Cuba USA

Fidel in Harvard: “Go to Cuba and learn for yourselves the truth”

by Rosa Miriam Elizalde
source Cubadebate
translation Cuba-Network in Defense of Humanity

Saturday, April 25, 1959. The Prime Minister of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba arrived at 3:45 pm by train from New York. It was his sixth day in the United States and has had little time to sleep. More than 2 000 await him in the Back Bay station of Boston, a city split in two: Cambridge to the west of the mouth of the Charles River where in 1636 the University of Harvard was inaugurated and Boston proper on the other bank. Center of the metropolitan area, capital of the state of Massachusetts and most important city of New England. This region of the eastern coast is the most ultra US conservatism, tends to be brimming with dangerous intellectuals and aristocratic families with radical ideas.

Immediately upon his arrival he goes to the Statler Hotel where another crowd waits for him. From the music store whose specialty is organs, located in front of hotel, the National Hymn is played while Fidel and his delegation make their entrance to the Statler. The grave sounds of the copper tubes must sound strange and the sound boxes of fir and walnut wood. A photo shows a smiling guerrilla leader and another taken seconds later show him raising his arm, saluting the unusual musicians that are on the opposite side of the street.

In the lobby it is hard to take a step with so many Cubans with 26th of July armbands waiting and cheering Fidel before he steps into the escalator for the 13th floor where he is hounded by many journalists. After 6 pm Fidel attends a reception in the Club of the Harvard Faculty where he talks with students and several professors of the University including the dean of the Law Faculty, McGeorge Bundy – who years later would be advisor to the National Security Council of the Kennedy administration – and the young president of the Harvard Forum, Robert Seidenberg.

“After dinner Fidel Castro will confront the most important public presentations in the United States” reports Revolucion daily. He goes to Dillon Field House of the Harvard Stadium: “He was going to speak in a language he does not dominate, to a student audience, conservative, cultured and independent. He was going to launch his revolutionary message in a center that has taught most statesmen in the United States, the first University in a city that has the best educational staff in the country, in Boston home of millionaires and suspicious minds. Where the best English is spoken and from which the name of the city is taken”, describes the newspaper with national circulation in the Island.

Robert Ellis Smith is 19, he studies Law and is training as a journalist in the Harvard Crimson, university newspaper of Boston - where, of course, he published in Facebook the book entitled “The book of two faces” of the school students: “We used Facebook to see the interest of the people [ …]; at times a photo alone gives an idea”, a young student Susan Faludi said in 1979 when she won the Pulitzer prize for journalism.

Most experience journalists are not interested in working over time, recalls Ellis Smith and the meeting of Fidel with the students is programmed for nine in the evening a hectic time for closing the newspapers and television news programs. “Also it was Saturday – in April before exams – there were not enough people to cover the event. I offered and was accepted and they gave me a camera to take pictures. I hung the yellow press card around my neck – a credential that I still have – that is gold for me”, he adds.

The president of Harvard, Nathan Pusey had announced that he would be out of the city this weekend, to avoid taking a difficult decision of attending the speech and introducing the “who was received in Washington “with cautions critical skepticism “as explained by the researcher, Carlos Alzugaray, and the attitude adopted about Cuba by US officials after the triumph the first of January in 1959. “Shortly after the trip of Castro, Harvard Crimson demonstrated that Pusey, in fact, was not out of the city” assures Robert Ellis Smith.

The distant attitude contrasts with the warm expectations of the students. In spite of the hour in a region of the cold spring of New England there are so many interested in the meeting in a place that can hold multitudes: in areas of the Harvard stadium. Some recall that the oldest buildings of the house of studies, has dark niches and giant columns that are not a safe place for someone who has received death threats of the Batista followers in the United States. But is the best option to the open area of Dillon Field House with ten thousand seats for students and professors who pay to attend. The balcony has an ideal platform for the high ranking guest with an elegant roof that passes across the English watch tower and the shield of the University that dominates with the words in Latin – veritas that is truth in Latin –. It is a short space between the stadium and Charles river and less than ten kilometers from the main campus of Cambridge.

“It is a soft and clear night”, recalls the veteran lawyer and writer who has published parts of his memoirs in the digital Havana Journal. Fidel steps up to the high rostrum about 20 feet from the floor. The words of presentation are clearly heard. He says he is uncomfortable to be so far from the public and that he had never addressed a public so high up. Also he now understands that lights in front are an instrument of torture to capture confessions. The public applauds and will repeat it many times in the two hours his speech lasts. Now one of the public notices that the Prime Minister only has his army fatigues and brings him a jacket that is in tune with the guerrilla uniform.

“I can’t say that I remember much of what he said there. What I do remember is that most of the students later expressed curiosity about Cuba and a vague support of the new Cuban leader”, and adds: “but you have to be seduced by this man”.

The Boston dailies, the next day, are flooded with words of Fidel explaining that 11 years before he had visited the university to learn about the program of economic subjects: “I was unable to follow my dream to come here but I want to thank this university for the many able to study here”. The Cuban makes a clear distinction of democracy in practice, in theory there are many that are not true democrats. The Cuban Revolution – he says – has its own ideals. We strongly believe in ideals of freedom, of human rights and social justice. But freedom is not possible of millions of persons don’t know how to read and right. A man cannot be free if he is hungry”.

In answer to a question that reveals a sign of distrust of Washington, the Prime Minister gives a cutting answer: “The Revolution is the same in power in the mountains. We have never made any concessions” although kindly, before concluding, he launches an invitation that would become the leitmotif of the trip of Fidel Castro to the United States in 1959. “Go to Cuba and learn the truth for yourselves.”

It is a Sunday in August of 2014 in Dillon Field House of the Harvard stadium. The campus is deserted. The students have boarded to train for vacations and only some Chinese tourists wander around, a couple of seventy odd years who talk in the shadow of an elm tree, sitting on plastic chairs. I ask if they work in the University: “No we are here to appear intelligent”, responds humorously the man and they both laugh freely. A short distance beyond is the river on which young people can be seen rowing boats and their enthusiastic shouts reach us.

“Do you know that in this building, from the first floor balcony Fidel Castro spoke in 1959? Really? She reacts and both look incredulous the balcony of red bricks with little stairs at the side. “Castro is a good guy…The only one who dared to Harlem to meet with Malcolm X; the only one who helped Madiba”, he says now asking a question: “I bet you don’t know what Malcolm X said to Castro when they met in New York?...’if you know that Uncle Sam is against you they you are a good man”. And again they laughed, we laughed.

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