Raul Castro's 1958
Kidnaping of 50
[Ref: News Tribune, Fort Pierce/Port St. Lucie, Florida Friday, June 24, 1988. From the Tom Dunkin Papers]
Politically-inspired kidnaping an old story
By Tom Dunkin
Raul Castro's 1958 kidnaping of 50 American and Canadian military
personnel and civilians in Cuba, 30 years ago this coming Sunday, June
26, gave the sputtering Castro rebellion the spark needed to explode
into victory.
That example has been copied profitably by political dissidents in the
ensuing three decades, including the Mideast, where U.S., British, West
German, Indian, Italian and Irish citizens still are being held captive.
Release of three French citizens last month in Lebanon leaves "16 to
23" hostages still being held there, according to varying estimates.
And Cubans on the other side of the fence, exiles ruled "undesirable"
by U.S. authorities, recently used hostages taken in prison rioting to
gain reconsideration of plans to send them back to Fidel Castro's Cuba.
IN THAT instance, the contentious point was U.S. Cuban agreement
announced last November to deport 2,746 "excludable" refugees.
Most were "Marielitos", exiles who swarmed to Florida in the 1980
exodus from the Cuban port of Mariel.
Some 7,000 more in detention as questionable immigrant or serving
sentences for crimes committed after coming here, plus another 3,000
Marielitos who had been released to families or "halfway houses" were
to be subject to deportation.
Resultant riots, and taking of more than 100 prison guards and
employees hostage by Cuban prisoners, joined by some American inmates
in two federal prisons, changed the schedule.
Casualties for the prison hostage venture were reported as one inmate shot to death and 30 persons injured.
The incidents at the Atlanta Penitentiary and a detention center at
Oakdale, La. last November, won a moratorium on immediate deportation
plans and an individual review for each potential deportee.
FOR THE 1958 Cuban incident, the major casualty was a broken
collarbone. Chicago Tribune Latin America correspondent Jules
DuBois received that when his jeep overturned en route to the hills.
In Raul Castro's profitable use of hostages also is found a classic
example of astute use of propaganda. His venture in late June of
1958 helped to the war six months later. Raul's caper once again
focused world attention on the heroic underdog struggled of idealistic
Cubans against a cruel dictatorship.
The kidnaping, considered a quixotic publicity ploy by many, including
several jaundiced newsmen themselves held hostage by the U.S. Navy, was
a valuable asset to the Castro cause. Reporters who accepted the
Navy's invitation to cover the kidnaping found the Navy required they
do if from the Guantanamo Naval Base.
ELEVEN newsmen, however, either ignored the Navy's hospitality or rules of dutiful guests, and took to the hills.
The scene of action, much inactivity and a bit of tedium, was in the
Sierra Cristal mountains, about 50 miles northeast of Fidel Castro's
Sierra Maestra area of operations. Raul Castro had marched from
his brother Fidel's bailiwick three months earlier to establish this
"Second Front of Frank Pais," named for a young Santiago martyr among
the Castro followers.
Fidel said nothing, even in his nightly rebel radio broadcasts about
the incident until almost two weeks after it happened.
Communications were poor between the command posts, and he ordered the
captives' release at the earliest possible moment, Fidel later
explained. That took almost three weeks.
Most of the hostages were U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. (next page 3)
enlisted men whose bus was hijacked while they were on liberty from the
naval base.
OTHERS included mining engineers and other employees at U.S. business installations in northeastern Oriente Province.
The hostages and valuable equipment such as bulldozers, trucks and
jeeps taken from mining and agricultural operators, mostly American and
Canadian, were taken to two small villages 45 miles northwest of
Guantanamo and its nearby U.S. Navy base.
Raul and his aide-de-camp Vilma Espin, who later became his wife,
maintained a headquarters at Calabazas, which had a population of about
400 persons, and another small village, Pruriales, a short distance
away.
Calabazas was the evacuation point for the hostages and headquarters
for U.S. Consul Park Wollam Jr. and his principal aide, CIA agent
Robert Wiecha who was operating in the public role of a vice
consul. Both had been based at Santiago de Cuba.
The publicity admittedly gave new impetus to Castro supporters whose
renewed vigor in arms-smuggling gave the rebels a needed boost in
material.
THE kidnaping also brought a two-week cease-fire which enabled the
rebels to bring in badly needed weapons and supplies to their
"Territorio Libre de Cuba", Free Cuba Zone, in easternmost Oriente
Province. Fear of injuring hostages caused the Batista government
to halt all military operations against the rebels. Raul Castro
himself said the hostages' presence was as valuable as 50 millimeter
anti-aircraft guns.
Bombing and staffing attacks by government air forces had killed some
and disheartened many of the hill country residents in the coffee and
sugar farming area of Raul Castro's "Second Front." The primary
defense was passive, refuge in dugout earth-and-coconut-log bomb
shelters.
Raul's kidnapings took place from June 26 through July 1. The last hostages were freed July 18.
THE three-week lull in combat activity greatly improved morale among
Castro's insurgents and their often-indistinguishable "compesino"
(farmer) on-the-scene supporters and renewed the faith of exile
organizations in the U.S. and other foreign areas.
The rebels' methods were impressive to most of the guests, both
voluntary and involuntary. The best possible medical care was in
evidence for both combatants and the men, women and children whose
domiciles had been turned into a war zone.
An estimate of the rebel arms and troop strength would have been about
as accurate as their reports on the same subject. Not every
potential combatant had a weapon, and a wide variety was found among
firearms in evidence. The more fortunate rebels had weaponry
ranging from various small-caliber pistols and revolvers to
highly-favored U.S.-military .45 caliber pistols, Thompson sub
machineguns, U.S.-made d.30 caliber rifles and carbines and a few
carbines produced in the Dominican Republic. Food supplies
appeared adequate for all, even though boiled green plantains decidedly
were not appetizing.
ARMED bodyguards accompanied the reporters and cameramen everywhere, but the newsmen were free to go where they pleased.
The Robin Hood aspect of the hostage situation created a measure of
sympathy among newsmen on the scene and among some hostages.
There were some skeptics among the reporters among them Miami-based
freelance photographer George Skadding, who was in the hills for LIFE
magazine. "This war," Skadding erroneously observed, "will last
just about as long as these (mostly battered) jeeps."
Among the hostages, one old hand in Cuban revolutions, 61-year-old
George Sargent, a sugar mill official, was prudently noncommital.
"It's their country", Sargent said of the Cubans in Calabazas. he
later transferred his sugar production activity to Belle Glade, a
victim of the Castro victory.
OTHERS were more demonstrative. One sailor, Thomas Mosness from
Iowa, sported a .45 caliber pistol while touring the rebel area.
After reading a letter from his wife, delivered by Navy helicopter used
to ferry hostages out of and diplomats into the hills, Mosness gave the
weapon back to his hosts and boarded the chopper for a return to
domestic felicity and Navy tranquility.
One newsman, Robert Taber, a CBS television cameraman on his second
tour of the Castro insurgency, six months later forsook newsmongering
to become a propagandistic co-founder of the pro-Castro "Fair Play for
Cuba Committee."
Hostage sympathy also was engendered with a tour of battle areas "to
show you how American weapons are being used by Cubans to kill Cubans."
A WIDELY-published photograph showed U.S. made aircraft rocket warheads
being delivered to Batista forces, after being flown from the U.S. to
the Guantanamo Naval Air Base.
The diplomatic account was that the weaponry was replacement for
defective arms delivered for mutual hemispheric defense before a
cessation of arms to Batista was declared. The photo reportedly
was taken by a Castro sympathizer on the base in late March, after
official Washington declarations had said no more weapons were being
made available to Batista.
The rebels also complained that Batista's bombers were being refueled at the Guantanamo base for air strikes in rebel territory.
Raul termed the hostages "invited guests," who could leave at any time
they so desired. This was true of the 110 newsmen who went into
the hills on their own, but not of the hostages. They were
released in dribbles during the three-week period.
EVEN the final liberation was a minor propaganda coup for Raul.
"We're sending them back because their country needs them," Raul
declared when the last group was freed July 18. That need, he
pointed out, was due to President Dwight Eisenhower having sent 5,000
Marines ashore on a peace-keeping mission in Lebanon, where a
two-months'-old rebellion was threatening President Camille Chamoun.
Another political innovation materialized from the Castro campaign
three months later. that innovation also has mushroomed in use
over the ensuing 30 years--aerial hijacking by both pilots and airliner
passengers.
Cubana Airlines pilot Carlos Villamar, who later went into a second
exile after disillusion with Castro, was in the vanguard. He flew
his plane and unwitting passengers to Miami instead of Santiago in
October, 1958. A short time later, another Cubana airliner
disappeared over Oriente Province, with all aboard -- rebel hijacking
suspected. Then four rebels commandeered a propjet airliner and
forced the pilot to try to put it down on the too-small airport at Moa
Bay, near Raul's headquarters. There were few survivors, and the
hijackers were not among them.
Freelance writer Tom Dunkin made a dozen trips to Cuba as a reporter
covering Castro and anti-Castro revolutionary activities from 1957
through 1964. The kidnap story was covered for the St. Petersburg
Times, in 1958.
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