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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