In your own words, five main points of news story AND statement whether U.S. Medical Aid represents MISSION or LCWO, for both, and how. And does the Race lens operate here as well?
Cuban Memory Wars
Michael J. Bustamante, September 2014
On May 20, 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the Central Intelligence Agency did not have to release the last volume of its own in-house history of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The AHA has been following this case closely, and the National coalition for History, which represents 56 organizations, including the AHA, filed an amicus brief in favor of release. This issue of Perspectives features one historian’s views on the wider implications of the case, but what does the ruling mean to historians of Cuba? We asked Michael J. Bustamante for his reaction, and his response appears below.
Two days after the calamitous Bay of Pigs invasion ended in Cuban exile defeat, a group of well-known Cuban journalists began interviewing captives of the CIA-backed Brigade 2506 live on television. Over five days, revolutionaries and their opponents squared off in a one-of-a-kind encounter, broadcast island-wide, that was part interrogation, part debate. The battle to define public knowledge of the invasion—to determine exactly what happened, why, who was responsible, and what lessons should be drawn—had begun.
The recent ruling by the US Court of Appeals defending the CIA’s decision to withhold the fifth and final volume of its official Bay of Pigs history represents only the latest round in a decades-long struggle over the episode’s meaning and memory. In Miami and on the island, dozens of books have been and continue to be published; competing monuments and museums vie for nationalist bona fides. Historians and transparency advocates, meanwhile, have tussled with bureaucrats and the courts to secure documents that might improve our understanding of US invasion planning. And yet, no single declassification will put...