While the perception of President John F. Kennedy is largely positive among most Americans, that is not the case for Miami’s Cuban exile community, which has never forgotten his betrayal. Despite the many attempts to whitewash or ignore JFK’s scandalous betrayal of Cuban freedom fighters at the Bay of Pigs, Cubans in exile have not forgotten and will not be fooled by revisionist history. As far as Cuban Americans are concerned, the memory of JFK will always be a memory of betrayal.
Hank Tester explains at Miami’s CBS4:
Miami Cuban community’s strained relationship with President John F. Kennedy
It was a balmy 80 degrees on December 29th, 1962, at Miami’s Orange Bowl when then President John F. Kennedy and wife Jackie welcomed home 1,100 members of the 2506 Brigade that the president’s administration had ransomed out of Fidel Castro’s jails in the wake of the failure of the Bay of Pigs Operation.
Kennedy addressed the huge crowd saying, “I bring you my nation’s respect for your courage and for your cause.”
Sixty years later, bring up the name Kennedy to many Cubans and the word from them is often “betrayal.” The failed invasion and a decision made by Kennedy at the time still promotes heated discussions about the former president’s standing in the Cuban community.
The botched Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis ended with a U.S. pledge to not invade Cuba were in the background at the huge Orange Bowl event. Rafael Montalvo, a member of the Brigade, was there.
“Him being there was a sign of respect for us and we really appreciated that. Jackie addresses us saying we are the bravest men in the world, we almost started crying. But yet, when he marched in front of me I couldn’t salute. There was something in me that would not let me. I had no bitterness, I had no hate. I was really appreciative but I did not salute as I had no respect for him,” said Montalvo.
Montalvo’s frank assessment led to the long-held belief that old guard Cubans never really forgave Kennedy, a Democrat. As they gained citizenship and the right to vote, they joined the Republican Party.
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The Orange Bowl event was cheap damage control. Kennedy was a shameless POS. After abandoning the Cuban freedom fighters, he had the chutzpah to greet them as heroes. The ignominy of it all.
Yes, it is indelibly a memory of betrayal, but also of woeful incompetence, deception and false appearances. The guy was a glorified Ken doll who looked and sounded far better than what he was, who had withheld information about his serious medical issues, who was a reckless sex addict and adulterer, and who was simply not up to being POTUS. But, he was quite marketable by an adoring media and other enablers, though I have absolutely no doubt that Khrushchev, for one, totally had his number. Lord, the contempt.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco was not just a betrayal but a willful waste of a golden opportunity, and the consequences wound up screwing a LOT more people than Cubans. Ask Venezuelans, for instance. I suppose Kennedy got shitty advice from his inner circle, and he sure as hell was not qualified to handle such a situation. Still, I expect his personality didn’t help any. The Brigade members, of course, were seen and treated as entirely expendable, and obviously Kennedy couldn’t care less about Cubans on the island. Talk about a cluster fuck.
Cuban American Nestor Carbonell, a former president of Pepsi Cola, Bay of Pigs Veteran and author [incidentally, the father of actor Nestor Carbonell] wrote a great book called, Por la libertad de Cuba, where he mentions the Bay of Pigs. JFK and his brother Robert Kennedy treated the Cubans horribly. He basically describes them as arrogant morons who thought they knew more than Cubans whom they looked down about while being morons who knew nothing. Everything Cubans told the moronic dual fell on deaf ears.
The so-called Prince of Camelot [what a bogus name! Laughable] was actually very unpopular among Americans who hated what he did in Cuba. It is said that his secret service was actually afraid for him when he went to Dallas on the day he was killed because Texans and other Americans were so pissed off with him for allowing Cuba to fall to the Russians.
No doubt the Kennedys were arrogant. They were spoiled rich boys whose father’s money was ill-gotten, but they were raised as if they’d been blue bloods, and they both thought they were the shit, especially JFK. As I said, it’s not just how badly Cubans were screwed, but how needless and stupid it was.