Foreign Relations: That Month

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

-T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

John F. Kennedy could subscribe to the notion of April's cruelty—although those weren't exactly lilacs popping out about him. In April 1961, came his dismaying Bay of Pigs debacle. In April 1962, came his savage assault on the steel industry, which pasted on him an antibusiness label he has been trying ever since to peel off. And in April 1963, both steel (see jallowing story] and Cuba were back to plague him.

Cuba was most distressing: the Kennedy Administration and the Cuban exiles it had praised and supported were now fighting like fishwives. Their dispute came to a head last week with the resignation of former Havana Law Professor Jose Miro Cardona, 60, as head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council—a position for which he had been handpicked by the Administration. At issue: exile claims that the Administration had welshed on promises to help them return to their homeland and oust Castro.

The Johnstown Flood. The exiles had some cause for thinking that President Kennedy would back them all the way. As far back as Oct. 15, 1960, in a Johnstown, Pa., campaign speech, Kennedy had said: "Mr. Nixon hasn't mentioned Cuba very prominently in this campaign. He talks about standing firm in Berlin, standing firm in the Far East, standing up to Khrushchev, but he never mentioned standing firm in Cuba—and if you can't stand up to Castro, how can you be expected to stand up to Khrushchev? . . . While we cannot violate international law, we must recognize that these exiles and rebels represent the real voice of Cuba and should not be constantly handicapped by our immigration and Justice Department authorities."

Again, last December, when the Bay of Pigs prisoners were ransomed from Castro, Kennedy greeted them at Miami's Orange Bowl, and, with a fervor that set the exiles aflame, proclaimed: "I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana."

The Last Straw. Among those Bay of Pigs prisoners was Miro Cardona's son Pepito. As for Miro himself, he was a staunch defender of U.S. policy toward Cuba. At the time of the Bay of Pigs, he publicly denied that the U.S. had played any part in the invasion, at the same time fought off bitter exile claims that Kennedy had let them down. Miro's defense of the U.S. cost him dearly among the exiles, many of whom came to consider him a self-seeking apologist for the Kennedy Administration.

The Administration's failure, after last October's Cuba crisis, to follow through on U.S. demands for on-site missile inspection and the removal of Russian troops, came as a staggering blow to Miro. The last straw came when the Administration, without advising Miro beforehand, announced an all-out crackdown on the exiles' hit-and-run raids against Cuba.