Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–10, Documents on American Republics, 1969–1972

242. Intelligence Memorandum, OCI No. 1730/71¹ ²

Washington, September 1, 1971

Joint Assessment
Cuban Subversion in Latin America

SUBJECT:

• Cuban Subversive Activities in Latin America

Summary

1. The paucity of hard evidence of current Cuban participation in violent subversion—particularly in view of the ease with which such evidence was uncovered in the past—indicates that Havana’s involvement in this activity is at its lowest level since Fidel Castro assumed power. Only in Guatemala is there information about direct Cuban participation with an active Latin American guerrilla force; Havana’s subversive assistance to other Latin American groups consists primarily of continued propaganda and probably limited insurgent training and funding Cuba’s foreign intelligence apparatus now seems to be geared more to intelligence collection and political action than to support of insurgent movements. Castro would probably insist upon a very low risk factor and a high probability of success before lending substantial Cuban support to an effort to unseat an “unfriendly” Latin American government by violent means. It has taken him almost a decade to learn that sponsorship of violent subversion often bears bitter fruit and that there are more subtle ways of promoting his foreign policy objectives with less risk to his own revolution.

2. Stung by the failure of Che Guevara’s guerrilla team In Bolivia and by the many other defeats in similar operations abroad, and hard pressed by the domestic economic situation to devote more attention to internal affairs, Castro in 1968 began a gradual disengagement from those violent subversive operations that showed little promise of success. At the same time, he moved to improve his relations with his chief economic benefactor—the USSR—and worked to re-establish ties with Latin American Communist parties formerly alienated by his seemingly unrestricted support of revolutionary movements. He also attempted to refurbish his image among non-Communist circles in the hemisphere and, although he continued to give verbal support to violent revolution, he reduced his material commitment to rebel movements to such an extent that some guerrilla chieftains complained publicly of a withdrawal of Cuban assistance.

3. Events of the last three and one-half years—notably the political developments in Peru, Chile, and until recently Bolivia—have led Castro to believe that a trend in Cuba’s favor has materialized and that it is growing stronger. As long as he can continue to take advantage of this trend and dilute the isolation imposed on Cuba by the Organization of American States (OAS), he will be less inclined to chance an international political reversal occasioned by blatant involvement in violent subversive operations. His adoption of a new policy on subversion, however, does not mean that he has rejected completely his support of violent revolution; neither does it represent an abandonment of other terms of subversion, which he is believed to continue to regard as valid and useful political tools.

Background

4. Fidel Castro has been involved in subversion and armed struggle in varying degrees ever since the Cayo Confites expedition in 1947. Almost every Latin American Republic has felt his interference at least once. His involvement has taken many different forms ranging from direct personal participation, as in the Cayo Confites adventure against dictator Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, to the supplying of arms and ammunition as in Nicaragua in 1959 and Venezuela in 1963. His efforts have consistently met with failure, with the single exception of his war against former Cuban President Fulgencio Batista

5. As soon as Castro assumed power in Cuba in January 1959, Havana became the center for subversive operations against other Latin American countries. In 1959 alone, expeditions were mounted against Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Panama. These ill-planned and poorly executed operations, developed during the euphoria created by the unprecedented success of Castro’s guerrilla forces, were total failures.

6. Undeterred by his early failures, Castro continued dabbling in subversion. In the early and mid-1960’s, Cuban support—in the form of money, weapons, training, propaganda, and/or personnel—was directed to those rebel groups in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Central America, and the Caribbean willing to take to the hills and adopt guerrilla warfare. Proof of Cuban involvement in many of these affairs was irrefutable. In 1963, for example, a cache of several tons of weapons and ammunition, much of it traceable to Havana through identification of serial numbers and restoration (through scientific processes) of partially obliterated imprints of the Cuban Army’s coat of arms, was unearthed by government officials on a Venezuelan beach where it had been secreted by the Cubans for use by Venezuelan guerrillas.

7. The Tricontinental Conference, held in Havana In January 1966 was an effort by Castro to assume a major role in the leadership of revolutionary movements throughout the world. At the Conference, which was co-sponsored by the USSR and Cuba and was attended by more than 500 delegates, the African-Asian-Latin American Peoples Solidarity Organization (AALAPSO)was formed to coordinate the activities or all “anti-imperialist” rebel movements. A Cuban, Captain Osmani Cienfuegos, was appointed AALAPSO Secretary General and Havana was designated as the location of the organization’s headquarters. Following the conference, a second meeting, also sponsored by Cuba and attended by the conference’s Latin American delegates, was held at which the Latin American Solidarity Organization(LASO) was formed. Havana was declared the permanent seat of LASO and Cuba presided over the LASO’s ruling Permanent Committee. Castro apparently intended that LASO would function as a support mechanism for guerrilla expeditions such as Che Guevara’s Bolivian operation which was already in the formative stage, but by the time LASO held its first congress in July 1967, the Bolivian guerrillas were already doomed, thanks largely to the premature exposure of the group in March long before it was ready for combat.

8. Further proof of Havana’s sponsorship of subversion surfaced in May 1967 when four Cuban military officers were captured near Machurucuto, Venezuela. The Cubans were attempting Infiltrate into the Venezuelan interior and had been brought to the infiltration point by a Cuban fishing boat, the SIERRA. The equipment they brought with them readily identified them as prospective guerrillas.

9. Castro was dismayed by the embarrassing turn of events in Venezuela but he suffered an even more damaging blow in October 1967 when it became clear the Bolivian armed forces had liquidated Guevara’s band. The Bolivian adventure represented Castro’s most important attempt to “export the revolution” and it was carried out with the most expert leadership and generous financial support that Havana could provide. The fall of Guevara apparently forced upon Castro the realization that, unless very specific and unique conditions were present, subversive operations of the magnitude that Havana could muster enjoyed little chance of success.

10. The unsuccessful operations in Venezuela and Bolivia, culminating almost a decade of failures in international subversion, caused Castro to pause and reassess his foreign policy. He probably realized that his adventures abroad had been expensive in terms of personnel, money, and prestige and that they did little more than give his opponents justification for advocating continued restrictive measures designed to further Havana’s isolation.

11. Although Castro had predicted that success in guerrilla warfare In Latin America would be a long-range prospect and that victory could not be expected in the short term, he clearly was exasperated with the failure of Cuban-supported revolutionary movements to gain momentum, and he openly criticized those rebel leaders such as Douglas Bravo in Venezuela who had had opportunities but had “fumbled them away.”

12. Furthermore, Castro was aware that his espousal of violent revolution had sparked bitter opposition in the local Communist parties in Latin America. Local Communist leaders judged themselves to be in a better position than Castro to determine what was the proper way to achieve power in their respective countries. Whereas Castro looked upon them as ossified hacks too concerned with creature comforts to engineer a seizure of power, they considered Castro a country bumpkin, a Johnny-come-lately who had come to power through a political accident and who, despite his gross political and ideological inexperience, had the effrontery to press upon them his naive and fallacious interpretation of Marxist-Leninist theory. These leaders made their dissatisfaction with Castro known in Moscow and Moscow in turn relayed this dissatisfaction on to Castro.

13. Although Castro had largely ignored previous admonitions to restrain his subversive activities—his promises to orthodox Communist leaders to that effect in May 1963 and November 1964 were never honored—he was in a less favorable negotiating position in late 1967 and early 1968 because of serious domestic pressures. Faced with the decision of continuing an aggressive but sterile policy or shifting to a more pragmatic approach that offered to be more productive in the long run, Castro chose the latter. In 1968, he began the painful process of improving his relations with the USSR, re-establishing ties with the Latin American Communist parties, and refurbishing his image in the hemisphere.

14. Castro’s decision was not adopted without some vigorous nudging from Moscow which had expressed its irritation in various ways. The Soviet ambassador in Havana was not immediately replaced following his recall in April 1967 and, at the height of the Middle East crisis, party chief Brezhnev is said to have likened Castro to the Chinese and to have threatened that Moscow would not keep Cuba “afloat” if the Cuban leader did not soon come to his senses. Premier Kosygin paid a personal call on Castro following his visit to the US in the wake of the June 1967 war and there were reports at the time that he dropped hints in line with Brezhnev’s admonitions. By the spring of 1968, however, the situation began to improve and in May a new Soviet ambassador was sent to Havana, filling the post left vacant for 13 months.

15. Castro’s reluctant endorsement of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, backhanded though it was, constituted the first major public concession by Havana in the interest of improving of Cuban-Soviet relations. Perhaps the high point in Havana’s campaign to please Moscow came in April 1970 when Castro delivered a speech slavish In Its praise of Lenin and, in a pointed affront to one of the specific prerequisites for an improvement in Cuban-US relations, calling for even closer military ties with the USSR.

16. Havana’s gradual disengagement from guerrilla groups could not fail to please both the USSR and the local Communist parties. In addition, special radio programs that were sources of considerable irritation to the Communist Parties of Chile, Venezuela, and Brazil were dropped from Radio Havana’s broadcasting schedule and contacts were developed which eventually led to the restoration formal ties between the Cuban Communist Party and several Latin American Communist parties. Cuba continued to provide safe haven for revolutionaries who fled their homelands by hijacking airplanes, being exchanged for kidnapped diplomats, or other means, but Castro could hardly have retained his credentials as a revolutionary had he denied entry to those seeking refuge.

17. The process of disengaging left Castro extremely sensitive to charges that his revolutionary fervor might be on the wane. When guerrilla leaders in Venezuela complained in late 1969 and early 1970 that Havana had withdrawn its assistance, Castro responded in a bitter attack, promising that revolutionaries “like Che,” willing to fight and die, could always count on Cuba’s aid but that pseudo-revolutionaries who fumbled away precious opportunities would get nothing. Probably because of that sensitivity, his break with large-scale support of violent revolution was neither quick nor clean. Deeply impressed by the headline-grabbing exploits of the Tupamaros in Uruguay and Carlos Marighella and other revolutionaries in Brazil, Castro conducted a short-lived flirtation with urban terrorism. Following the death or capture of important pro-Cuban rebel leaders in Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Panama, and Haiti all in the space of a few months beginning in late 1969, however, Castro seemed to lose interest even in this form of violent revolution.

18. To present a more respectable image in Latin America, Havana encouraged increased contacts with foreign nationals through expansion of PRENSA LATINA; exchanges of sports, technical, and cultural delegations; participation in international meetings and conferences (e.g.: FAO and ECLA meetings in various Latin American capitals); and developing trade. PRENSA LATINA itself was reshaped to give the outward appearance of a Latin American rather than Cuban press agency but it remained a branch of the Cuban foreign intelligence apparatus and continued to serve as an intelligence collector.

19. After the emergence of a nationalistic military regime in Peru in October 1968, Castro expanded his definition of “revolutionary” to embrace not only guerrilla movements but any regime which in his opinion demonstrated its independence from “US imperialism” and initiated basic domestic reforms. In July 1969, he publicly expressed approval of the military government in Lima and began a campaign of cautious cultivation of the Peruvians. He succeeded in getting approval for the opening of a PRENSA LATINA office in Lima and it was through this office that Havana, quick to take advantage of the opportunity, arranged for the dispatch to Peru of blood plasma, medical personnel, and relief supplies in the wake of the disastrous earthquake of May 1970. Seeking to extract the maximum propaganda value from the occasion, Havana gave wide publicity to its relief efforts and outdistanced even the Peruvians in demanding special consideration for the earthquake victims in the United Nations. The propaganda value accruing to Havana far exceeded the actual cost of the relief effort and is an example of Castro’s new sophistication. The Cubans now have a permanent medical mission in Peru and—in contrast to Havana’s aid to Peruvian guerrillas in the mid-1960s—are building six field hospitals in areas hardest hit by the earthquake. The Peruvian government has responded by ignoring OAS sanctions and selling 105,000 tons of fishmeal to Cuba.

20. Chile also responded to Castro’s new posture. Although direct trade was resumed during the administration of President Frei early last year, in November the government of President Allende re-established diplomatic relations with Havana and a marked increase in Cuban-Chilean trade occurred. Normal political, commercial, and cultural contacts have been resumed between the two countries and a contingent of Cuban Interior Ministry officials are in Chile engaged in training Chilean intelligence and security officers.

21. Comments indicating a favorable attitude concerning ending of OAS sanctions against Cuba and reintegrating Cuba into the hemispheric community have also been made by important political leaders in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Trinidad and Tobago and, up until the recent coup in Bolivia, the Torres government in La Paz had been expected to announce the resumption of diplomatic relations in the near future. Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela followed Peru’s lead and permitted PRENSA LATINA to open offices in their respective capitals. Several countries have hosted Cuban sports teams and many countries have permitted sports delegations to travel to Cuba to participate in various competitive events. Cuban technical groups have visited British Honduras, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Martinique, and Guadeloupe in the past two years and return visits from several of these areas have been accorded special attention by Havana. Although Havana has attempted unsuccessfully so far, to establish commerce with some of the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean, a modest trade has been conducted with the French islands for at least the past two years.

The Current Picture

22. Cuban support to revolutionary movements in Latin America is probably at its lowest point since Castro took power in 1959. Only in Guatemala is there information about direct Cuban participation with an active Latin America guerrilla force and all reporting on this backing has been supplied [text not declassified] claimed that as of early 1971 fifteen Cuban guerrilla advisers were serving with the Rebel Armed Forces, a guerrilla group that has been waging unconventional warfare in both the cities and rural areas for years.

23. Havana has undoubtedly maintained contact with other revolutionary organizations in Latin America and probably is involved in some funding and guerrilla warfare training. There is very little evidence of this, however, and the level of activity is well below that of 1967 and previous years when proof of Cuban-sponsored subversion was comparatively easy to uncover. Fidel Castro apparently weighed the results of almost a decade of subversion against the potential dividends of a longer term but more realistic and flexible foreign policy and he opted for the latter. Rather than trying opportunities to enhance his own revolutionary influence in other countries through the use of violence, he now seems willing to be more flexible and take advantage of opportunities as they arise in order to promote his policy aims.

24. His adoption of a new policy, however, does not mean that he has rejected subversion as tool. As he has frequently stated, he will continue to support revolutionary movements; but his definition of what constitutes a revolutionary movement has changed radically. He no longer restricts the term to units engaged in waging rural guerrilla warfare according to textbooks such as those produced by Che Guevara and Regis Debray. Defined much more broadly, the term revolutionary movement can now even include governments which adopt a strongly nationalistic, “anti-imperialist” stance such as the governments of Allende in Chile and Velasco in Peru. The nationalization of foreign-owned businesses and genuine agrarian reform are two key criteria in Castro’s determination of a government’s “revolutionary” status.

25. Castro views the trend of events in Latin America as having shifted in his favor. He is aware that by reducing direct revolutionary involvements abroad he has created an atmosphere in which he can much more easily take advantage of opportunities precipitated by growing Latin American nationalism. Since he reduced his sponsorship of revolution, Cuba’s isolation has diminished and he is unlikely to risk a reversal of this trend by giving support to small and relatively ineffective rebel groups intent upon the overthrow of governments such as those in Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. He probably views these countries as potential friends that will someday follow independent policies similar to those already taken by Chile and Peru. Uruguay, he claims, may reach this stage later this year via the Frente Amplio. His foreign intelligence organization will presumably concentrate on such “enemy” countries as Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, and Nicaragua but will probably restrict itself more to intelligence gathering activities in these areas, content to keep its subversive apparatus in check until a particularly advantageous opportunity presents itself.

26. Certain countries are expected to be excluded entirely from the threat of Cuban-sponsored subversion. Trinidad and Tobago is in this category primarily because Prime Minister Eric Williams has gone on record as favoring Cuba’s integration into the hemispheric community. Williams’ remarks, including those made at an FAO conference in Caracas, Venezuela, last year, were particularly pleasing to Castro who responded by sending a shipment of breeding cattle to Port of Spain as a gift of the Cuban government. Guyana is another country in this category as is Jamaica. The latter is a prospective trading partner and a convenient transportation transfer point while the former, under the independent-minded Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, has carried out activities (e.g., the nationalization of Canadian-owned mining interests) in line with Castro’s own political thinking. Chile and Peru of course, are already following paths which have produced deep satisfaction in Havana and thus will not be targets for Cuban-supported violent revolution. Mexico, too, is in this category; Castro reportedly issued instructions in 1969 that no operations were to be undertaken against the Mexican Government and no assistance was to be given to any Mexican subversive group. Presumably this is because Mexico was the only Latin American country that did not break relations with the Castro regime and also because Mexico has proved valuable in the past as a center for Cuban clandestine operations elsewhere in Latin America.

27. Similar reporting from independent sources indicates that Chile’s President Allende is anxious to see Havana adhere to its more pragmatic approach in foreign relations. Allende reportedly has urged Castro to maintain his stand-down on subversive activities so that Chile could persuade other governments to reassess their attitudes toward Cuba. Castro should be receptive to the idea because it would require nothing more than a continuation of Cuba’s present policy in return for the valuable intercession of a respected and able politician. There is evidence that Allende has already embarked on such a campaign on Cuba’s behalf.

1. Source: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Current Intelligence, Job 79–T00831A. Secret; No Foreign Dissem; No Dissem Abroad; Background Use Only. The Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence organizations of the Departments of State and Defense participated in the preparation of this assessment. The annexes are not published.
2. The intelligence community provided a joint assessment of Cuban subversion in Latin America.