Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume V, Microfiche Supplement, American Republics

CR–24. Letter from the Ambassador in Costa Rica (Willauer) to the Director of the Office of Central American and Panamanian Affairs (Stewart)¹

San José, July 27, 1960

Dear Allan:

In your informal Washington roundups of July 15 and 22 (Reverse Weekas)² you remark that “President Echandi’s rather shabby performance made it impossible for the Central American countries to take action” jointly to break relations with Cuba and you wonder whether Cuba’s insulting view of San José as the situs for the Meeting of Foreign Ministers³ “might not change President Mario Echandi’s attitude toward Fidelismo.”

In fairness to Echandi, and in the hope that the Department will not let the disappointment that I share with you were unable to persuade Echandi to join in a break relations, I wish to recall certain things to your attention; as Echandi himself did to mine, at the time I obtained his immediate support to the Peruvian initiative for action in the OAS on the Cuban problem.

As I have constantly reported there has never been any doubt Echandi’s own ideological condemnation of “Fidelismo.” He also was one of the earliest Latin leaders to advocate OAS action against Cuban communism. His most concrete move towards that was the offer he made last month which I presented to the Department in my April visit to Washington.⁴

As that time you will recall that Castro had just denounced the Rio Treaty.⁵ Echandi and I worked out a plan whereby, using this current threat to the Inter-American System, Costa Rica would join with Colombia or with the U.S., or both, or with any other politically palatable Latin States in a declaration in the forum of the OAS which would:

1. Demand a showdown on whether Cuba in fact adhered to the Rio Treaty.

2. Would praise the original objectives of the Cuban revolution and would offer hemisphere moral and economic support to accomplish these objectives if and when Cuba’s Government would give proof that it intended to accomplish these within the principles of the Declaration of Santiago,⁶ and was willing to divorce itself from International Communism.

The plan in (2) above had been advocated by me before the March 28th Castro denunciation of the Rio Treaty in my letters to Assistant Secretary Rubottom of March 8 and 22;⁷ and when the denunciation of the Treaty came I explained my ideas to Echandi. He enthusiastically adopted them, and authorized me to offer that kind of action to the Department in my forthcoming visit to Washington.

In my visit it developed that the Department was not prepared then to go along with a U.S.-Costa Rican declaration, but that explorations of possible Colombian action with Costa Rica would be made through Bogotá. Nothing apparently came of these.

Whatever may have been the further complicating factors in Echandi’s failure to join a break of relations (and there have been a number of these) the fact remains that Echandi insisted that there was not, at the time he was asked to break, a clear-cut issue between Cuba and Costa Rica as nations, as distinguished from the situation in March where the “peg” for action was the then current defiance of the Inter-American System.

As also previously pointed out, Echandi wished to be accompanied in his action by the U.S., or by other democratically impeccable Latin countries. One of the inherent difficulties in his political problem in the proposed Central American break of relations always was that Costa Rica would be open to accusation internally and internationally of joining with Ydígoras and Somoza who had already taken action; and since there was no current clear issue between Costa Rica and Cuba to justify Costa Rica’s action in Costa Rica’s own direct interest, Echandi would have to justify it as solidarity with other countries, two of which were pretty unpalatable in Costa Rican and hemisphere opinion when it came to an attack against Cuba based upon democratic principles.

I suggest that this explanation with any comments you care to make be circulated to my colleagues in the other OAP countries. My feeling is that would be most unfortunate if Echandi would be chided by any of the governments of these countries into publicly taking the position, which has privately expressed to me, that the “U.S. missed the boat” when it did not accept his offer last April.

With best regards,

Whiting Willauer

1. Source: Department of State, OAP Files, Lot 63 D 127, “Costa Rica, 1960.” Secret; Official-Informal.
2. The letters from Stewart were not found in Department of State files.
3. Documentation on the Sixth and Seventh Meetings of consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of American States, held at San José, August 16–29, 1960 is presented in Volume. V.
4. Ambassador Willauer departed from San José on April 21 for consultations in Washington. Documentation on these consultations is in OAP Files, Lot 64 D 66, “Interdepartmental Memos: Costa Rica, 1960.” He returned to San José on May 3.
5. Reference is to the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, opened for signature at Rio de Janeiro, September 2, 1947; for text, see 4 Bevans 559.
6. Reference is to Res. I adopted by the Fifth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of American States, held at Santiago, August, 12–18, 1959.
7. Not printed. (OAP Files, Lot 63 D 127, “Costa Rica, 1960”)