Castro and Franco

The Backstage of Cold War Diplomacy

Haruko Hosoda

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429799587
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Cuba's Fidel Castro and Spain's Francisco Franco were two men with very similar backgrounds but very different political ideologies. Both received a Catholic education and had strong connections to the Galicia region of Spain. Both were familiar with guerrilla tactics and came to power through fighting civil wars. However, Franco had support from fascists, who fought a vicious campaign against communist guerrillas, whereas Cuba was strategically aligned with the USSR after the revolution. The two countries nevertheless maintained strong relations, notably keeping a formal diplomatic relationship after the 1959 Cuban revolution despite the United States' severing of ties to Cuba. This relationship, Hosoda argues, would remain a vital back channel for communication between Cuba and the West.

Using a mixture of primary and secondary sources, derived from Cuban, American and Spanish archives, Hosoda analyses the nature and wider role of diplomatic relations between Cuba and Spain during the Cold War. Addressing both the question of how this relationship was forged – whether through the personal strange "amity" of their leaders, mutual animosity toward the U.S., or the alignment of national interests – and the importance of the role that it played. Considering also the role of the Vatican, this book offers a fascinating insight into a rarely studied aspect of the Cold War, one that transcends the usual East-West binaries.

1 Introduction

Trilateral relations: Cuba, Spain, and the U.S.

This book highlights the legacy of Spanish influence in Cuba during the Cold War in order to establish a new perspective for analysis of that era, comparing the leaders of those two countries, Francisco Franco (1892–1975) and Fidel Castro (1926–2016). The analysis places at its center Spanish diplomacy, emphasizing bilateral ties and taking into account U.S. diplomacy and public opinion.

Viewed through the lens of the East–West bipolar system, one might question why the Franco regime, which fought against the communists, socialists, and anarchists who comprised the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), would maintain diplomatic relations with Castro’s Cuba. However, the broader perspective established in this book allows for a far more nuanced view of the issue.

Cold War in Latin America

After the publication of numerous multi-archival studies, it became clear that the dichotomous framework of the Cold War did not adequately account for all conflicts, especially in Latin America. Westad (2017) pointed this out in the chapter entitled “The Cold War and Latin America” in his book:

[T]he origins of the Cold War in Latin America are not all about the effects of US supremacy. They are also about class and ethnic conflict inside Latin American republics and about the growth of nationalism, populism, and the Left. On the whole, perhaps, the roots of the Latin American Cold War fed on high levels of inequality and social oppression.

(2017, p. 339–340)

In other words, when people are not satisfied with the current situation, they provoke a revolution in order to survive. In Latin America, problems were not rooted in the confrontation between communism and anticommunism but rather in locally situated social conflicts and anti-American nationalism. That is, diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Latin America cannot be measured in terms of the axis of West–East, yet we cannot understand these relations without at least some reference to this framework, as very little foreign policy of the Cold War era could proceed without consideration of the conflict between the U.S. and the USSR.

Most Latin American leaders seemed to speak out against “the communist threat”; however, they would only pretend to be “obeying a paradigm of international relations imposed by U.S. hegemonic control of the region and using it as a ploy to get more aid and assistance” (Harmer, 2013, p. 141). Not only these leaders but also the exiled Catholics and Miami Cubans utilized this strategy, as discussed in Chapters 5 and 7.

Among Latin American countries, Cuba could be seen as an independent actor in the Cold War, especially if we consider its international activities in Africa. Gleijeses argued that “the Cubans played an extremely active role in shaping Cold War history and had an impact unmatched by any other country of its size” (Kirkendall, 2014, p. 10). Domínguez, a political scientist born in Cuba, also stressed that Cuba was not a “puppet” of the Soviet Union and that “it was Cuba, not the USSR, that took the most risks in the 1960s, 70s and 80s in supporting insurgencies in different Latin American countries” (2009, pp. 14–15).

It is important also to note that the Soviet Union had “minimal” influence in Latin America during the Cold War; rather, the Soviet Union’s position on Cuba was that it did not want the island nation to “dictate the policies of Latin American Communists,” even if there was a “Cold War” between them (Rabe, 2016, pp. xxvi, 67–68, 84, 118). The Soviet Union “had relatively little contact with most of Latin America,” compared with the U.S., from 1917 to the 1960s, when Castro established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union (Blasier, 1983, pp. 16, 19).

Spain and Cuba in the Cold War

Although Spain was a peripheral player in the Cold War, the “Hispanic tie” with Cuba deserves further scrutiny. Until now, its significance has been minimized. Kirkendall referred to the need for more analysis of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany and cited new studies of relations between Italy and the UK with Latin America. However, strangely, he did not mention Spain. Even though it is a former empire, there are few studies from the Spanish perspective. Leycester Coltman, the British ambassador to Cuba (1991–1994), described coolly the Cuban situation and some aspects of its foreign relations with the U.S.; however, he hardly mentioned Cuban relations with Spain at all (Coltman, 2003). If Cuba was one of the important actors in the Cold War, we have to reconsider how its Spanish origin might have informed its role.

In this book I analyze the Spanish–Cuban relationship mainly from the Spanish point of view, while paying particular attention to the meaning of the Spanish Civil War as a precursor to World War II.

At that time, Spain was not viewed as part of the “south,” but neither was it considered to be in the center of the “north.” Moreover, from the point of view of the East–West paradigm, it was not a plenary member of the West. Spain signed a unilateral agreement with the U.S. Inside the regime, however, there was a faction that supported independent diplomacy. During the Cold War, Castro’s Cuba and Franco’s Spain were not central actors on either side; from this position, we can view the international relationship differently.

Up to now, numerous books have examined Castro’s foreign policy, and some have delved into Cuba’s relationship with Spain. Joaquín Roy, a pioneer scholar of Spain–Cuba relations, describes the bilateral history from the global viewpoint. However, he does not use the primary official sources of either Spain or Cuba (1998, 2009, among others). On the other hand, Manuel de Paz-Sánchez wrote about the bilateral relationship using the Spanish archives but only about the periods of 1957–1960 and 1960–1962 and without considering Cuban and American points of view (1997, 2001, 2006). While the approaches taken by these scholars have yielded significant contributions, a multi-archival approach to a longer timeline might provide a broader and more nuanced perspective of these international relationships and would therefore be more effective in helping us view the more subtle contours of the Spanish–Cuban relationship.

The points of view in this book

This book is different from previous scholarship in that the analysis is concentrated on the 1950s through the 1980s, from before the Cuban Revolution through the Spanish transition to democracy, focusing on the “Spanish heritage” that informed the diplomacy between the two nations. I also conduct a global analysis of the international relationship, considering political, economic, ideological, and cultural aspects. Here the history of international relations is constructed based specifically on the study of diplomatic history.

In addition, if we add the perspective of the U.S., in light of presidential campaigns, economic sanctions (what Cuba referred to as an economic blockade), and the role of mass media, we can attain a new perspective on international relations during the Cold War.

However, if one uses only accessible English archives, one would have a biased point of view. We should consider why these documents are easy to access. In Cuba, I was able to access Cuban documents at the Central Archive at the library of the Institution of the History of Cuba. However, gaining access to Spanish documents is more difficult and requires more time. For example, the diplomatic documents of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the late 20th century could not be accessed for several years due to their relocation, and even as of late 2018, they were not easy to access, except for documents from the first half of the 20th century and some documents from the late 20th century in the General Archive of the Administration (AGA). This might be one of the reasons studies about the foreign relations between Spain and Latin America have not flourished even after democratization.

I worked as a diplomat and lived in Spain for eight years in total. While in Spain, various Spanish archives were available to me for study, including the Archive of Francisco Franco, the Ministry of Commerce, the Real Academia de la Historia, the AGA, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before its closure.

The detailed documents from the archives provide nuance for our understanding of the negotiations among three countries. The Spanish documents are especially useful, as they relate to the humanistic character of the main actors. However, I did not want to write a book based only on primary sources, which sometimes do not relate all the facts; rather, I tried to analyze the facts from perspectives constructed from the archival records of various countries and to consider disparate decision-making processes evidenced therein. My experience as a diplomat, especially knowing the process of creating diplomatic papers (not all processes were written down), helped me understand relations between the Ministry and the embassies, and the importance of talented ambassadors. I developed an instinct for reading between the lines of the documents.

Four commonalities between two contrasting “dictators”

At first glance, it is difficult to discern much in common between Franco and Castro. However, upon deeper reflection, it is possible to identify four significant commonalities between the two men that would inform their interactions: Galicia as a shared “motherland”; Catholicism as a spiritual axis; “guerrilla combat” (both were “rebels” and experienced guerrilla combat); and a shared anti-Americanism imbedded in their sense of patriotism.

“Galicia as motherland” refers to the fact that both leaders were influenced by the atmosphere of the northwestern region of Spain, where authoritarian and patriarchal traditions were dominant. Franco was born in Ferrol, a military and commercial port with dockyards. Meanwhile, Castro’s father, Ángel Castro, was from Láncara, a small village in Galicia about 150 kilometers inland from Ferrol. A sense of patriotism and sympathy for Galicia would have formed a tie between the two men.

Of course, geographic proximity and related sympathies do not in themselves explain the strong connection between the two men. Another commonality is the experience of guerilla warfare. Both Castro and Franco took power after rebellions against the government. During the Spanish Civil War, Franco fought against the Second Spanish Republic, leading the rebels and Moor mercenaries. This war was to become the first battle of World War II and the Cold War, and the guerilla tactics first used in this battle would be applied during the Cuban Revolution. Curiously, Franco sympathized with Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), who used guerilla tactics in the Vietnam War, for his patriotism.

The influence of the Catholic Church is also important. Not only in Spain (it was the state religion during the Franco regime) but also in communist Cuba, the Catholic Church maintained significant influence. Castro was educated in a Jesuit high school by Spanish monks. The Catholic mindset that he acquired there would subtly inform interactions between Cuba and Spain. Moreover, Cuba maintained diplomatic relations with the Vatican during the Cold War, at a time when other Eastern European countries eschewed relations with both the Vatican and Spain. This allowed Cuba to build a positive and consequential relationship between Havana and Rome.

Finally, between Castro and Franco, there was one more commonality: anti-Americanism informed by patriotism. When Franco was young, he saw in Ferrol the physical and psychological wounds suffered by officers in the Spanish-American War (1898). Afterward, Castro said that the Cuban Revolution would serve to restore Spanish honor following its defeat in that war (Ramonet, 2006, pp. 459–460).

The complex relationship between Cuba and Spain

The relationship between Cuba and Spain could not have proceeded smoothly based solely on the sympathies shared by the two leaders. In 1960, a year after the Cuban Revolution, the furious Spanish ambassador to Cuba rushed into the TV studio where Castro had been criticizing the Franco regime and was declared “persona non grata” on the spot. In the late 1960s, the Spanish cultural attaché was condemned as a CIA spy. After the Spanish democratic transition, the Spanish ambassador to Cuba was denied his placet in 1996.

Despite such tensions, Cuba and Spain never broke diplomatic relations. One of the reasons was the pending problem of the release of Spanish political prisoners. Many officials of the Second Spanish Republic had been exiled to Cuba, and this was seen to complicate relations between the two nations. Here we can see an example of conventional thinking: Viewed through the lens of the East–West bipolar system, one might expect that the exiled “left” of the defeated Spanish regime would naturally unite with the “left” of the Castro regime. We challenge this presumption.

In addition, the relationship between Spain and Cuba must be viewed in light of often overlooked commercial issues at the time.¹ Beginning in the 19th century, Latin American countries gradually gained independence from Spain, and many Catalonian immigrants, apart from the Galicians, went to Cuba. Although a commercial route had been well established by the 1960s, Spain was left without a sugar-producing colony. Spain signed a five-year agreement with Cuba to purchase sugar at a price fixed considerably higher than the international market rate. Ironically, the market price collapsed immediately afterward, rendering this agreement very advantageous to Cuba. The Spanish ships were paid with sugar, the monoculture crop in Cuba, during hard economic times in the mid-1960s. The transactions were similar to bartering.

In short, the ties between the two were very strong despite their disparate ideologies. Unlike the U.S., Spain kept diplomatic relations with Cuba after the Revolution of 1959, despite some important disputes. In the following pages, we analyze the factors that contributed to this dynamic.

Cuba between the Americas and Spain

American policy and ideology added nuance to this bilateral relationship. During the Cold War, the U.S. feared that a communist wave would spread throughout Latin America. To keep the rest of Latin America within his sphere of influence, President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) took various measures, including the “Alliance for Progress” program, which was designed to increase economic cooperation between the U.S. and other Latin American countries in order to isolate Cuba.

In contrast, the Franco regime, under the banner of Hispanidad (Hispanicity), tried to keep its former Latin American colonies under control by means of cultural imperialism. This was necessary because Franco-led Spain was isolated from the international community following World War II. There was little choice but to stress ties with Latin American countries and the Middle East. In Latin America, Spain and the U.S. would confront each other again.

The U.S. started to establish military bases of geopolitical importance following the signing of three separate executive agreements in 1953. This alleviated Spain’s isolation somewhat. However, the Franco regime recklessly challenged U.S. hegemony by developing an independent foreign policy. The most remarkable aspect of this foreign policy was in relation to Cuba, despite U.S. pressure to keep Cuba diplomatically isolated from other nations. The U.S. had severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961. Despite repeated U.S. pressure, Spain maintained diplomatic and commercial relations with Cuba throughout the 1960s, even after two Spanish commercial vessels were sunk by radical Cuban exiles in Miami. At the same time, Spain tried to serve as a mediator to improve U.S.–Cuba relations, perhaps partly out of nostalgia for its last colony in Latin America.

The influence of the Franco regime’s foreign policy was maintained following his death in 1975. Analysis of subsequent Spanish politicians and politics makes clear the continuing relationship between Spain and Cuba. For example, Spanish president Adolfo Suárez (1976–1981), despite his center-right ideology, showed deep understanding of the Non-Aligned Movement. He even visited Havana, which led to a shift in U.S. support for him. After joining the EC in 1986, Spain under the Socialist (PSOE) tried to serve as a bridge between the EC, Latin America, and Cuba as a means of extending the pro-Atlantic policy of the Franco regime.

At the end of 2014, then-president Barack Obama (2009–2017) stated that the U.S. was going to start to normalize relations with Cuba. At that moment, he said in Spanish, “Todos somos Americanos.” He stressed the fostering of unity among the Americas (The White House, 2016). In Spanish, “America” means the American continents, while “Americano” refers to the people of those continents.² In fact, José Martí used the term “Nuestra América” (Our America) to refer to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Galicia’s influence: Castro and Franco’s common roots
• 3 Consequences of the Spanish Civil War: revolutionary Cuba and Castro
• 4 Catholicism as a lifeline during the Cold War: independent Spanish diplomacy toward Castro’s Cuba
• 5 Anti-Americanism in Cuba and Spain and American prejudice
• 6 People fighting for a cause vs. pragmatists
• 7 The reconciliation of generations: the post-Franco era and Castro
• 8 Conclusion: everything changes: who leaves his name in history?
• Bibliography
• Index