Helped shape Cuban policy

R. Richard Rubottom: a diplomat who influenced and helped hone United States policy toward Latin America in the late 1950s, a time of economic and political tumult that culminated in Fidel Castro’s takeover in Cuba. Mr. Rubottom rose from modest roots — his parents ran a boardinghouse in central Texas — to become the “official most responsible for defining United States Cuban policy” in the years immediately surrounding the 1959 Cuban revolution, the historian Thomas G. Paterson wrote in “Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution” (1994).

Mr. Rubottom began grappling with foreign policy issues in Latin America as assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs from 1956 to 1960. In 1958 he accompanied Vice President Richard M. Nixon on a widely publicized tour of Latin America that was marred by violent demonstrations against the United States. After protesters in Caracas, Venezuela, shattered windows in the vice president’s car, news reports suggested that Mr. Nixon partly blamed Mr. Rubottom for allowing his motorcade to be put in harm’s way.

For Nixon, it was always somebody else's fault.


As a high-level strategist on American policy toward Cuba in the late 1950s, Mr. Rubottom was portrayed in books and news reports as a strong early supporter of the country’s repressive leader, Fulgencio Batista as he battled the rebellion led by Fidel Castro. But Mr. Rubottom later worried that Mr. Batista’s “brutal retaliatory tactics” were eroding his support and questioned whether the United States should continue to sell tanks to Cuba after it became known that Mr. Batista was using them against his domestic opponents, a violation of American law. Mr. Batista ultimately canceled the tank order.


With the rise of Mr. Castro, Mr. Rubottom represented the State Department in meetings with military and intelligence officials on whether, how and when to try to eliminate him both before and after he seized power in January 1959. Yet when Mr. Castro visited the United States in April 1959 as Cuba’s new leader, Mr. Rubottom was on hand to greet him, and he was deputized to ask Mr. Castro what American aid he would like. Mr. Castro said none.


Some politicians and historians have criticized Mr. Rubottom for not identifying Mr. Castro as a Communist before he took control. But Adolf A. Berle, a former assistant secretary of state, wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1962 that he knew for certain Mr. Rubottom had not known. However, he and his deputy, William Wieland, were convinced that Mr. Castro was “a hopeless megalomaniac,” Mr. Berle wrote, and that the “optimistic image created by the uninformed American press” was wrong.


In 1960, Mr. Rubottom created a controversy by telegraphing Gov. Edmund G. Brown of California with an appeal by the Uruguayan government to halt the planned execution of Caryl Chessman, a convicted robber and rapist who had become a global cause célèbre for opponents of capital punishment. Governor Brown granted Mr. Chessman a 60-day reprieve, although he was ultimately executed. Mr. Rubottom said he had merely been passing on information that related to American foreign policy — Uruguay opposed the death penalty — but his action ignited a debate over federal intervention in state matters and prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to issue a statement saying the execution was entirely a California matter.