nations would write an even less favorable resolution that would stress reconciliation and weaken the fiction that the dispute was between rival groups of Cuban citizens and not between Washington and Havana. (See The New York Times, April 13, 1961, p. 8; April 14, 1961, p. 6; and April 17, 1961, p. 2.)

44 For the Political Committee vote on the whole resolution as well as on its several parts, see A/C.l/PV. 1161 (April 21, 1961), pp. 27-40.

45 Ibid., pp. 41-55.

46 For the plenary votes on the two resolutions, see A/PV. 995 (April 21, 1961), pp. 171-185 and The New York Times, April 23, 1961, p. 8. Italics added.

47 Mecham, J. Lloyd, The United States and Inter-American Security, 1889-1960 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961), p. 262.Google Scholar For a good discussion of the integration of the Inter-American system into the UN, see pp. 246-277.

48 A/PV. 872 (September 26, 1960), p. 82; italics added; and A/BUR/SR. 131 (October 25, 1960), p. 18.

49 A/C.l/PV. 1158 (April 20, 1961), p. 3. Italics added.

50 A/C.l/PV. 1160 (April 21, 1961), p. 11. Italics added.

51 For example: “On African questions we give priority to African leaders … because the Africans are well qualified to know what is most suitable for Africa.” Ambassador Manuel Bisbe in A/PV. 922 (November 21, 1960), p. 2.