THE LITTLE-KNOWN STORY TO BRING FIDEL TO BROWNTOWN

(Ed.'s Note: After we posted a picture of the Cohiba hand-rolled cigar that a friend brought us from his recent visit to Havana, Cuba, we received electronic correspondence reminding us that even the Brownsville Chamber of Commerce had attempted to bring the Cuban revolutionary to Brownsville during his visit the the United States in April 1959. The Chamber planned to have Castro and his entourage spend the day in Brownsville and even planned a banquet for him. Alas, that never materialized due to issues beyond their control and Castro went on to Montreal, New York, and then to Houston and then on to Argentina).

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

In April, 1959, some four months after leading a successful revolution in  Cuba, Fidel Castro began an 11-day visit to the United States.

Hoping that they would somehow work their way into the Cuban leader's itinerary, members of the Brownsville Chamber of Commerce, the Jr. Chamber of Commerce, the City of Brownsville, the Lions Club, the Brownsville Herald and a local radio station, gathered to plan the envisioned ceremony on April 25.

In a long letter detailing the plans, then-Chamber General Manager and Executive Secretary O.M. Longnecker Jr. wrote members of the failed attempt to get Castro to come here. As it was, Castro neither requested nor accepted an official government invitation for his trip to Washington and New York. Rather, he came at the invitation of what was then called the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

They found out that the Castro visit to Houston that they had planned to piggyback the Brownsville event had been reduced to a three-hour refueling layover on the way from Montreal to Argentina. Additionally, their plans to use the Civic Center to hold a banquet was stymied because of a previous scheduling for a large convention there.

News reports of the day indicate that during his stay, Castro placed a wreath on George Washington’s grave, toured the Bronx Zoo, ate hot dogs and hamburgers at Yankee Stadium and generally made a big media splash. Wherever he went, the 33-year-old bearded Cuban leader invariably wore his trademark rumpled green fatigues.

He did not meet with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who snubbed him, although the Cuban leader did meet with Vice President Richard Nixon.

Nixon later said he came away from the meeting with the conclusion that Castro was “either incredibly naive about communism or under communist discipline – my guess is the former.” On the other hand, after meeting with Castro, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson called him “the first democrat of Latin America.”

In a speech in New York to the Council on Foreign Relations, Castro said he would not beg the United States for economic assistance. He finally stormed out of the session, professing his anger at some of the questions raised by his audience.

Relations between the United States and Castro deteriorated rapidly after the April visit.

Two years to the day after Castro’s U.S. visit, President John F. Kennedy put into motion Operation Zapata, also known as the Bay of Pigs operation, a CIA-sponsored plan to oust Castro.

The coup attempt proved to be a political and military disaster, precipitating a shakeup of the U.S. spy agency. Political tensions between Washington and Havana continue to this day.

In retrospect, perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that the plans by the Chamber of Commerce fell through. Imagine if they had succeeded and Brownsville had been considered a hotbed of radicalism.