What was life like in the 60s?
I was in Miami on 1 January 1959 when Batista fled and Fidel Castro sent Camilo Cienfuegos to Havana right away to take possession of the government, while he began a cautious trip by motor caravan from Santiago de Cuba to Havana, stopping and making speeches at every town along the way, a prudent operation in case it was a trap. The United States, in a very unusual move, recognized Castro's government on 7 January 1959, Castro reached Havana on 9 January 1959 and I flew in from Miami on 11 January 1959.
The Castro promises had generated expectations of a free and stable Cuba that were short-lived. Soon began public, televised trials of "war criminals" of the Batista regime that were a complete sham. I remember the trial of Comandante Sosa Blanco, witnesses against whom could not identify him even though he was wearing a grey prison suit with a big P on the back. Ironically, Comandante Humberto Sorí Marín, a lawyer who served as prosecutor during those trials, was himself executed by firing squad a few years later.
Then in Santiago de Cuba there were trials of pilots of the FAE --Fuerza Aerea del Ejército-- accused of bombarding the rebels at Sierra Maestra during the war, which resulted in a verdict of Not Guilty. The following day, Havana newspapers had a front page huge headline that said "Fidel Renuncia" or Fidel Resigns. Castro was Prime Minister at the time, under a nominal President named Manuel Urrutia. Castro demanded a new trial for the pilots, against the "Jes Judicata" principle every civilized country accepts, they were tried again in Havana, some were executed, other sent to prison.
Executions were plentiful, many indiscriminate, the idea was to create uncertainty, to start the considerable exodus of potential enemies to the regime, while the government sent children to boarding schools away from home, mixing sexes and races, encouraging promiscuity, eliminating family morals.
The Agrarian Reform began, government propaganda exacerbated race and class resentment, created it where there was none, mobs demanded the execution of people without knowing whom or why. Expropiations began without compensation, first big landowners and large businesses, slowly trickling down to smaller and smaller ones.
Cuban currency was backed in gold and promptly paper money of $500 and $1,000 denomination were taken out of circulation. If you left the country, you could take out only $500, which you could exchange for U.S. dollars at a bank by taking your passport to the bank, which made a notation on it. Later on, this amount was reduced to $5.
A millionaire friend of my cousin Pepe was, during the first few months of 1959, paying the airline tickets of people Pepe deemed reliable, to fly to Miami and deposit a little less than $500 in his bank account, so he got money out of Cuba while my parents and I got a free trip to Miami.
My sister-in-law Mariana married at the Corpus Christie Church, at Gran Avenida de Roosevelt, half a block from the house Alfredo owned in Avenida del Golfo, on August 1959. The reception was a big event at the public gardens of the FOCSA building in 17 and M, Vedado, where they lived at the time in apartment 20-D. We showed Charles Wade, Mariana's husband, and his mother Rosalie, a great time while in Havana, took them many places in Havana and Matanzas.
My father was the first in my family to be deceptioned by the revolution, other followed during the rest of 1959 and 1960. Miriam's family never sympathized with the revolution. I had joined the Brigadas Universitarias, all we did was to march in parades, but in December 1959 they took us by train, --a modern electric Fiat train of the fleet Batista had purchased-- to Oriente, then in trucks to the sugar mill "La Demajagua" where the Ten-Year War of 1868 had begun, later to the foot hills of Sierra Maestra, where we hiked for a week uphill to Pico Turquino. After I returned from that trip I never attended the marches again.
At the beginning of 1960 I came to Miami again, then in June I accompanied Alfredo to Portsmouth Virginia, when Mariana's twins were born. On 13 October 1960 my father, mother and I came with our resident visas to stay. Miriam and her mother came two days later, albeit Miriam with a student visa and her mother with a tourist visa.
In late 1959 and 1960 Anti-Castro guerillas took up arms in the mountains of central Cuba, La Sierra del Escambray. Castro sent about 50,000 regular troops and 200,000 members of the militia to fight back in was known as the Escambray Revolt, or how Fidel called it: the War Against the Bandits."
Some of the prominent names in the Escambray rebellion had fought there against Batista in the 1950s, and included Osvaldo Ramírez, William A. Morgan, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo and Sinesio Walsh. The CIA first thought this was a good alternative to the Castro regime and assisted the rebels with arms and supplies, but their help ceased completely after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of 17 April 1961.
The rebels continued their heroic fight, but overwhelming Castro forces and the sacrifice of thousands of militia and hundreds of soldiers proved too much in the long run for the abandoned guerrillas and when they finally surrendered, most were executed, the rest sent to prison.
In 1960, the month of September, Fidel Castro visited the U.S. and embraces Soviet Premier Nikita Kreuzchev at the United Nations.
the United States established an embargo on Cuba in October 1960 and broke diplomatic relations the following January. Tensions between the two governments peaked during the April 1961 "Bay of Pigs" invasion and the October 1962 missile crisis
Upper class and professional Cubans were leaving the island in droves, as the new government seemed to embody a disturbing new ideology. By mid 1960, Cuba and the Soviet Union had established formal diplomatic relations, and oil companies owned by Shell, Esso and Texaco, were nationalized after they refused to refine Soviet oil.
In December 1959 Cubans began to send their children to the U.S., afraid of "loosing them to communism." (Over 14,000 Cuban children who came to the U.S. in this manner are now remembered as the Pedro Pan kids.) At the same time, various newspapers in the U.S., Mexico, and Latin America were running articles warning of an imminent U.S. attack on Cuba.
After coming from Havana for the last time, to stay and never go back, in October of 1960, by pure chance I saw John F. Kennedy sitting in the back of a convertible riding slowly south on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami, while I stood on the sidewalk, he was on his presidential campaign. In 1960 also was the first televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
1961 was the year in which, after winning over Nixon last November by a very short margin, JFK gave his famous inaugural speech in which he said "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" and soon thereafter he was confronted with a dilemma for which he was ill-prepared, a plan conceived and led by the CIA but in which different factions of the CIA disagreed and had been suspiciously postponed during the Eisenhower administration, landing as a hot potato in his lap, I am talking about the Bay of Pigs invasion, a betrayal of Brigade 2506, recruited and trained by the CIA in Florida, Louisiana and Nicaragua, composed mostly of Cuban exiles, but that contained also CIA operatives, some of which died while the rest were captured, after landing them at the wrong place, in a swampy area and then withdrawing the promised air support of three raids which should have dominated the inadequate Cuban air force and control the movilization of Castro's troops, who had only one highway and one railroad track to reach the area, not landing supplies for them that were nearby and refusing to withdraw them to nearby ships when failure was inminent. It was the tremendous failure of this operation what cemented Castro in power, made him a worldwide hero, a Robin Hood that defeated the Sheriff of Nothingham. Afterwards, JFK ransomed the Brigade 2506 prisoners with shipments of food and medicines, came to Miami and accepted a Cuban flag presented to him by Brigade 2506, promising to return it in a free Cuba. Read more:
https://www.military.com/history/assault-brigade-2506-and-the-bay-of-pigs.html
The Joseph Alsop book "I have seen the best of it" speaks of this event from the point of view of the close friend of JFK that he was.
In September 1961, the Castro regime at gunpoint collected 131 priests, brothers and a bishop, placing them on board the Spanish ship Covadonga and deported them from Cuba. Many of the remaining priests were sent to forced labor camps. Over 300 priests, brothers, and nuns were expelled from Cuba in 1961 alone. Our friend, Father Arnaldo Bazán was expelled from Cuba in the Covadonga and went to Vitoria, Basque Country, Spain.
https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=tmon19610922-01.2.7&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN--------
In September of 1965, after a huge exodus of Cubans opposed to the regime, the Cuban government rounded up disidents, long-haired rock-and-rollers, consciouncious objectors, Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, Jevoha Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists and others that would not join the revolution, about 35,000 in total, and sent them to a concentration labor camp euphemistacally
called Unidad Militar de Ayuda a la Producción or Military Unit of Aid to Production, ostensibly in military service, but forced to work twelve hours daily, seven days a week, maltreated and with food at the bare subsistance level.
While many died and more committed suicide, it was effective brainwashing many others, but it must be said that the group they could not subjugate were the Jevoha Witnesses. Some of the prominent men who emerged rehabilitated from the UMAP were Jaime Lucas Ortega Alamino, who later became a Cardinal in the Catholic Church, Archbishop of Havana, and Pablo Milanés, a popular composer and singer.
The UMAP lasted until July 1968.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Units_to_Aid_Production
The decade ended with the widely lauded goal of a 10-million-ton sugar crop for 1970. It became the holy grail of the Revolution on its tenth birthday, and turned out to be 1.5 million tons short.
Here in the United States life was very different that is now, for example, according to
https://www.humbleisd.net/Page/101527
the 1960s Cost of Living
New House 1960: $12,675 1969: $15,550
Average Income 1960: $5,199 per year 1969: $8,550 per year
New Car 1960: $2,610 1969: $3,270
Average Rent 1960: $98 per month 1969: $135 per month
Movie Ticket 1960: $1.00 each 1969: $1.42 each
Gasoline 1960: 25 cents per gallon 1969: 35 cents per gallon
First Class Postage Stamps 1960: 4 cents 1969: 6 cents
Preceding the 1960s that marked the beginning of the counterculture that has changed our way of life progressively since. In December of 1953 the first issue of the Playboy Magazine showed Marilyn Monroe in the Centerfold; in May of 1954 the Supreme Court ended school segregation with its Brown V. The School Board decision; in July of 1955 Billy Haley came out with his version of the Keystone song Rock around the clock and on 30 September 1955, James Dean, star of Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden and Giant, and idol of the youth that was beginning to rebel, died in a car crash at age 24, while on December of 1955 Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to cede her seat on a bus to a white person in Montgomery Alabama, which resulted in a bus boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King, a year later ordered the desegregation of the Montgomery Bus System; in April 1956 an es truck driver called Elvis Pressley recorded Heartbreak Hotel that stayed on top of the charts for weeks, but in March 24 of 1958 Elvis Presley, by then the biggest recording star in the world, was inducted into the U.S. Army. Presley serves his two years honorably.
On 29 October 1959, the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle filed an application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to license their drug Enovid for use as an oral contraceptive.
On 23 June 1960, the FDA approved the sale of Enovid, which contributed greatly to the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s with the Hippie Movement.
The decade that began in 1960 marks the beginning, or rather acceleration, of the attack on traditional Christian family values, religion and patriotism, but also the beginning of civil liberties for blacks in the South.
The publication in 1960 of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" and its subsequent release as a movie in 1962, a classic if there ever was one, was very significant indeed.
The year 1961 also brought the Twenty-third Amendment that gave District of Columbia the right to vote for President, the Berlin crisis when East Berlin began the building of the wall, which prompted me to join the U.S. Army on 28 July 1961, JFK also instituted the Peace Corps in that year, was reluctant to send more troops --we only had then 16,000 troops in Vietnam-- Special Forces training and advising the South Vietnamese Army.
On 1 May 1960 CIA Francis Gary Powers, flying a U2 plane at 70,000 feet, was shot down and captured over the Soviet Union; after extensive questioning by the KGB, Powers was convicted of spying and sentenced to three years in prison and seven more of hard labor. In February, 1962, however, he and a detained American student were traded for a captured Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel. Read more here:
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/u2-incident
In 1962, the University of Mississippi was integrated using federal troops, in October of 1962 it was revealed that offensive Soviet missiles were in Cuba and JFK ordered a naval blockade of Cuba while Soviet ships navigated toward the island; after JFK twice ordered the blockaders to retreat a short distance, Nikita Kreuchev acceded to withdraw the missiles in exchange for JFK's promise of never to invade Cuba.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, better known as Pope John XXIII, died on 3 June 1963, so when Miriam, our son Humberto and I went to Italy on September of that same year, Pope Paul VI was the new Pope, whom we saw fairly close during a Public Audience at Saint Peter Cathedral on 18 September 1963, before going back to our campground and celebrating Humberto's first birthday.
In 1963 was the Civil Rights march on Washington. On 22 October 1963, while I was in Germany, we went on military Alert and soon found that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. There are many viable theories about the reason for it, among them:
1. The Mafia did it, Joseph Kennedy had used his influence with Organized Crime and Labor Unions, but soon after taking possession, Robert F. Kennedy began his battle against Organized Crime.
2. JFK had ordered the Treasury Department to take over the issuance of currency and did in fact issued Silver Certificate bank notes in 1964, taking that privilege away from the Federal Reserve Bank.
3. Castro's Cuba was involved, in retaliation for CIA's attempts on Castro, which is doubtful, as Castro claims over 100 attempts had been made by the CIA on his life, hard to swallow, since I believe that if the CIA had really wanted to eliminate him, it would have done so.
4. Cuban exiles, also very improbable in my opinion, there was no organization or structure capable of the deed.
5. The CIA wanted to eliminate him, which is what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. openly believes and says now, the reasons vary depending on whom you read, Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to send troops to Vietnam and Kennedy refused, as well as many other reasons.
The one certain thing is that Harvey Lee Oswald was a patsy, he could not have made that shot from the Book Depository using an old inadequate Italian Carcano rifle with a cheap telescopic site, his subsequent improbable assassination while flanked by two U.S. Marshalls, one of which was a survivor of the Bataan Death March, by nightclub owner Jack Ruby whom in turn died of a pulmonary embolism on January 3, 1967.
The Commission presided by Supreme Court Justice Warren did a poor review of the facts, reached conclusions that did not convince many, the information was classified for 30 years, but in 1993 was extended another 30 years and, frustrating our hopes of finally learning the truth on 2023, was again extended.
On 2 July 1964 the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, also in 1964 the Free speech movement was born at Berkeley, The Beatles reach number one in the charts with "I Want to Hold Your Hand," the Twenty-fourth Amendment outlawed the poll tax, LBJ began his "War on poverty" and the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 2 August 1964 where 3 North Vietnam torpedo boats attacked a US destroyer USS Maddox that was on covert maneuvers close to their coast, which resulted on 4 Northvietnamese dead and six injured, with no casualties and slight damage to our destroyer and an aircraft from a nearby carrier, then a report by the Captain of the destroyer of a second attack on 4 August, as reported by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara which was proven false years later, but the outcome of the incident was the passage by U.S. Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by "communist aggression". The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for deploying U.S. conventional forces to South Vietnam and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.
On 12 January 1965 Miriam, our sons Humberto and Pablo and I docked at New York Harbor aboard an MSTS ship that had left Bremerhaven and stopped at South Hampton on the way, on that same day I was released from active duty into the Inactive Reserves of the U.S. Army, from which I was Honorably Discharged in July 1967.
Also in 1965 The Voting Rights Act was signed into law, on Feb 21 was the death of Malcolm X, beginning on 11 and lasting until 16 August 1965 The Watts riots in Los Angeles resulted in 34 dead and intervention by 14,000 National Guard Troops, Lyndon B. Johnson inaugurated his Great Society and the Operation Rolling Thunder from 2 March 1965 to 2 November 1968in Vietnam was the strategic bombing of North Vietnam micromanaged by President Johnson. Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder
In 1966 The Black Panther Party was founded, France withdrew from NATO, the National Organization of Women or N. O. W. was formed.
In July 23 and lasting until 28, 1967 the Detroit Riot started when police raided late at night an unlicensed bar and required the intervention of the National Guard, the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, resulted in several deaths; also in 1967 began the Peace movement in the U. S and The Summer of Love in San Francisco took place. The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
On January 23, 1968, a small U.S. Navy ship called the Pueblo was seized at sea by North Korean forces. One crew member was dead and 82 others were prisoners, destined to spend 11 months in North Korean captivity; On 30 January 1968, The Tet Offensive began, during the lunar new year (or “Tet”) holiday, North Vietnamese and communist Viet Cong forces launched a coordinated attack against a number of targets in South Vietnam. The U.S. and South Vietnamese militaries sustained heavy losses before finally repelling the communist assault; the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. happened on 4 April 1968 and that of Robert F. Kennedy on 6 June 1968; President Johnson declared that he will not seek re-election, Richard Nixon was elected President
In 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon, President Nixon began his Vietnamization of the Vietnam War, but later Congress denied help to the South Vietnamese; on August 15 to August 18 of 1969 The Woodstock music festival took place in Bethel, New York, where an estimated 400,000 attendants made history and went a long way to advance the counterculture and sexual revolution, received lots of press and a documental, it was one of, if not the, largest music festival of history.
On 10 April 1970, Jerry Rubin, a leader of the Youth International Party (also known as the Yippies), spoke on campus. In remarks reported locally, he said: "The first part of the Yippie program is to kill your parents. They are the first oppressors." Two weeks after that, Bill Arthrell, an SDS member and former student, distributed flyers to an event where he said he was going to napalm a dog; the Massacre at Kent State began on 1 May 1970 after President Nixon announced the expansion of the war into Cambodia, on 2 May the ROTC building was burned, information developed by an FBI investigation of the ROTC building fire indicates that, of those who participated actively, a significant portion weren't Kent State students, the riots culminated two days later when soldiers of the National Guard unjustifiably opened fire on the students and killed 4; also in 1970 the EPA was established and the SALT talks began.
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