Cuba's Roswell Connection: A Crack in the Economic Door?

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.13.2.0331
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Date: 01 December 2021
• Pages: 331-350
• Author: H. Michael Erisman

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

ACADEMIC ARTICLE

CUBA’S ROSWELL CONNECTION: A CRACK

IN THE ECONOMIC DOOR?

H. Michael Erisman

H. Michael Erisman is professor emeritus of Political Science at Indiana State University

in Terre Haute, Indiana. His main fields of interest are US policies toward Latin America,

political economy in the Caribbean Basin and Cuban foreign affairs. Relative specifically to

Cuba besides numerous articles and book chapters, the most recent of the nine books that

he has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited is Cuban Foreign Policy: Transformation

under Raúl Castro (2018). His current research agenda involves projects dealing with Cuban/

US relations in the area of pharmaceutical collaboration and Cuban medical tourism. He has

visited Cuba over 20 times to conduct research, to present papers at conferences and special

seminars, and to participate in academic exchanges with Cuban colleagues from the University

of Havana and various research centers (e.g. Centro de Estudios Hemisféricos y sobre Estados

Unidos and Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales).

For all sad words of tongue and pen,

The saddest are these,

“It might have been”.

John Greenleaf Whittier

Introduction

Whittier’s lament about lost opportunities surely can be said to have a certain

resonance when it comes to US/Cuban relations, for despite the fact that for over

60 years the dealings between them have often been characterised primarily by

suspicion, antagonism and mutual recrimination, there have been occasions

when the possibilities for some degree of rapprochement have begun to be

explored (LeoGrande and Kornbluth 2015). Often these efforts have been rather

low-profile in the sense that they have taken place outside the glare of media

publicity and have focused on developing medium-level cooperation on issues of

332 ACADEMIC ARTICLE – H. MICHAEL ERISMAN

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 13.2 WInter 2021

pragmatic mutual concern (e.g. combating drug trafficking and promoting

orderly migration). These initiatives have not, for the most part, been susceptible

to what might be called the “Whittier Syndrome”. In other words, the agree-

ments reached have been maintained and long-term cooperation rather than the

re-emergence of tensions and animosities has become firmly established.

The same cannot, however, be said for other instances where an inclination

among high-level policy-makers to test the waters for a dramatic breakthrough

toward a more routine relationship was derailed by a resuscitation, especially in

Washington, of the confrontational zero-sum mentality that has long plagued the

dealings between the two countries. Three major examples of this dynamic are:

 Despite the fact that the US had been a supporter of the Batista regime, there

were some indications in early 1959 of a possible reconciliation between

Washington and the new leaders in Havana. On 7 January, just a week after

Batista was forced to flee the island, the Eisenhower administration extended

diplomatic recognition to the rebel government and one week later replaced

ambassador Earl Smith (a political appointee who had been an enthusiastic

Batista supporter) with a career State Department diplomat (Philip Bonsal)

who had a reputation for being sympathetic toward Latin American reform-

ers. Such civility was, however, rather short-lived. When Castro visited the

United States in April 1959, President Eisenhower pointedly refused to meet

him by abandoning the White House for a golfing holiday in Georgia.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Castro “did not request any U.S. foreign

assistance, which troubled U.S. officials, because they hoped that U.S. aid

would be a mechanism for binding Cuba to the United States” (Brenner and

Elsner 2018). Things continued to unravel and by the end of the year the CIA

began its plans for regime change (which Eisenhower would endorse in March

1960), culminating in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

 Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency committed to improving relations with

Havana (Erisman 2018: 50–2). However, as had been the case with previous

administrations, the Carter White House tended at times to interject linkage

politics into the picture by demanding that the Cubans make concessions in

other policy areas (e.g. loosening their Soviet bloc ties or withdrawing their

troops from Angola) as a precondition for better relations, while Havana

maintained its long-held position that the rapprochement process must take

place within a context of purely bilateral issues. The schism between moder-

ate (i.e. non-linkage) and hardline (i.e. linkage) factions within the

administration produced a somewhat complicated schizophrenic approach to

addressing the already complex “Cuban question”. Initially the moderates,

led by such individuals as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and UN Ambassador