'LISTEN YANKEE' REVISITED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000500250012-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 6, 2004
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: January 19, 1963
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

JAN 91963
Approved For Release 2004/02/10: CIA-RDP75-00
BOOKS AND THE 1L
"Listen Yankee" Revisited
by Samuel Shapiro
"My loyalties are conditional upon
my own convictions and my own
values.... Both of these lie more
with the Cuban revolution than with
the official United States reaction to
it. The policies the United States has
pursued and is pursuing against
Cuba are based upon a profound ig-
norance, and are shot through with
hysteria. I believe that if they are
continued they will result in more
disgrace and more disaster for the
image of my country before Cuba,
before Latin America, and before the
world." - C. Wright Mills,
Listen Yankee (1g6o)
Despite his successful academic career,
C. Wright Mills did not fit the conven-
tional pattern of a professor of sociol-
ogy at a major American university. For
one thing, his work was always intense-
ly committed and personal; he shied
away from foundation grants and asso-
ciation with research organizations that
turn out studies of public opinion, mar-
keting research, and similar directly use-
ful subjects. For another, he was not
content to mark out a small area within
his discipline and spend his life map-
ping its boundaries and filling in de-
tails. And, finally, he never accepted the
pleasing image of a righteous, prosper-
ous, and conflict-free America that was
a product of full employment in the
academic profession during the 1950's.
Instead, as the years went by and the
Cold War continued, Mills grew more
irreverent, more alienated, and more
critical of the faults he saw in Ameri-
can society.
Mills' boldness, his concern for big
problems and pivotal situations, and
his willingness to take intellectual risks
are all evident in Listen Yankee, the
shortest and next to last of the eleven
books he wrote or edited. As his critics
were quick to point out, he lacked most
of the usual qualifications requisite for
op -A-I~ z'f
writing about the Cuban revolution. He
had visited Latin America only briefly,
in 1959 and 1g6o, knew little about the
area's history or social structure, and
had never visited Cuba before his brief
tour in the summer of 1g6o. He did not
speak Spanish, and allowed himself to
be guided about the island by partisans
of the revolution; he did not interview
or obtain information from any gua-
jiros (peasants) or workers, from op-
ponents of Fidel, or from members of
the PSP (Communist) hierarchy who
were rising to key posts at the time of
his arrival in Havana.
Listen Yankee, therefore, was not a
cool and careful sociological study, but
a polemic along the lines of Common
Sense or J'accuse, an unusual and pas-
sionate statement to have come from an
academician. Despite Mills' explanation
that for the most part he was serving
only as a spokesman for the revolution-
aries, for "the hungry nation bloc [as]
a voice that must be heard" by, the
American public, his book was pretty
generally dismissed as a piece of fidelis-
ta propaganda:
"Mills is dishing out ... the official
Castro line; and ... he expounds it
with a mixture of bluster, revolu-
tionary rhetoric, and downright
falsehood which could not be im-
proved on by Fidel himself"-
Charles Rolo, The Atlantic, Febru-
ary, 1961.
"The book is . . . naive in the ex-
treme . . . or . . . purposefully de-
signed to create a false impression
about the . . . current situation in
Cuba." - Kevin Corrigan, Catholic
World, March, 1961.
"Tedious and repetitious, the book
reads like translations of Castro's in-
terminable and paranoiac brain-
washing tirades against the United
tortions and untruths ... that have
been printed in the Communist Par-
ty press for more than twenty-five
years.... With absolutely no at-
tempt at objectivity, Mills parrots
these absurd accusations." - Jules
Dubois, The Saturday Review, De-
cember 17, 1g6o.
When Harper's published a chapter
(December, 1g6o), its editors were care-
ful to label it "a piece of propaganda -
uncritical, emotional, oblivious of the
faults of the Castro regime." Even pe-
riodicals like Dissent and Encounter
were hostile to the argument of Listen
Yankee; as Mills put it, in the last letter
he wrote to me, "I expected to be beat
on the head by the mass media, but I
did not expect that the entire intelli-
gentsia of this country would reveal so
fully their moral cowardice."
Reading the book over again today,
with the perspective derived from two
more years' development of the Cuban
revolution, it is possible to see that
Mills was sometimes led astray by his
informants, or at least did repeat in-
accurate things which they told him.
Since his book had such an extraordi-
nary circulation (hundreds of thou-
sands of copies in this country, ioo,ooo
more in four editions in an authorized
translation issued in Mexico, and at
least one counterfeit edition published
in Peru - all most unusual for a serious
book about Latin America), it is worth
pointing out some of the errors of fact
which Mills did not correct or criticize:
Listen, Yankee:
The middle classes "failed complete-
ly to do anything real about the
Batista tyranny."
Comment:
This is unfair to the thousands of
middle-class Cubans who risked their
lives in clandestine work in the cities,
to such middle-class martyrs as Jose
Antonio Echevarria, who led the attack
on the Presidential Palace in 1957, to
the 170 middle-class youths who took
STAT
STAT
STAT
Approved For Release 2004/02/10 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000500250012-0
 part in the assault on the Moncada bar-
racks. Castro himself is of middle-class
origin, the son of a well-to-do Oriente
landlord, married for a -ime to the sister
of a Batista official.
'What. did you [Yankoes] do - about
the weapons, for example, the Yan-
kee Government kept sending. .. to
Batista?
US arms shipments tc, Cuba, totaling
less than $ii million botween 1945 and
1958, were doubtless an error. But
these shipments were halted in March,
1958.
Medical doctors are with and for
the revolution.
The Cuban Emergency Relief Center in
lv[iami estimates that 1,300 of Cuba's
5,000 MD's had left tae island by the
end of 1961, and more continue to ar-
rive in Miami every week.
"We are already [August, 1960] be-
yond the point where [American
economic pressure] c Auld hurt us in
any real way."
On my most recent %isit to Cuba, in
August, 1962, the loss of $600 million
in imports from the US was painfully
apparent; there were severe shortages
of food and every kind of consumer
goods. It is not at all clear if a viable
economy can be built up relying on
Approved For Release 200ffE 2f J 8fAuf 75-00149R000500250012-0
markets and sources of supply that are
10,000 miles away..
The Soviet countries are buying su-
gar. And that is because theit? stand-
ard of living is increasing. There is
thus a rational economic relation be-
tween These Soviet countries and
countries such as Cuba. . . . The
greater,gemand in the world market
will increase the price of sugar.
Ernesto Guevara himself has pointed
out that the USSR produces enough
(beet) sugar of its own, and that it
would be cheaper for the Russians to
increaseproduction at home rather than
rely on Cuba's antiquated and ineffi-
cient industry. And despite a disastrous
1962 Cuban crop of only 4.8 million
tons (which was exceeded as far back
as 1925), the world price of sugar has
been hovering at about 3 cents a pound
all year.
Ours is the first agrarian reform in
the world which began right away
with an increased production.... For
the first time in the history of Cuba,
the rural population is going to have
plenty of good clean chicken to eat
at a price they can afford.... By De-
cember, 1960, we figure we'l have
about do (state) farms, producing
some 6 million chickens a month; in
1961, we'll double that.
,!another Dream Song
INRA's figures, like those issued by
the Chinese during their Great Leap
Forward, arequite unreliable. There has
been some increase in production of
food in items like rice and beans. But
the agrarian reform has so far been un-
able to make up for the $i8o million in
food normally imported from the US.
Rice, beans, fish, eggs, meat, milk, but-
ter, and most other foods are tightly
rationed. As for chickens, Cubans are
entitled to only one a month, and don't
always get it. Castro's most recent
statement its that Cuba is producing
only 2 million chickens a month, "and
will double that in 1963." -Speech to
the Federation of Cuban Women, El
Mundo, October 3, .L962.
"Next year -1961-- we are going to
have a ore million ton steel plant."
No such plant is cur:rently in operation,
or even under construction. Even Pro-
fessor J. P. Morray, an enthusiastic de-
fender of the regime, estimates that
steel production will be only 250,000
tons in 1965. - "Cuba and Commu-
nism," Monthly Review, July-August
1961.
Our Prime Minister went to Wash-
ington right after the insurrection,
but he was just given the cold shoul-
der, and certainly no help. Even his
request for quite minor financial con-
sideration was turned down flat.
This bit of fidelista mythology has been
refuted by Felipe Pazos, Castro's first
National Bank President, and by Rufo
Lopez Fresquet, his Minister of Finance.
They accompanied Fidel to the US in
1959, and have reported their surprise
and disappointment: when he specifi-
cally ordered them not to ask for Amer-
ican help. - Daniel James, Cuba: The
First Soviet Satellite in the Americas
(New York, 1961)
Filling her com ,act and delicious body
with chicken p?iprika, she glanced at me
twice.
Fainting with i:iterest, I hungered back
and only the fact ofher husband and four other people
kept me from springing on her
or falling at he.- little feet and crying
"You are the h attest one for years of night
Henry's dazed .!yes
have enjoyed, Brilliance." I advanced upon
(despairing) m:rspumoni. - Sir Bones: is stuffed,
de world, wif reeding girls.
- Black hair, cc mplexion latin, jewelled eyes
downcast ... The slob beside her feasts ... What wonders is
she sitting on, over there?
The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.
Where did-it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.
- Mr. Bones: there is.
JOHN BERRYMAN
We Cuban revolutionaries of the
26th of July Movement are much
more advanced than the Communist
Party ever was or is today.... We
are using them rather than the re-
verse.... The Communists as a po-
litical party have very little impor-
tance in Cuba.
Even in the summer of 1960, when
Mills visited Cuba, PSP (Communist)
influence was considerable and grow-
ing. By 1962, INRA, Havana Univer-
sity, the trade union federation (CTC-
Approved For Release 2004/02/10 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000500250012-0
 Approved For Release 20d4ffiu1`/tb ~itIA41k1JP75-00149R000500250012-0
the largest newspaper were all headed
the only legal political party, and
The basic argument of Listen Yankee,
however, like the Cuban revolution it-
self, cannot be dismissed so easily. De-
spite errors of fact that were doubtless
inevitable in a book produced in such
haste, Mills also noted down a great
many truths about the revolution,
truths which the American people and
their leaders have not been able to
bring themselves to recognize even yet.
On re-reading the book in Cuba during
the summer of 1962, I was surprised to
see that much of what Mills wrote still
seemed applicable, even after two years
of continuing cataclysmic change. To
compensate for the brevity of Mills'
Latin American experience, he had the
advantages of a gifted observer's eye,
an understanding of the process of so-
cial change, a familiarity with radical
thought, and a sympathetic sociological
imagination to help him interpret the
revolution. He made many errors, but
on a number of crucial issues he was
right, and far more experienced Latin
American scholars and journalists
wrong; and it is important for us to
understand why.
To begin with, Mills made the most of
the weeks he spent in Cuba. Before ar-
riving in Havana he read everything he
could on the island's recent history, in-
cluding US Commerce Department re-
ports on sugar and the International
Bank for Reconstruction's surveys of
the economy. While his contacts were
limited to middle-class intellectuals, he
did travel from one end of the island
to the other, and interviewed many of
the men who are still running the re-
volution: President Osvaldo Dorticos,
Education Minister Armando Hart,
Ernesto Guevara, then head of the Na-
tional Bank and now Minister of In-
dustry, Carlos Franqui, editor of Revo-
lucidn, Major Rene Vallejo, INRA chief
of Oriente province, and others. And he
knew how to make the most of these
meetings. Robert Taber, himself an ex-
perienced reporter formerly with NBC,
wrote me last July that Mills
". . . was the most thorough, pene-
trating, and all-round best inter-
viewer I've ever seen, including any
journalist you'd care to mention, and
most psychiatrists.... When he got
through, subject and he were both
wrung dry, he because of remark-
ably intense concentration, watching
subject like a hawk for every ex-
pression. In the end he knew a
more about the subject than the sub
ject did, of that I'm sure. It was a
pleasure and wonder to watch him
work."
by "old militants," and the Union of
Young Communists (UJC) had clearly
become the road to future influence.
"We Cubans' aren't afraid of any
idea; so we are going to be really
free.... We believe that minorities
should have the means of expressing
their opinions."
Cuban newspapers, the university, the
schools, the publishing business, and
all the organs of intellectual life are
anything but "really free" at the pres-
ent time. Mills' informant could argue
that it is American pressure that has
led to the clamping-down on free dis-
cussion.
Listen Yankee says nothing about Cas-
tro's promise to restore the -1940 con-
stitution, his pledge of "genuine rep-
resentative government" and "truly
honest elections," his guarantee of "just
compensation of expropriated owners"
of land to be turned over to small
holders. Theodore Draper, Castro's
ablest American critic, has shown quite
clearly (in Castro's Revolution: Myths
and Realities) that el lider ma'ximo
promised one kind of revolution, and
delivered quite another.
Listen Yankee might seem, therefore,
to have only the limited value of telling
us what Cuban revolutionaries were
thinking and saying in the summer of
i96o. Even Draper admits that it is a
"peculiarly useful and exasperating
work" on this score, so faithful a record
that he was able to guess at the names
of many of Mills' informants.
"Catching superbly the color, flavor,
and intensity of the revolutionary
thinking and emotion, [Mills] has
presented with fine accuracy what
Castro and his friends think and
what makes them act the way they
have been acting toward the United
States.... The author has been emi-
nently successful in putting across
this 'voice of the Cuban revolu-
tion'." - Tad Szulc in The New
York Times, December 4, -1g6o.
But if the book were no more than an
honest and intelligent piece of journal-
ism, it could be regarded as only an
interesting but unimportant footnote
to Mills' scholarly career.
Putting together what he was told and
what he saw, Mills concluded that the
revolution had accomplished many
needed reforms, that it was popular
with a majority of the Cuban people,
and that it was permanent, i.e., could
not be destroyed by outside pressures.
In view of the subsequent unsuccessful
invasion of the island by aacked
group of Cuban exiles, it is clear that
President K?enneedy. would have done
well to listen t.9 CJs, Jnormants:
"Your government is dreaming of
some kind of indirect military action,
secretly supported mercenaries and
Batista henchmen; something like
they did in Guatemala a while back.
. But the ending isn't going to be
the same, we can assure you of that.
It won't work again.... We will not
flee the country as Batista did. We
are determined to fight to the end.
Any one who is here in Cuba for just
a little while sees clearly that this is
just a fact."
This was in print while American news-
papers prated about Castro's "hysteri-
cal" talk of an invasion, and even be-
fore Professor Ronald Hilton of Stan-
ford University revealed the existence
of an American base at Retalhuleu in
Guatemala. On the
(,gr.... nva-
sion and its, probable failure,.,MjI1 w s
c P -4 and the mass media,
the joint Chiefs of Staff, and
the President of the United States_=e
~noott.2lenty of Latin American experts,
wi~`th vastly more knowledge of Cuban
affairs than Mills, insisted, and still in-
sist, that Castro can be overthrown and
the old pattern of American domination
of the island resumed.
"I have the feeling that economic
pressures will make Fidel Castro un-
popular in the long run.... When
things hit bottom, the United States
will lend $500 million to a new Cu-
ban Government on the pledge that
the confiscated properties will be
returned or the former owners in-
demnified. American capital will re-
enter Cuba." - Daniel M. Frieden-
Approved For Release 2004/02/10 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000500250012-0
 Approved For Release 2004)OW f'GEv4C gROP75-00149R000500250012-0
berg;, "History Wi I Not Absolve
Castro," The New Republic, October
10, i.96o.
"To remain in power, Castro will
have to massacre m Est of the coun-
try's 6.5 million peo ,le." - Jules Du-
bois, The Pontiac Press, November
11, 1961.
People who write tr is way, as Mills
pointed out, simply CO not understand
revolutions. We can, as Senator Engle
of California has engagingly suggested,
"take the top six feet off of all of Cuba
with one air strike, and all that's built
on it, and all that lire on it." But we
cannot reverse a soc al revolution and
restore the old order of things in Cuba.
Another theme of L'sten Yankee was
Mills' insistence on Castro's humani-
tarian goals and achievements. On my
own visits to the island in 1g6o, 1960-
61, and 1962, I sari continuing evi-
dence of concern for the immediate wel-
fare and future well-being of what had
formerly been the despised lower
classes. Indeed, the Communist techni-
cians from Eastern Europe I interviewed
in Cuba usually criticized the regime
because it was too easy-going, too con-
sumption-oriented, too committed to
such "impractical" projects as housing,
hotels, and tourism - "not enough work
and too much cha-cha-cha."
No one can deny that the press in
Cuba today is muzzled, that the trade
unions z.re becoming organs of the state
for enforcing production goals, and that
grave injustices have been and are
being committed by a small group of
men with absolute power. Nevertheless,
the positive social accomplishments of
the past four years have won continu-
ing support for Castro from what I be-
lieve is still a substantial majority of
the Cuban people. It would be easy but
meaningless to present testimony to
that effect by such uncritical eulogists
of the regime as Leo Hubermman, Paul
Sweezevr, and Professor Morray. But
consider the following observations, all
of them supporting Mills' view, and all
of them written by men whose attitude
toward Castro ranges from mildly criti-
cal to bitterly hostile:
the program turns out in practice;-.,_
there is no getting around the fact
that for the poor, illiterate, landless,
outcast guajiros, the cooperatives
represent a jump of centuries in liv-
ing standards. They also represent a
vast increase of constructive activity
in the rural areas that were formerly
the most backward and stagnant
part of Cuba.... For the first time
in Cuban history a leader has given
[the peasants] a sense of human dig-
nity and political importance, and
they have paid him back by revering
him." - Theodore Draper, "The
Runaway Revolution," The Report-
er, May 12, 1960.
"I'm one hundred percent better. Be-
fore, there was not work. Now
there's work all year. Now we are
eating - rice, eggs, beans.... If this
is Communism, let it come." - An
unidentified cooperative farmer in
Pinar del Rio, quoted in Time, June
20, 1960.
"Seven thousand new school class-
rooms have been completed this
year.... Uncounted millions have
been spent on the building of public
beaches and tourist facilities - a pet
project of Dr. Castro-leading even
some of the Premier's most devoted
followers to wonder about his sys-
tem of revolutionary priorities."-
Tad Szulc, The New York Times,
August 3, 1g6o.
"No less than 86 percent of our
sample did approve of the present
situation in Cuba and ... one half
of these ... revealed themselves as
really fervent supporters of the pres-
ent government.... We feel reason-
ably confident in predicting that, had
a national election been held at the
time of our survey, Fidel Castro
would have won by overwhelming
odds." - Lloyd A. Free, Attitudes of
the Cuban People Toward the Cas-
tro Regime (Princeton, 1961).
"The story of the transformation of
Cuba from a friendly ally to a Com-
munist base is - in large measure -
the story of a government in Wash-
ington which lacked the imagination
and compassion to understand the
needs of the Cuban people." - Sen-
ator John F. Kennedy, in a speech
of October 6, ig6o, reprinted in In-
196o
"No matter what one may think of
the theory behind Cuba's ",and-re-
form program and no matter how
Enrico's Brother
Enrico's brother married a strange lady,
the Earth, no other bride he needed; she labored,
brought fcrth fine sapling children; he laughed at times
and offered firm red apples to his friends:
"My grandchild this," he'd say, "this saucy redhead;
or this blond fellow with the pointed head,"
pointing a pear.
Enrico's bi other's heart
tired suddenly one sunny morning
as he was sawing for his winter reading.
They gave him a harp. He had never favored the harp
and played it awkwardly. They taught him songs
and this v% as more to his liking. He was maker of songs
in his Earth-love days.
But after it million years
of tingling the harp and singing and singing the songs
and watcF ing the myriad myriad newcomers come,
Enrico's b ?other sought and asked the officials:
"How are my children in that lovely place?"
The officials were friendly enough, they studied the charts;
at last and slowly they turned their haloed heads
and spoke as one: "It seems to be gone," they said.
JOHN RUSSELL MCCARTHY
Approved For Release 2004/02/10 : CIA=RDP75-00149R000500250012-0
 Approved For Release R(2QA4/g2/1J, :1c,-RDf75-00149R000500250012-0
ter-American Economics Affairs, Journey to Cuba," Dissent, Summer,
Winter, 196x. 1961.
1961
"The agrarian reform program, the
heart of the original revolution, is, to
use the most reticent adjective, a
splendid piece of work ... undoubt-
edly a success in the improvement of
people as well as of statistics....
What is most impressive ... is the
change made by the revolution in
people's attitude to life." - "Cuba in
Mid-Revolution," The Economist
(London), January 7, x961.
"The Fidelist government does have
achievements to point to. In the
course of a short two years it has
built thousands of first-rate schools;
it has led an intense (and remark-
ably successful) campaign to eradi-
cate illiteracy; it has constructed
rural settlements which, for the first
time, offer modern, sane and even
comfortable housing to a growing
number of its coo perativistas.... A
strong majority of the rural popula-
tion still seems willing to follow
Castro's lead." - F. R. Alleman, Fo-
rum Service, February 11, 1961.
"Castro and Guevara are literally
adored ... by the large number of
poor and humiliated Cubans, especi-
ally the Negroes. They see these two
leaders as saintly and honorable
men, dedicated to removing injus-
tices and discrimination, to which
the Cuban Negroes had been sub-
jected." - Joseph Newman, The
New York Herald Tribune, March
23, 1961.
"If Castro has enough time and
money to create a higher standard
of living among the peasants as a re-
sult of this truly revolutionary [land
reform program] he will go down in
Cuban history as a greater patriot
than Jose Marti.... Not merely for
propaganda purposes . . . but be-
cause it is deeply and sincerely be-
lieved, the Cuban regime emphasizes
that justice and dignity are for the
poor and small and colored as well as
the rich and big and white.... Al-
most all the peasants still support
Castro, as do the very poor and the
Negroes in the city population. The
intellectuals are without doubt in his
camp." - Daniel M. Friedenberg, "A
"The concrete cubes of peasant
houses, with electricity and running
water, are replacing the former
squalor of palm leaf thatched huts.
... Living standards are rising and
unemployment is dwindling." - Tad
Szulc, The New York Times, June
25, 1961.
1962
"The explanations offered for Cas-
tro's failure to hold elections are on
the whole reasonable. The Revolu-
tion has been unquestionably popu-
lar with a large majority of the Cu-
ban people, and few revolutionary
governments ... have held elections
until considerable time elapsed after
they came to power." - Dennis H.
Wrong, "The American Left and
Cuba," Commentary, February,1962.
"Though greatly diminished, the re-
servoir of idealism and expectancy
that Castro began with still exists
among many campesinos." - Time,
April 27, 1962.
"Cubans partial to the revolution
... take pride in modern housing de-
velopments that have sprung up,
mainly on palm-dotted fields but
also around several cities. In Ha-
vana ... they will point at the East
Havana suburb, with its up-to-date
apartment buildings etched on the
bright horizon. Rolling through the
countryside, one sees acres of small
concrete-and-brick homes, designed
to replace miserable huts," - AP dis-
patches printed in The New York
Times, June =o and June 13, 1962.
"The eradication of prostitution and
gambling (much of it controlled by
US gangsters), the quick social re-
forms - these made a deep impres-
sion on all those in Latin America
who had been hoping for progress in
their own countries.... Castroism
still represents a formidable rallying
point for Latin America's destitute
masses." - George N. Fenin, "De-
mocracy's Last Chance in Latin
America," The Saturday Review,
August 18, 1962.
"Low cost modern housing, replac-
ing wretched slums, has benefited
N
ACCOMMODATION
FROM
I THE NEW
REPUBLIC
Briefly:
you may purchase any book
recently reviewed in The New
Republic for 20 percent less than
its retail price. Some of these
books are listed in the coupon
(below) with the bookstore
prices and the lower rates to
which you are entitled as a
reader of The New Republic.
Your check must accompany the
order. (We cannot bill you, be-
cause the bookkeeping and cler-
ical costs would be prohibitive.)
You may order direct from us,
as shown below. Mail to
-----------------
THE NEW REPUBLIC
shipping department
1244 19th Street, N.W.
Washington, D. C.
Please send me a copy of each book
I have checked off below.
^ Lessing: The Golden Notebook
(retail price - $5.95) PRICE: $4.76
^ Biddle: In Brief Authority
(retail price-$5.95) PRICE: $4.76
^ Powers: Morte D'Urban -
(retail price - $4.95) PRICE: $3.96
Sitwell: The Queens & the Hive
(retail price - $7.50) PRICE: $6
^ Purdy: Children Is All -
(retail price - $4.25) PRICE: $3.40
^ White: The Points of My Compass
(retail price - $4.00) PRICE: $3.20
TOTAL: *
* My check for this amount is en-
closed.
Approved For Release 2004/02/10 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000500250012-0
 Approved For Release 2004/012110.1-E6iIltt r75-00149R000500250012-0
But the United States, Mills argued,
could only exacerbate the problem and
drive Fidel to tyranny by continuing its
hostile attitude toward his regime. Re-
peated statements by American officials
that "Communism in'this hemisphere
is not negotiable" (Adlai Stevenson),
and that "we do not recognize the Cas-
tro regime in Cuba, and never will"
(Douglas Dillon), are fine for home
consumption, but hardly the basis for
a viable Caribbean policy. With the Al-
liance for Progress so far an admitted
failure, fidelismo is still what Mills said
it was," a major alternative to . . .
misery elsewhere in Latin America."
The intellectuals in President Ken-
nedy's entourage have tried to brush
aside Mills' assertion (in The Power
Elite and The Causes of World War III)
that a small group of men with vested
interests controlled American domestic
and foreign policy, and that they based
their rule on "violence and . . . inept
opportunism." But it remains for them
to explain why the Cuban policy pur-
sued during the last two years of the
Eisenhower Administration and the first
two years of the New `Frontier fell into
such a monolithic pattern. Eisenhower
cut off the Cuban sugar quota; Ken-
nedy shut off the last trickle of trade.
Eisenhower broke relations; Kennedy
kept our embassy in Havana shut. is-
enhower authorized the training or 'a
banes ~~f anti-C:astro xeugees by the
CIA; Kennedy sent them ashore in the
y of Pigs. The faces (except for the
ever-present head of the FBI) change.
Eisenhower, the Dulles brothers, and
Sherman Adams are yre laced by the
Kennedys, McCone,rt ur Schlesing-
er, Jr. and fc(jeorge Bundy. Buts our
Cuban,ains the, same. This
wou'Yd" be understandable, perhaps, if
that policy were successful, But our
hostility has so far succeeded only in
driving Fidel further' into the Soviet
camp; his first official announcement
that his was a. "Socialist" revolution
came immediately after our tragi-comic
invasion of April, .:196-1. As Mills
warned, State Department ,a . ! :? -
icyma;ershaveght a out what
they most feared - the intrusion of
Russian Communism in the tsar bti an.
y , -- it rI~ : , .n.
MIT ls` asic conclusions about astro,
then, have not yet been proved wrong.
He felt also that the inadequate Amer-
ican reaction to fidelismno was sympto-
matic, that "on the shores of Cuba the
whole international posture of th
thousands of Cuba--k families. So has
the health program. Clinics have
been established throughout the
countryside, and medicine has
reached some remote areas for the
first time.... Giant strides have also
been made in education.... More
Cubans are eating; more regularly
than was true in pr,!-Castro days. No
report on Cuba pretending to a rea-
sonable degree of objectivity can
avoid the judgment that Castro's re-
gime has achieved significant gains
for its people in tl.e realm of social
service." - Donald Grant, "Castro's
Cuba Today," "'he Progressive,
September, 1962.
These reports, and others like them,
should not of cour;e lead us to any
blanket endorsement of a totalitarian
regime; similar stories regularly came
out of Mussolini's :Italy, Stalin's Rus-
sia, and Hitler's Germany. Castro's dic-
tatorship could become a brutal tyran-
ny. Mills himself was aware of this,
and frank in expressing his fears:
"I do not like such dependence
upon one man as exists in Cuba to-
day', nor the virtually absolute pow-
er that this One mi.n possesses ....
Any moment of such military and
economic truth might become an
epoch of political and cultural lies.
It might harden into any one of sev-
eral kinds of dicta orial tyranny."
~,jb the author of numer-
c
ous S ? r tV - t l s pit pol-
io i;n Latin ,fume, cz, hqA_ us IOU,, his
l assistant pro f essor of Amer-
ican history at , ' l! an State Univer-
,y, The Detroit free Press charges
that the issue of academic freedom was
raised by his disco ssal, and students
have set up a committee for his rein-
statement. Dr. 51 apiro's article is
drawn from a f wt 9 in$,.vo_lu,me:
The New Sociology : Essays on Social
Theory and Social Values ",Honor of
C,~?tjvlills, edited by Irving L.
Horowitz, John Be?ryman, a member
of the English faculty at Brown Univer-
sity, has published several books of
poems. John Russel. McCarthy, a Cali-
fornia poet, makes his first New Re-
public appearance with this issue.
United States of America has . . . col-
lapsed in utter failure." Even before
Kennedy's election Mills predicted the
attempted invasion, the unsuccessful
Alianza, and the inability of the new
Administration to deviate in any essen-
tial way from the policies of the old in
Latin America: "You're coming up
against the economic and political struc-
ture of the United. States."
Re-read in this light, Listen Yankee
fits into Mills' thought as a significant
part of its structure. Here, he believed,
was a possible escape from the sterile
formulas of the past, from the warfare
between impotent: liberalism and vul-
garized ;Marxism. The Cuban revolu-
tion, he thought, was a new and inde-
pendent movement, with a great deal
of prom'se in opening a new road to
socialism., one free of the dogmatism
and sectarianism of orthodox Commu-
ist movements elsewhere. During the
last year of his life he hoped to return
to Cuba to see how the revolution was
progressng, and perhaps to begin a
broadly based study of what he re-
garded as one of the most promising
social experiments of the ig6o's. And it
was fitting that his last book, devoted
to a consideration of the varieties of
Marxism, should have concluded with
Ernesto Guevara's "Notes for the Study
of the Ideology of the Cuban Revolu-
tion." f can similarly end with some of
the advice that Mills hoped we would
listen to before it was too late:
"No matter what you believe about
Communism, there is only one way
you can counter it. You must begin
really to compete with that influence
in positive, constructive ways. And
that can only mean in technical and
cultural and economic and political
ways. If you really tried, perhaps
you might win . . . . Cuba is your
big chance. It's your chance to estab-
lish once again what the United
States perhaps did once mean to the
world. It's your chance to make it
clear how you're going to respond to
all the chaos and tumult and glory,
all the revolution and bloody mess
and enormous hopes that are coming
about among aP.l the impoverished,
disease-ridden, illiterate, hungry peo-
ples o:F the world in which you,
Yankee, are getting so fat an
drowsy."
Approved For Release 2004/02/10 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000500250012-0