AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
362. Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, Washington, September 18, 1959
This document is a record of a conversation between State Department officials on September 18, 1959. This conversation was between Assistant Secretary R. R. Rubottom Jr, Ambassador Bonsal, William A. Wieland, J. C. Hill, R. A. Stevenson, and R. B. Owen. This memorandum offers an important insight into the early U.S. response to the revolution and how diplomats were preparing to react. With the subject line “Our Future Relations with Cuba”, the reader might imagine an aggressive and stern conversation. But the points raised by Ambassador Bonsal and J. C. Hill are much less drastic than the eventual steps taken by the U.S. in response to the revolution in Cuba.
Bonsal raises the point that things may seem worse in the U.S. than they do on the ground in Cuba, and that the goals of the revolutionaries are not really a threat to the United States. While Hill brings up a concern that if the revolution is successful it could spread to other countries. The perspectives represented here are good indicators of the thinking at the time, with the ambassador attempting to assuage fears and the State Department official worrying that this was a precursor to widespread communist revolution.
Foreign Relations of the United States. “The U.S. Government Responds to Revolution.” In The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics, edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, Alfredo Prieto, and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff, 467–71. Duke University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smxrz.100.