538. Letter From the Ambassador in Cuba (Bonsal) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Rubottom)1
Dear Dick: The situation here is of course pretty hopeless. We are getting more and more into the field of unilateral actions by each party designed to retaliate for actions or attitudes of the other party and carried out with little or no prior discussion.
I venture the suggestion that we make a last attempt, when the question of fixing Cuban suger quotas in accordance with currently proposed legislation comes up, to have some useful discussion. Before we make any determination, I would suggest that I be given an instruction to discuss with the Cubans at the highest possible level our proposed action and reasons therefor so that before we make any final decisions we can have the benefit of their views and possibly modify our action in the light of their reaction to my approaches.
I refer to the memorandum of your conversation on June 10 with Mr. Dillon.2 People here are already talking about the diversion of Cuba’s expected quota additions to meet electoral commitments in the United States.
I doubt very much if we want to operate this business in such a way as “to take a good solid slap at Cuba”. My view is that what we want is to be able to take action in defense of our interests as we see them and in a way that will be as convincing as possible to public opinion in Cuba as well as convincing to our own public opinion and to that in the other American republics.
Of course, the uncertainty that exists with regard to this whole matter is probably more helpful than not. But I would like to be able to discuss our proposed action with the Cubans before we take it.
[Page 970]Sincerely yours,