Cuba and the Inter-American System: Exclusion of the Castro Regime from the Organization of American States

Abstract

The course taken by Fidel Castro's revolution brought it into early conflict with certain of the principles that were most deeply engraved in the Charter of the Organization of American States. Political organization of the member states “… on the basis of the effective exercise of representative democracy” and strict adherence to the non-intervention commitment were proclaimed as cardinal elements of the inter-American structure that had been created since World War II. Even though such noble ideals were not by any means fully realized by all the members, Castro's early sponsorship of interventionist activities and the moves he quickly made toward creation of a dictatorship—some said an increasingly communistic one—seemed to mark a new and more virulent challenge to the convivencia interatnericana than it had previously encountered. Whatever his reasons—and they will be long disputed—Castro had by 1961 brought his revolution gradually but decisively into dependence upon and, in effect, alliance with the Soviet Union, and that seemed to many to constitute precisely the kind of challenge the inter-American system had been designed to meet.