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| Fifth Column |
| National Review on The Man Who Invented Fidel |
| 2006-07-03 |
| A Dictator's Scribe - The Man Who Invented Fidel: Castro, Cuba, and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times, by Anthony DePalma By Ronald Radosh The late New York Times journalist Herbert L. Matthews is now an almost forgotten name, except, perhaps, among journalism students and those who remember the earliest days of the Cuban Revolution. It was Matthews who, while covering Cuba for the Times in February 1957, got the scoop of a lifetime. Fulgencio Batista, Cuba's authoritarian ruler, had announced that Castro and his small band of rebels had been killed by Batista's troops three months earlier. Not trusting the official sources, Matthews sought out the truth. Claiming to be a tourist, he penetrated Batista's military lines and made a harrowing journey through the jungle on foot, eluding government troops and eventually holding his now-famous rendezvous with the young revolutionary. Matthews's front-page story altered the fortunes of Castro and his beleaguered rebels. Opponents of Batista's regime smuggled copies of the banned paper into Cuba, and within a short time Cuba's people learned that Castro had not been defeated, and that he had more troops and followers than anyone had believed. For Americans, the story offered proof that conditions in Cuba were not as stable and calm as Batista had claimed, and that the charismatic young bearded guerrilla fighter was the new democratic hope for a nation tired of tyranny. Castro, after all, had told Matthews he sought only democracy, and was not interested in power for himself. Smitten by Castro, Matthews saw him as a heroic future liberator, a man whose cause he could make his own; Matthews would not just write a newspaper story, but help to make history. Nor was this the first time that Matthews saw himself as the chronicler of activist heroes. In the 1930s, biographer Anthony DePalma points out, Matthews was a supporter of Mussolini, whose invasion of Abyssinia he backed and whose Fascist armed forces he extolled. By 1936, the civil war in Spain was the new hot story, and -- moved by the valiant effort of the defenders of Madrid against Franco -- Matthews switched his allegiances and wrote accounts meant to awaken the sympathies of American readers to the Republic's cause. His stories won him the lifelong friendship of the American Communist volunteers who fought Franco in the so-called Abraham Lincoln Brigade. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #3 Don't forget the NYT's Raymond Bonner, who in the 1980s tried to do for the FDR and FMLN in El Salvador what Matthews did for Fidel and the 26th July Movement in Cuba back in the 1950s. The Reagan State Department exerted much pressure and got Bonner booted out of El Salvador before that rat fink could do his evil deed. |
| Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden 2006-07-03 21:15 |
| #2 In other words he was a crypto-communist (let's remember that teh FBI identified only a hundred of the eight hundred agents mentionned in teh small part of the soviet traffic the FBi was able to decipher. I know it from the fact he supported the Spanish Republic. Because this was no longer a democracy (in case it ever was) and its governemnt had not been democratically elected. I will pass over the fact that none of its formations supported democracy be it the anarchists, the communists or the socialists who unlike everywhere else in Europe had not renounced to establish a dictatorship supposedly of the proletariat. In fact the only thing who separated Spanish socialists from communists was the question of subordination to Moscow I will pass over how when the right had been elected in 1933, riots and threats impeded it to lead the governement, I will pass over the failed attempt of a leftist coup in 1934. In early 1936, there were new elections and the left basing on the first recounts (ie the big cities whare it had majority) proclamied itself winner and rioted so violently that the leaving government members fearing for their lives resigned and handled power to the Popular Front coalition before the recount was ended. Then the leftists stole the ballot boxes everywhere where recounts were still not finished (ie in zones whree they would have probably lost). In fact the Republic never published the definitive results. And then the left began to govern and militants of right wings partys were being assassinated. Then Calvo Sotelo the leader of one of the opposition parties was assassinated while only luck preserved two other in what appears as a coordinated attempt of decapitate the opposition. Two days later the army raised. Now I am not saying th coup had not been in gestation for weeks before I only highlight the fact thet the sitation was: -The opposition parties had no hope of ever returning to power through elections since the left would cheat like it had done in February (BTW the Socialist leader had told: we will remain in power forever) or would be rioted out of power in case they would ever win like in 1933 -Soon or later the pro-government death squads would kidnap and kill them like for Calvo Sotelo (or socialists would openly declare dictatorship and then it would be the police but on a larger scale) Now about the rebels. Contrary to legend set by Mr Matthews and others, most rebels werfe not fascists. The Falange (Spanish Fascist Party) was only a tiny part of them. The remainder was either for a truly democratic republic, constitutioanl monarchists or requetes (ie partisans of traditionalist non-Constitutional monarchy) plus catholics aggravated by religious perseecution. However the coup failed and degenrated in civil war. This favored a general Franco who was not even in the original junta but who happened to have bty far, more troops than any other rebel general. It also favoured those who could count on support (ie money and weapons) from outside ie Falange and Communists respectively, plus teh fact that the massacres ion both sides favoured the hard liners (again Falange and Communists). But I repaat in 1936 the rebels are not a fascist movement (Falange would grew later but even in 1939n it was only one of componet in an alliance of rebel movements that Franco played one against the other). Also the Republican governnt sent all of Spain's gold to Moscow as a payment in advance for Soviet war supplies. Of course when German and Soviet relations began to warm (several months before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) the Soviets alleged the Sapnish government had outspent its credit, kkept the gold and stopped shipping arms to the "Republicans". Now what can we think about a guy who propagandizes for a regime who was in fact a dictatorship and who had given all the country's gold to Stalin? |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-07-03 17:03 |
| #1 Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times NYT? What a surprise - you could knock me over with freight train. |
| Posted by: Xbalanke 2006-07-03 14:45 |