The Americas: Policy on Castro

U.S. policy on Cuba, clouded since the invasion fiasco in the Bay of Pigs, could be seen a little more clearly last week. To begin with, said President Kennedy, the U.S. is not resigned to Castro; he is still a "threat to peace," the President told Izvestia Editor Alexei Adzhubei. Until Castro holds "free and honest elections," he "cannot claim to represent the majority of the people."

But what to do about him? The U.S. has long ceased to talk about overthrowing him. Notions of staging another invasion by Cuban exiles have been shelved" supplies promised the shattered anti-Castro underground inside Cuba have been deliberately withheld, and exiled Underground Leader Manuel Ray has taken an economic development job in Puerto Rico. The U.S. now pins its hopes on a Colombian plan to ostracize and quarantine Castro through joint action of the 21 nation Organization of American States. Under the Colombian plan, an OAS convened conference of hemisphere foreign ministers would be held to "consider threats to the peace and political independence of the American states which could arise from the intervention of extracontinental powers"—meaning, though not saying, Communist penetration through Cuba.

The plan is running into opposition. For a variety of reasons—old Latin fears of Yankee Big Stick intervention, concern over pro-Castro elements at home, an obvious but unconfessed desire to use the example of Cuba as a lever to pry more aid out of Washington—the big ABC powers (Argentina, Brazil and Chile), as well as Ecuador and Mexico, oppose any OAS moves against Castro.

Last week Kennedy put U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson aboard a presidential jet and sent him winging to Trinidad to enlist the support of Argentina's pivotal President Arturo Frondizi for the Colombian plan. But after a two-hour, twenty-minute dead-of-night talk with Stevenson, Frondizi would only agree vaguely to "consider" an OAS foreign ministers' conference.

All the while, Kennedy is trying to convince Latin Americans that his Alliance for Progress is a workable alternative to Castro's Communist dictatorship. Last week he disclosed that he may make his first visit to Latin America soon, probably a journey to two reform-prone nations, Colombia and Venezuela.