"The Brilliant Disaster"
By Jim Rasenberger
480 pages
Publisher: Scribner
(April 5, 2011)
By Juan Montoya
Growing up in South Texas, it used to be that in almost every home one would find pictures of John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline.
Later when he and his brother Robert were gunned down, tapestries with their likeness would adorn many Valley living rooms.
I remember when Kennedy was shot in Dealy Plaza in Dallas vividly because my third-grade class at Garden Park was just returning from a field trip to the Holsum Bread Company and the Hygeia Dairy Company in Harlingen. As we arrived in Garden park aboard the bus, our teachers were in tears as school was suspended and they notified us that an assassin had shot the president in Dallas.
They were the martyrs of our day, the princes of Camelot who died before they had the time to deliver us all to the Promised Land of Freedom and Equality for all. To many, the mention of the Bay of Pigs episode in Cuba doesn't mean much. The common knowledge was that a bunch of Cuban exiles with the help of rogue elements of the CIA invaded the island and failed in their efforts to topple the newly-installed Fidel Castro regime.
The mystique of the Kennedy Myth in Hispanics has endured through many generations. Certainly, their attractive appeal and their Catholicism did much to endear our ethnic group to embrace them. Viva Kennedy Clubs sprang up throughout the Southwest and Hispanics of the time cast their votes overwhelming for Kennedy during his election in 1960 over Richard M. Nixon. He took over from Dwight D. Eisenhower in January 1961.
Author Rasenberger lays the context of Kennedy's administration when they took over a plan brewed during Ike's term of getting rid of Castro, who had himself overthrown Fulgencio Batista in 1959 after waging guerrilla war with his fellow revolutionary Che Guevara in the Cuban Sierra Madre.
Working with newly-declassified CIA documents and archives from the Kennedy years, Resenberger paints a picture of a very different Kennedy that the one we knew growing up. Gone was the Prince of Camelot decisively standing up to Kruschev during the October Missile Crisis. Gone was the perfect family portrait pushed by his media consultants and public relations whizzes.
Instead, Rasenberger paints a picture of a neophyte president pushed along by events that – once set in motion by the previous administration – quickly developed a momentum of their own and dragged the reluctant new president to sign on to half-heartedly support the desperate Cuban exiles left stranded on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba.
Another reviewer sums it up this way: The U.S.-backed military invasion of Cuba in 1961 remains one of the most ill-fated blunders in American history, with echoes of the event reverberating even today. Despite the Kennedy administration’s initial public insistence that the United States had nothing to do with the invasion, it soon became clear that the complex operation had been planned and approved by the best and brightest minds at the highest reaches of Washington, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President John F. Kennedy himself.
By Jim Rasenberger
480 pages
Publisher: Scribner
(April 5, 2011)
By Juan Montoya
Growing up in South Texas, it used to be that in almost every home one would find pictures of John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline.
Later when he and his brother Robert were gunned down, tapestries with their likeness would adorn many Valley living rooms.
I remember when Kennedy was shot in Dealy Plaza in Dallas vividly because my third-grade class at Garden Park was just returning from a field trip to the Holsum Bread Company and the Hygeia Dairy Company in Harlingen. As we arrived in Garden park aboard the bus, our teachers were in tears as school was suspended and they notified us that an assassin had shot the president in Dallas.
They were the martyrs of our day, the princes of Camelot who died before they had the time to deliver us all to the Promised Land of Freedom and Equality for all. To many, the mention of the Bay of Pigs episode in Cuba doesn't mean much. The common knowledge was that a bunch of Cuban exiles with the help of rogue elements of the CIA invaded the island and failed in their efforts to topple the newly-installed Fidel Castro regime.
The mystique of the Kennedy Myth in Hispanics has endured through many generations. Certainly, their attractive appeal and their Catholicism did much to endear our ethnic group to embrace them. Viva Kennedy Clubs sprang up throughout the Southwest and Hispanics of the time cast their votes overwhelming for Kennedy during his election in 1960 over Richard M. Nixon. He took over from Dwight D. Eisenhower in January 1961.
Author Rasenberger lays the context of Kennedy's administration when they took over a plan brewed during Ike's term of getting rid of Castro, who had himself overthrown Fulgencio Batista in 1959 after waging guerrilla war with his fellow revolutionary Che Guevara in the Cuban Sierra Madre.
Working with newly-declassified CIA documents and archives from the Kennedy years, Resenberger paints a picture of a very different Kennedy that the one we knew growing up. Gone was the Prince of Camelot decisively standing up to Kruschev during the October Missile Crisis. Gone was the perfect family portrait pushed by his media consultants and public relations whizzes.
Instead, Rasenberger paints a picture of a neophyte president pushed along by events that – once set in motion by the previous administration – quickly developed a momentum of their own and dragged the reluctant new president to sign on to half-heartedly support the desperate Cuban exiles left stranded on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba.
Another reviewer sums it up this way: The U.S.-backed military invasion of Cuba in 1961 remains one of the most ill-fated blunders in American history, with echoes of the event reverberating even today. Despite the Kennedy administration’s initial public insistence that the United States had nothing to do with the invasion, it soon became clear that the complex operation had been planned and approved by the best and brightest minds at the highest reaches of Washington, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President John F. Kennedy himself.
Some of the new revelations in the Rasenberger book are that, despite the plausible denials of the government, American pilots did participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion and that at least four died in the air over Cuba. One of their bodies eventually was returned to his family and a $24 million dollar payment was granted the family by U.S. courts from frozen Cuban assets.
The Mafia was contacted by the Kennedy administration to hatch a plot to assassinate Castro, and even ludicrous plans by the CIA to provide Castro with cigars laced with LSD were contemplated.
E. Howard Hunt, later to gain notoriety through the Watergate scandal, was one of the CIA operatives who recruited Cuban exiles to support the invasion. And even U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson (just as Colin Powell did for George W. Bush in the case of Iraq) went before the world body and lied for the administration.
Apparently, Rasenberger points out, the U.S. didn't learn anything from the fiasco.
Instead of overthrowing Castro, the invasion made him stronger, allowing him to outlast 11 presidents (more than a quarter of all U.S. presidents) and allowing him a free hand to oppress the Cuban people under the pretense of defending his island nation.
Cuba, he points out, remains a thorn on the side of the U.S. (and not a dagger in its heart).
For all those of us today that want to know the unvarnished truth of the era, Rasenberger's book is a good place to start.
3 comments:
Fidel Castro was a High school student in Heroica Matamoros in the 1950's, do you own research if You don't believe Me.
!!! Viva Cuba Libre !!!
I was hoping you would talk about the Brownsville connection and the incident in Cuba. Brownsville Country Club would not be here had it not been for the incident and life changing events which followed for a few Cuban American families !
He had connections in Tuxpam, Vera Cruz, Mx. I think they did training there.
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