An Impressive Gesture. Fidel Reflects on John .F. Kennedy
and Robert F. Kennedy
I confess that many times I have meditated on the dramatic
story of John F. Kennedy. It was my fate to live through the era when he was
the greatest and most dangerous adversary of the Revolution. It was something
that didn’t play a part in his calculations.
He saw himself as the representative of a new generation of
Americans who were confronting the old-style, dirty politics of men of the sort
of Nixon whom he had defeated with a tremendous display of political talent.
He had behind him his history as a combatant in the Pacific
and of his adroit pen.
Because he was over-confident, he was dragged into the Bay
of Pigs adventure by his predecessors, since he had no doubts
about the experience and professional capacity of all those men. His failure
was bitter and unexpected, a scant three months after his inauguration. Even
though he was on the point of attacking the Island with
his country’s powerful and sophisticated weaponry, on that occasion he didn’t
do what Nixon would have done: use the fighter-bombers and land the Marines.
Rivers of blood would have flowed in our Homeland where hundreds of thousands
of combatants were ready to die. He controlled himself and came up with a
categorical phrase that is hard to forget: “Victory has a thousand fathers, but
defeat is an orphan.”
His life continued to be dramatic, like a shadow that
accompanied him at all times. On the strength of wounded pride, he again
succumbed to the idea of invading us. This brought on the October [Missile]
Crisis and the most serious risks of thermonuclear warfare that the world has
ever known until the present day. He emerged from this test as an authority
thanks to the mistakes of his chief adversary. He seriously wanted to talk with
Cuba and that’s
what he decided to do. He sent Jean Daniel to talk with me and return to Washington .
His mission was being carried out at that moment when the news of President
Kennedy’s assassination arrived. His death and the strange way in which it was
orchestrated and carried out, was truly sad.
Later I met close family members who visited Cuba .
I never mentioned the unpleasant aspects of his policy against our country, nor
did I refer at all to the attempts to eliminate me. I met his son when he was
an adult, who had been a young child when his father had been the president of
the United States .
We got together as friends. His own brother Robert was also assassinated,
multiplying the drama shadowing that family.
At the distance of so many years, information arrived about
a gesture that impressed me.
These days, while so much was being said about the lengthy
and unfair blockade of Cuba in the upper echelons of the continent’s countries,
I read a news item in Mexico’s La Jornada: “At the end of 1963, the then
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sought to overturn the ban on travel to Cuba
and today his daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, wrote that President Barack
Obama ought to take this into account and support legislative initiatives that would
allow all Americans to travel to the island.
“In official documents declassified by the National Security
Archive research centre it is recorded that on December 12, 1963 , less than one month after the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent a
communication to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, urging the removal of
regulations prohibiting Americans from traveling to Cuba .
“Robert Kennedy claimed that the prohibition violated
American freedoms. According to the document, he affirmed that the current
restrictions on travel are inconsistent with traditional American freedoms.
“That position was unsuccessful inside the Lyndon B. Johnson
administration and the State Department decided that to suspend the
restrictions would be perceived as a softening of the Cuban policy and that
they were part of the joint effort made by the United
States and other American republics to
isolate Cuba .
“In an editorial article by Kathleen Kennedy printed today
in The Washington Post, Robert’s daughter expresses her wish that her father’s
position be adopted by the Barack Obama government, and that this should be the
position promoted by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. while the Obama
government weighs the next step it will take with Cuba, one that should be
pushing for allowing more than just Cuban-Americans to travel freely to the
island and dealing with the rights of all Americans, most of whom are not free
to go.
“Kathleen Kennedy writes that just as Obama found out at the
summit meeting last week-end, Latin American leaders have adopted a coordinated
message on Cuba :
the time is here to normalize relations with Havana .
By keeping on trying to isolate Cuba ,
they essentially told Obama , Washington
has only succeeded in isolating itself.
“Thus, the niece of the president who attempted to invade
and overthrow the Cuban Revolutionary government and impose the blockade, adds
her voice now to the ever-growing chorus in favor of reversing these policies
which were put in place half a century ago.”
A worthy article by Kathleen Kennedy!
Fidel Castro Ruz
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