Mrs. Phillips, The New York Times’ Havana correspondent, has always known that Castro was a Communist. Did he not once, as a student, stand up in class and say: “I am a leftist”? [p. 18]. Of course, once in power he denied being a Communist, “but many people were convinced even at that time that he was. He had already said in a speech that he believed in national ownership of public utilities and the division of all big estates among the landless” [p. 47]. More conclusive, however, was Castro’s exercise of power not as President, but as Premier, “just as Premier Khrushchev does in the Soviet Union and Mao Tse-tung in Red China. Had the people paused to question this new form of government in Cuba they might have realized that it was along the lines of that in Communist countries” [p. 51].
Therefore, “why [the State Department] could not see [Castro’s] plan . . . is a great puzzle” to Mrs. Phillips. After all, she “was sending in all the information [she] could get, and many of [her] stories were printed in the front pages. The pattern was perfectly plain to anyone who read the Times” [p. 179]. But some pieces of the puzzle are known to her, for instance, “the ‘Castro cell’ in the U. S. Embassy,” [p. 22]. And it is no secret that “there were too many officials in the State Department who had for years been appeasing communism all over the world” [p. 294]. Indeed, “many of our government officials are unhappy with capitalism and are inclined to look with longing eyes at socialism” [p. 348], and Americana would do well to be on their lookout for “brainwashing.” (Mrs. Phillips helpfully explains who is best equipped to resist it: “a person, not too well educated perhaps, but one who has been raised by a God-fearing family, who has been taught honesty and respect of property. . .” [p. 252]). In short, Mrs. Phillips will have no truck with “liberals” who “in imitation of the Communists” [p. 349] talk about social revolution: “social revolution is the cloak under which the Communists hide” [p. 251].
Thus prepossessed, Mrs. Phillips chronicles the Cuban revolution. Her logic is sometimes difficult to follow. Item: after proposing in Buenos Aires United States aid for Latin America, “Castro flew off to Uruguay to make another speech. Later he spent two days in Brazil making speeches and holding news conferences. It was all part of his campaign to discredit the United States and to make himself a hero in Latin America” [pp. 75-76]. Item: she complains of Castro’s expulsion of NBC correspondent Ted Scott, yet confesses that had they really known what he was up to he “most assuredly woud have been shot” [p. 218]. Similarly: when AP correspondent Bob Berrellez, chased by Cuban agents, sneaks into her bathroom and manages to get rid of “some notes” which “included the names of the Cuban warships in the harbor,” Mrs. Phillips indignantly comments: “it was a good thing he got rid of them, since the first charge was always that an American was a spy” [p. 320]. Item: Castro helped organize a Latin American “National Sovereignty, Economic Emancipation and Peace Conference. Anyone could tell from the name that it was Communistic” [p. 310]. And some of Mrs. Phillips’ jottings read as from a diary reprinted without revision. Speaking of the invasion alarm of January, 1961, she says: “I am sure that Castro knew the United States had no intention of attacking Cuba, but used this for propaganda” [p. 299].
The book’s conclusion is quite uncluttered: “there can be no peace and security in the Western Hemisphere until Communism is eradicated from Cuba. This can be done only by force of arms—and time is running out” [p. 357].
Evidently, this work is almost as invaluable a personal document for the study of the role of American journalism in U.S.-Cuban relations for the period 1959-1961 as William Randolph Hearst’s diary would be for the period 1895-1898.