Take Me to Havana! Airline Hijacking, U.S.–Cuba Relations, and Political Protest in Late...

t e i s h a n a l a t n e r

Take Me to Havana Airline Hijacking USndashCuba

Relations and Political Protest in Late Sixtiesrsquo America

In 1968 the Republic of Cuba acquired an unwelcome distinction as the worldrsquosmost popular place to land a hijacked airplane The perpetrators came primarilyfrom the United States making American citizens or residents the worldrsquos mostfrequent air hijackers Making over ninety attempts to reach Cuba in commercialand private aircraft between 1968 and 1973 hijackers guided more flights fromUS skies to Cubarsquos airspace than all other global air-hijacking incidents com-bined1 Seeking political asylum a haven from racism contact with Third Worldrevolutionary movements escape from criminal charges and adventure themajority of the hijackers framed their actions in explicitly political terms by invok-ing left-wing tropes of social justice and political protest2 The perpetratorsincluded an ex-Black Panther facing criminal charges in California who hopedldquoto start a new life among revolutionary socialist-minded people who wouldnrsquothold my past or my race against merdquo3 a divorced college professor who wanted

This article is derived from my larger work on the relationship between the CubanRevolution and the US Left For their comments support and assistance at various stages ofthe research and writing of this essay I gratefully acknowledge Anita Casavantes-Bradford SohailDaulatzai David Farber Raul Fernandez Van Gosse Winston James Martin Klimke DanielMcClure Harvey Neptune Emily Rosenberg Mark Sanders Mark Redondo Villegas K WayneYang and the two anonymous reviewers for Diplomatic History Research for the article was aidedby grants from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations the UC-Cuba AcademicInitiative and the Humanities Center and the Center for Writing and Translation at theUniversity of California Irvine In Cuba I especially wish to thank Nehanda Abiodun CharlieHill William Potts Tomas Fernandez Robaına Rene Tamayo and Roberto Zurbano for theirassistance and insights

1 Robert T Holden counts 137 hijackings of flights between 1968 and 1972 by persons whoboarded in the United States of these ninety were ldquotransportation attemptsrdquo to Cuba whiletwenty-one were attempts to reach other countries Mexico the next most popular destinationfor American hijackers was the desired destination for four hijacking attempts Robert T HoldenldquoThe Contagiousness of Aircraft Hijackingrdquo The American Journal of Sociology 91 no 4 (1986)874 879

2 Over a dozen hijackings were also orchestrated by Cuban exiles seeking to return to theisland and in at least two cases by American citizens protesting against the Castro governmentHowever the overwhelming majority of hijackings were committed by US citizens who articu-lated identifiable left-wing ideals and held generally favorable views of Cuba It is these hijackersthat are the focus of this article

3 William Lee Brent Long Time Gone A Black Pantherrsquos True-Life Story of His Hijacking andTwenty-Five Years in Cuba (New York 1996) 134

Diplomatic History Vol 39 No 1 (2015) The Author 2014 Published by Oxford UniversityPress on behalf of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations All rights reservedFor permissions please e-mail journalspermissionsoupcom doi101093dhdht129

Advance Access publication on January 4 2014

16

at University of C

alifornia Irvine on April 20 2015

httpdhoxfordjournalsorgD

ownloaded from

to ldquohelp the revolution of Fidel Castrordquo4 a father-and-sons team who robbinga bank to fund a ldquorevolutionary commando organizationrdquo hijacked a plane toCuba to escape murder charges5 and a man who wanted to go to Cuba becausehe was ldquotired of TV dinners and tired of seeing people starve in the worldrdquo6

Formulating themselves as beleaguered idealists and political refugees left-winghijackers imagined Cuba as an ldquooutlaw nationrdquo a clandestine revolutionary stateexisting defiantly outside the orbit of US influence to secure personal liberationand global belonging beyond the borders of America

As the phenomenon grew air hijacking referred to variously as ldquoair piracyrdquo andldquoskyjackingrdquo became a fixture of American public life Extorting tens of millionsof random dollars from airline corporations and occasionally threatening toblow up planes hijackers commanded political attention and popular fascinationCommercial airline pilots threatened to strike en masse and emergency fundingwas allocated to build a nation-wide airport security apparatus costing $300 mil-lion Hijacking invaded popular culture becoming fodder for comedic televisiongags as pundits debated the epidemicrsquos connection to the erarsquos social ferment In acharacteristic segment NBC News surmised that far from being left-wing politicalrefugees or idealistic youth the air pirates were psychopathic and mentally ill ldquoawax museum of freaks perverts criminals and assorted social misfitsrdquo7 Hijackersrsquofascination with the communist Caribbean nation was evidence right-wingcommentators charged of the decadence of the erarsquos rebellious youth and ofthe perilously seductive aura of Cubarsquos revolutionary mystique

Yet the Cuban government was little more enthused by the arrival of self-styledAmerican revolutionaries some of which exhibited signs of mental illness8 ldquoMostof the hijackersrdquo Fidel Castro opined a year into the episode ldquoare not completelynormal peoplerdquo9 Imprisoning many as common criminals or suspected CentralIntelligence Agency (CIA) spies Cuban officials treated hijacking as a both anuisance and national security problem Nonetheless Cuba refused to extraditeits uninvited American guests As US officials fulminated over their inabilityto retrieve fugitives from Castrorsquos island Cuba afforded many of them the

4 US News and World Report December 9 19685 Alfred E Lewis and Jay Mathews ldquoFather Son Give Up in rsquo72 Killingsrdquo The Washington

Post July 8 19756 National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals Disorders and

Terrorism Report of the Task Force on Disorders and Terrorism (Washington 1976) 5157 NBC January 30 19698 ldquoAmericanrdquo is a fraught and imperfect term in the transnational context of the Americas

Nonetheless to facilitate ease of reading I employ the term in this article to indicate the nationalorigin of a hijacker who is a US citizen While Cubans are also Americans in the hemisphericsense most citizens of Cuba refer to themselves as Cubanaos in everyday parlance they in turnfrequently refer to citizens of the United States as Americanaos

9 Quoted by the Swiss Ambassador who had spoken with Castro Memorandum HenryKissinger to the President ldquoAircraft Hijackingrdquo February 7 1969 3 declassified June 2004US Department of State online archive

Airline Hijacking USndashCuba Relations and Political Protest in Late Sixtiesrsquo America 17

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opportunity to make a new life for themselves as exiles beyond the reach of USlegality

This article seeks first to understand the USndashCuba hijacking surge of 1968ndash1973 by exploring how the Caribbean nation functioned in the American radicalimaginary at the apex of the sixties era Constructing Cuba as an idealizedldquoimagined nationrdquo as an alternative to consumer capitalism white dominationand US global hegemony and as a portal to Third World movements within thegeopolitical context of the Cold War and decolonization left-wing US hijackerssought to become global actors beyond the constraints of the US imperial stateHijackers also occasionally framed their actions in ways that suggested age-oldpaternalistic tropes of Cuba Arriving without invitation and imagining theCaribbean island as a permissive space that should welcome them as refugeesand revolutionary comrades some hijackers inadvertently echoed olderAmerican fantasies of imperial entitlement dating as far back as the late 1800sthat imagined Cuba as a space of lawlessness and personal license for foreigners10

These tendencies notwithstanding the hijacking surge from America to Cuba inthe late sixties can be most productively understood by situating it within the largerrelationship between Cuba and the US protest movements of the sixtiesAlthough much scholarship has illuminated the projection of US hegemonicpower vis-a-vis the postcolonial world significantly less attention has been devotedto the Third Worldrsquos subterranean cultural and political influence withinAmerican life One exception is a growing body of work seeking to globalize thestudy of US social movements in the ldquolongrdquo sixties and beyond by revealing theirtransnational links to movements abroad illuminating the ways in which Americanradicals formulated their own politics of protest in relation to an emerging ThirdWorld11 As some scholars have pointed out Cubarsquos 1959 revolution exerted aconspicuous influence on early elements of the US New Left on AfricanAmerican radicals and intellectuals and on what has more recently been concep-tualized as a multi-ethnic ldquoUS Third World Leftrdquo12 Few studies however have

10 Representations of Cuba in the American imaginary over time are examined most lucidlyin Louis A Perez Cuba in the American Imagination Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos (Chapel Hill2008)

11 The most thorough recent examination of the influence of the Third World on US socialmovements is Cynthia A Young Soul Power Culture Radicalism and the Making of a US ThirdWorld Left (Durham 2006) See also Laura Pulido Black Brown Yellow and Left Radical Activism inLos Angeles (Berkeley 2006) and Max Elbaum Revolution in the Air Sixties Radicals Turn to LeninMao and Che (New York 2002) See also George Katsiaficas The Imagination of the New Left AGlobal Analysis of 1968 (Cambridge 1999) and Fredric Jameson ldquoPeriodizing the 60srdquo Social Textno 910 (1984) 178ndash209 For the influence of the decolonizing world on African American left-ism see Penny Von Eschen Race Against Empire Black Americans and Anticolonialism (Ithaca 1997)

12 The term ldquoUS Third World Leftrdquo derives from Young who employs it to locate thebroad spectrum of movements originating in African American Asian American and Latinocommunities in the United States who incorporated anticolonial and Third World liberationdiscourses into their domestic political activism Cubarsquos influence on the early New Left togetherwith US black activists and intellectuals is examined in Van Gossersquos Where the Boys Are CubaCold War America and the Making of a New Left (New York 1993) and Devyn Spence

18 d i p l o m a t i c h i s t o r y

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followed up on this claim beyond the early sixties13 Hijacking thus provides anunder-scrutinized avenue through which to explore the complex cultural impact ofthe Cuban Revolution within American life at the height of the erarsquos ferment andsocial protest

The story of the 1968ndash1973 hijacking episode however is also the story ofUSndashCuba diplomacy during the Cold War Indeed the phenomenon marks theunlikely meeting point where the protest politics of the late sixties era collided withUSndashCuba foreign relations Although locked in a diplomatic impasse hijackersforced the United States and Cuba into an unprecedented series of dialoguesculminating in a 1973 antihijacking agreement which foreshadowed the mildthaw in relations during the coming Carter era14 As such hijacking adds a crucialldquonon-staterdquo element to evaluations of Cold War diplomacy between Washingtonand Havana a relationship that has most commonly been framed by the workingsof intransigent governments acting independently of the public generally andsocial movements specifically15 Similarly the rise of American hijacking toCuba provides an unexplored counterpoint to the peculiarities of US immigra-tion policy toward Cuba and the ways in which these policies based in a history ofunequal power relations and imperial hubris were shaped by Washingtonrsquos ColdWar logic of unrelenting antagonism and destabilization toward its neighbor inthe Caribbean Indeed Cubarsquos provision of asylum to beleaguered Americansclosely replicated the US policy of granting sanctuary under the 1966 CubanRefugee Adjustment Act to all Cubans reaching US soil with ldquodry feetrdquo includ-ing those accused of hijacking and other serious offenses As Cuban emigres tra-veling to South Florida formulated themselves as refugees from communistrepression US hijackers traveling in the other direction understood themselvesas refugees from a racist and capitalist America The hijacking surge providedCuba with an unwieldy but useable counterpoint to the imperial exceptionalismof US policy while also exposing the ways in which Cubarsquos attractiveness as a legal

BensonldquoCuba Calls African American Tourism Race and the Cuban Revolution 1959ndash1961rdquoHispanic American Historical Review 93 no 2 (2013) 239ndash71 Kepa Artaraz includes some consid-eration to Cubarsquos theoretical influence on both the New Left and black Liberation Movements inCuba and Western Intellectuals Since 1959 (Basingstoke 2009) Todd F Tietchen traces Cubarsquosinfluence on black and white US writers in the early sixties in great detail in The Cubalogues BeatWriters in Revolutionary Havana (Gainesville 2010)

13 Artaraz offers useful if brief forays into this area of inquiry See Cuba and WesternIntellectuals Since 1959 especially 72ndash81

14 The diplomatic dimensions of the hijacking surge that began in 1968 have been exploredonly cursorily in published scholarship See for example Jorge Domınguez To Make a World Safefor Revolution Cubarsquos Foreign Policy (Cambridge 1989) 122 226ndash27 and Lars Schoultz ThatInfernal Little Cuban Republic The United States and the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill 2009)Marıa Cristina Garcıa includes a brief mention of the episode in Havana USA Cuban Exiles andCuban Americans in South Florida 1959-1994 (Berkeley 1996) 138

15 See for example Morris H Morley Imperial State and Revolution The United States andCuba 1952-1986 (Cambridge 1987) and Louis A Perez Cuba and the United States Ties of SingularIntimacy 3rd ed (Athens 2013) See Jeremi Suri Power and Protest Global Revolution and the Rise ofDetente (Cambridge 2003) for an analysis of the influence of global social movements on govern-ment diplomacy during the sixties


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sanctuary for American dissidents was a consequence of Washingtonrsquos own policyof diplomatic hostility which had severed the normal channels through which thetwo nations might ostensibly act as equal juridical actors in ldquorealistrdquo fashion toresolve an issue such as air piracy

The distinctive transnational nexus of social cultural and diplomatic historiesthat is visible in the 1968ndash1973 hijacking episode comes into perhaps its sharpestfocus in the instance of black radical hijackers Imagining Cuba as a haven fromUS white supremacy and an opportunity to forge political connections withAfrican diasporic and global anticolonial movements black American hijackersconstituted a disproportionate number of Cubarsquos unbidden guests Their percep-tions of Cubarsquos racial project paralleled earlier renderings of the island by USPan-Africanists who understood the island nation as a vital part of the Africandiaspora one whose fate was bound up with that of black Americans The circu-lations of people of African descent between Cuba and the United States in theearly and mid-twentieth century influenced black racial politics in early and mid-twentieth-century United States long before Cubarsquos 1959 revolution16 Later en-counters between African American radicals and Cuba occurred as US blackactivists evaluated the revolutionary governmentrsquos claims to have forged a breakwith the islandrsquos racist past17 However considerably less attention has focused onthe relationship between African American activists and Cuba after 1961Although air hijacking became a high-profile medium for African American en-counters with Cuba during the Black Power era no published work has examinedthese relationships through air piracy18

Much of the academic scholarship on hijacking has been limited by an unwill-ingness to imagine hijackers as anything more than terrorists mentally ill idealistsand common criminals Academic treatments of hijacking have examined the1968ndash1973 USndashCuba episode primarily through the lenses of aviation policysecurity studies and counter-terrorism19 Two well-researched articles havedefined recent scholarly treatments of air hijacking in the Americas The first

16 See Frank Andre Guridy Forging Diaspora Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World ofEmpire and Jim Crow (Chapel Hill 2010) Lisa Brock and Digna Castaneda Fuertes eds BetweenRace and Empire African-Americans and Cubans Before the Cuban Revolution (Philadelphia 1998)Susan D Greenbaum More Than Black Afro-Cubans in Tampa (Gainesville 2002) and WinstonJames Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth Century America(New York 1998)

17 Gosse Where the Boys Are and Young Soul Power18 The two scholars that have examined African American relations with Cuba after 1961

most thoroughly are Ruth Reitan and Mark Sawyer Although they do not devote significantattention to hijacking their work reveals the larger contours of African American relations withCuba during the period See Ruth Reitan The Rise and Decline of an Alliance Cuba and AfricanAmerican Leaders in the 1960s (East Lansing MI 1999) and Mark Q Sawyer Racial Politics inPost-Revolutionary Cuba (Cambridge 2005)

19 While these studies are not concerned with the questions addressed in this article theyprovide useful data that has been incorporated where appropriate See especially Laura DuganGary LaFree and Alex Piquero ldquoTesting a Rational Choice Model of Airline HijackingsrdquoCriminology 43 no 4 (2005) 1031ndash65


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published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1986 argued that hijackings were aldquocontagious phenomenonrdquo in that successful hijackings often generated additionalhijacking attempts The article developed a mathematical model of the contagionthesis applying it to hijackings occurring during the 1968ndash1972 surge20 Anotherpublished in the journal Criminology in 2005 used a rational choice framework ofcrime analysis to evaluate the efficacy of counter-hijacking measures finding thathijackings decreased when apprehension seemed more certain or when punish-ments became more severe21 These studies built upon a wide range of earlierwork Indeed as hijackings surged during the late sixties the incidents becamethe focus of a number of mass-market books on air piracy that attempted withvarying degrees of success to explain its rise develop psychological and criminalprofiles of the perpetrators and examine official responses to hijacking in theUnited States and abroad22

I depart from much of the writing on air hijackings to Cuba to argue that as asocial phenomenon the sagarsquos human actors whether hijackers or Cuban and USofficials cannot so easily be reduced to the facile binaries of ldquopolitical actorsrdquo andldquocriminalsrdquo23 Hijacking to Cuba like the historical era in which it emerged wasconsiderably more complex Since the modern notion of legality is explicitly tied tonation-states many left-wing American hijackersmdashlike Cuban refugees and bol-seros who are their arguable counterpartsmdashchanged legal status when they crossednational borders transforming themselves legally from ldquooutlawsrdquo in the UnitedStates to ldquorefugeesrdquo in Cuba Both emigres from Cuba and hijackers from theUnited States embody contested notions of legality that lie at the very heart ofpost-1959 USndashCuba diplomatic relations Hijackers collectively must be locatedwithin a larger historical continuum not as heroes or villains but as transnationalhistorical actors who belong within conversations about social change and USndashCuba relations precisely because they are multifaceted complex and contradictorysubjects

20 Holden ldquoThe Contagiousness of Aircraft Hijackingrdquo21 Dugan LaFree and Piquero ldquoTesting a Rational Choice Model of Airline Hijackingsrdquo22 Some of their findings have been incorporated into this article as well as newer books on

hijacking Representative works include James A Arey The Sky Pirates (New York 1972) andDavid Philips Skyjack The Story of Air Piracy (London 1973) More recent work on hijacking hasbeen framed by the aftermath of the 911 hijacking attacks see Geoffrey Gray Skyjack The Huntfor D B Cooper (New York 2011) A brief analysis of hijacking appears in Andreas Killen 1973Nervous Breakdown Watergate Warhol and the Birth of Post-Sixties America (New York 2006) Airhijacking in the United States was also the focus of several memoirs by former hijackers and theyhave been referenced here where appropriate The best known is William Lee Brent Long TimeGone A Black Pantherrsquos True-Life Story of His Hijacking and Twenty-Five Years In Cuba (New York1996) See also Anthony Bryant Hijack (Fort Lauderdale 1984) and Tamsin Fitzgerald Tamsin(New York 1973)

23 One very useful journalistic account that resists this polarization is also the most recentBrendan I Koerner The Skies Belong to Us Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking(New York 2013)


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ownloaded from

A ME R I C A NS A ND T H E ldquoYO UN GEST REVOL UTIONrdquo

The surge of air hijackings that began in 1968 brought Americans into contactwith Cuba in ways that echoed earlier patterns of travel to the Caribbean na-tion from the Colossus to its north Hijackers were not the first Americans toimagine Cuba as a refuge from legal troubles a scene of adventure and licenseand a haven from both racial and political persecution and these uses for theisland preceded Cubarsquos 1959 revolution24 However the revolutionary processinitiated a new set of circumstances that shaped American understandings ofCuba As historian Van Gosse has noted perceptions of the anti-Batista insurgencyamong Americans particularly young white men were informed by early mediaportrayals of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as masculine and ruggedly independ-ent ldquorebels with a causerdquo who were endeavoring to change the islandrsquos legacyof poverty corruption and foreign domination25 A decade after the triumphof Castrorsquos rebels over the dictatorship portrayals of the revolutionrsquos iconsas independent masculine bearded outlaws continued to inform popular USperceptions of the Cuban revolution Like the guerrillas American hijackers over-whelmingly young and male often regarded themselves as outlaws with idealsmanifesting real and threatened violence to achieve ambitions that they formulatedas legitimate political acts within the context of the social upheaval and radicalincandescence of the late sixties era

Some of the ability of American hijackers to imagine their acts in politicalterms stemmed from their perception of the congruencies between the Cubanrevolution and broad left-wing ideals during the late sixties Institutionalizingstructural changes that channeled the nationrsquos material wealth and human cap-ital into a socialist system Cubarsquos new government had soon enshrined educa-tion healthcare and housing not as ldquosocial servicesrdquo but as universal humanrights to which all Cubans were entitled The nationrsquos reputation as a relativehaven from US-style Jim Crow racism also solidified a durable base of AfricanAmerican support26 The perception of Cubarsquos racial egalitarianism encouragedby the new governmentrsquos campaign to dismantle racial segregation on theisland in 1959 when desegregation was still years away in the Americansouth its official encouragement of black American tourism to a land ldquofree

24 While this article is concerned with the late twentieth century Cubarsquos earlier history andencounters with a variety of non-state actors including sea pirates and filibusters show compellingparallels with air piracy and contributed to Cubarsquos place in the ldquolongrdquo American imaginary as anisland refuge for banditsmdasha space of lawlessness and agency for foreigners See Perez Cuba in theAmerican Imagination 2008 and Amy S Greenberg Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum AmericanEmpire (University Park 2005) For an analysis of African American perceptions of Cuba beforethe fifties see Guridy Forging Diaspora

25 Gosse Where the Boys Are 1ndash526 See Devyn Spence Benson ldquoCuba Calls African American Tourism Race and the Cuban

Revolution 1959ndash1961rdquo Hispanic American Historical Review 93 no 2 (2013) 239ndash71 as well asYoung Soul Power 18ndash53 and Van Gosse ldquoThe African-American Press Greets the CubanRevolutionrdquo in Between Race and Empire 266 Carlos Moore Pichon and Rosa Guy ldquoCastro inNew Yorkrdquo Black renaissanceRenaissance noire 1 no 1 (1996) 10


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of racismrdquo a claim bolstered by the endorsement of guests such as boxinglegend Joe Louis Castrorsquos famed stay at Harlemrsquos Hotel Theresa in 1960where he met with Malcolm X and the Cuban leaderrsquos strongly wordeddenunciations of US anti-black racism contributed to the islandrsquos appeal asa Caribbean sanctuary from de facto racial apartheid27

Cubarsquos image as a racial sanctuary was closely related to the Castro govern-mentrsquos propensity to grant political asylum to Americans particularly black rad-icals In 1961 NAACP activists Mabel and Robert F Williams had obtainedasylum in Cuba after fleeing trumped up kidnapping charges in NorthCarolina28 Foreigners ldquobeing persecuted by reactionaries and exploitersrdquoCastro later affirmed referring to Robert F Williams ldquocan find asylum hereIt does not matter if they speak English and were born in the United Statesrdquo29

While Ghana had also recently been a refuge for several black Americandissidents Kwame Nkrumahrsquos deposing in 1966 foreclosed Ghanarsquos furtherstatus as a haven and although several black radicals later went to Algeria Cubabecame the primary destination for US political exiles in the late sixties30 Soubiquitous was Cubarsquos reputation as a sanctuary that rebelling Attica prisonersrequested safe passage to Cuba or another ldquonon-imperialistrdquo nation as one of theirdemands in 197131 Hijacking despite its dangers afforded American dissidents atravel route to an island haven to which no legal avenue existed as a result of theUS embargo

Cubarsquos appeal to hijackers depended finally upon the revolutionrsquos aura ofinternationalism Hijackers frequently sought Cuba as a portal to revolutionarystruggles abroad with Havana functioning in the hijacker imaginary as a trans-national space in which Americans could forge links with a radical global public asa result of the presence of representatives from Third World political move-ments32 Cuba they hoped would allow them to volunteer or receive guidanceand practical instruction and the islandrsquos appeal in this respect was not limited tothe United States Dozens of foreigners particularly from Latin America similarlytried to enlist in Cubarsquos revolution in the late sixties Ulloa Bornemann a young

27 Although African American perceptions of Cubarsquos racial climate in the sixties were dueprimarily to changes wrought by the 1959 revolution perceptions of Cuba as a racial haven existedwell before the fifties See Guridy Forging Diaspora

28 See Timothy B Tyson Radio Free Dixie Robert F Williams and the Roots of Black Power(Chapel Hill 1999)

29 Fidel Castro speech Chaplin Theater Havana October 4 196530 For Ghana see Kevin Gaines American Africans in Ghana Black Expatriates in the Civil

Rights Era (Chapel Hill 2006)31 Quoted in Juanita Dıaz-Cotto Gender Ethnicity and the State Latina and Latino Prison

Politics (Albany 1996) 7832 For the Castro governmentrsquos politics of internationalism see Domınguez To Make a

World Safe for Revolution For Cubarsquos formidable foreign policy in Africa see Piero GleijesesConflicting Missions Havana Washington and Africa 1959-1976 (Chapel Hill 2002) AsTietchen points out perceptions of Havana as a ldquotransnational counterpublicrdquo for visiting artistsand intellectuals existed immediately after the revolution See The Cubalogues 113


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Mexican communist arriving from Mexico in September 1967 told Cuban officialsthat he wanted to help in the sugar harvest and receive ldquomilitary and politicaltrainingrdquo Although Bornemann was offered volunteer work and the opportunityto travel the island his requests for military training were met with amusement andsuspicion Bornemann was ultimately deported from Cuba as a nuisance and asuspected foreign agent The island the Cubans told him had become a destin-ation of young men arriving without invitation ldquofrom all over the worldrdquo seekingto join the revolutionary process33 Bornemannrsquos ambitions foreshadowed whatwas to come a stream of young men this time from the United States hoping to betrained and sent to fight in Third World liberation movements or to realize theirown dreams of personal liberation or political sanctuary in Cuba

AME RICAN HIJAC KING TO CUB A A SN A PS HO T

In October 1971 Time magazine wrote that ldquostrong masculine idealistic andpolitically radicalrdquo had been the usual characteristics ascribed to hijackers whowere often ldquofolk heroes of the New Leftrdquo34 The hijacking phenomenon began in1968 almost innocuously The Sun featured the yearrsquos first hijacking with a photo ofa stewardess bearing the caption ldquoCoffee tea ormdashCastrordquo35 News reports wereoccasionally sympathetic portraying hijackers as ldquounwelcomerdquo but generallyldquocongenialrdquo and downplayed hijackersrsquo threat of violence36 Cuba permitted allcommercial flights hijacked into its airspace to land and crew and passengersreported courteous treatment from Cuban officials who capitalized on the inci-dents as opportunities for both goodwill diplomacy and compulsory touristrevenue Stranded crew and passengers alike often received extravagant treatmentlive Cuban bands steak and shrimp dinners or a night in one of Havanarsquos besthotels others were given cigars or photos of Che Guevara while they waited on thetarmac and the bill was often sent to the airlines37 A December 1968 Timemagazine article entitled ldquoWhat to Do When the Hijacker Comesrdquo publishedin the magazinersquos travel section encouraged passengers to enjoy their overnighthotel stays at the Havana Libre (formerly the Hilton) or the Varadero Internacionalcourtesy of the Cuban government take advantage of shopping for cigars and rumand to ldquobring your bathing suitrdquo to enjoy Varadero Beach a ldquo15-mile-long-ribbonof white sandrdquo A hijacker identified only as ldquoJoserdquo who had commandeered acommercial flight in November 1968 reportedly chatted with passengers andhanded out 32-caliber bullets as souvenirs and at least one honeymooning

33 Alberto Ulloa Bornemann Surviving Mexicorsquos Dirty War A Political Prisonerrsquos Memoir(Philadelphia PA 2007) eds trans Arturo Schmidt and Aurora Camacho de Schmidt 99ndash117

34 ldquoBringing Skyjackers Down to Earthrdquo Time October 4 197135 The Sun February 22 196836 Time December 6 196837 Douglas Robinson ldquoHijacking Victims Term Treatment by Cuban Hosts Royal but

Tiresomerdquo New York Times February 9 1969 79


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couple on the flight did not seem to mind their diversion to Havana ldquoCubansreally are very friendly peoplerdquo38

By the decadersquos end however the sky had darkened Media coverageof hijackings turned somber then fearful Commandeering planes to obtainpolitical exile escape criminal charges and extort ransoms hijackers frequentlyimagined themselves as beleaguered driven to acts of last resort by circum-stances out of their control For skyjackers commandeering an aircraft full ofpassengers could also be imagined as an act of political protest Appropriatingprivate property under federal jurisdiction and holding passengers as hostageshijackers who captured a plane could leverage significant negotiating power toachieve political ends Circa 1970 a 747 jetliner cost approximately $20 millionand could carry 400 passengers and with airport security lax commercialairliners and their passengers were uniquely vulnerable to becoming vesselsfor political demands or extortion Airborne the plane became a formidableweapon against people and structures a frightening specter for passengers andcrew even in the pre-911 era Political hijackers conveyed messages that foundguaranteed amplification from the resulting media coverage and their demandswere treated with the utmost seriousness in light of the potential danger topassengers and crew Indeed the global record of hijackings in the late sixtiesand early seventies worldwide shows that hijacking could be used as an effectivelever to gain concrete political demands particularly in Europe and the MiddleEast39

Hijackings could also be executed in a manner that transformed them into actsof social protest On May 5 1972 a white youth from Fargo North Dakota namedMichael Lynn Hansen used a pistol to take airline passengers on a compulsorydetour to Cuba His intention he said was to protest the ongoing US air bom-bardment of North Vietnam a few days after he had been inducted into the USArmy by a California draft board40 ldquoThis hijacking is only the first in a seriesrdquo hewrote in a note to the pilot ldquoThe skies of America will not be safe again until theUnited States Government ceases its aggression against the people of Indochina IfAmerican bombs continue falling on Indochina by July 4 1972 our organizationwill execute Mr Nixonrdquo The note was signed ldquothe anti-imperialist movementrdquo41

Hijacking a Western Airlines flight out of Salt Lake City Hanson and his captivestouched down in San Francisco Los Angeles Dallas Atlanta and Tampa beforelanding in Cuba No one was reported injured in the incident and the plane andpassengers returned unharmed to the United States42

38 Time December 6 196839 For a European aviation security perspective see Yonah Alexander and Eugene Sochor

eds Aerial Piracy and Aviation Security (Dordrecht 1990)40 David Briscoe ldquo4 Await Sentencing 1 Hijacker in Cubardquo The Desert News July 4 197241 ldquoJet Hijacked To Cubardquo New York Times May 7 1972 8042 ldquoHijacking Suspect Returned By Cubardquo New York Times June 15 1975 ldquoAccused

Hijacker Held By FBI After Release by Cuban Governmentrdquo Miami Herald June 15 1975


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ownloaded from

Not all hijackings were similarly bloodless Among the most notorious airbornedramas of the era was perpetrated by a father-and-sons team dubbed the ldquoTullergangrdquo On October 29 1972 Charles A Tuller a former US CommerceDepartment executive-turned Maoist radical civil rights activist and a self-described ldquowhite middle-class revolutionaryrdquo his sons Bryce age nineteen andJonathan age eighteen and an accomplice William White Graham attempted abank robbery in Arlington Virginia to finance what they claimed was a secretldquorevolutionary commando organization in the United Statesrdquo43 Having taken atelephone company job as a cable splicer and then enlisting in the Army to learnabout weapons Bryce Tuller accompanied by his younger brother Jonathanallegedly used stolen uniforms to pose as telephone workers cutting phoneand alarm lines to the bank before walking in to offer their assistance Butwhen the bank manager reportedly made a sudden movement Jonathan Tullershot him dead Confronted in the bank by Israel P Gonzalez a twenty-seven-year-old policeman who happened to be Cuban-born Jonathan Tuller fatally shot himas well The four men fled by car driving cross-country and arriving in HoustonTexas on October 28 undetected by authorities

The next day they hijacked a commercial jet to Cuba but not before killing athird man ticket agent Stanley Hubbard44 En route to Cuba the elderTuller lectured his captive audience of nervous passengers about the virtues ofCuban society informing them that ldquoCuba was the only country where freedomis guaranteedrdquo45 Spending almost three years in Cuba the Tullers returned tothe United States unnoticed via Jamaica and then the BahamasmdashGrahamremained in Cubamdashin June 1975 Within days after their return to the UnitedStates the three Tullers attempted to rob a K-mart in Fayetteville NorthCarolina but the heist ended with Brycersquos capture the others turned themselvesover to the FBI46

The motley crew of hijackers with widely varying motivations created a logis-tical and national security nightmare for the Cuban government Often unawareof the details of specific criminal cases in the United States involving hijackingperpetrators and lacking reliable intelligence from US law enforcementagencies47 the Cuban officials nonetheless needed to accurately differentiatebetween skyjackings that seemed to be crimes of criminal opportunism and

43 Alfred E Lewis and Jay Mathews ldquoFather Son Give Up in rsquo72 Killingsrdquo Washington PostJuly 8 1975

44 Ibid45 See for example Paul L Montgomery ldquo4 Kill Texas Airline Aide and Hijack a Jet to

Cubardquo New York Times October 30 197246 Lewis and Mathews ldquoFather Son Give Up in rsquo72 Killingsrdquo47 For instance according to then US Congressman Bill Richardson who visited Cuba in

1996 officials there knew that Charles Hill and Michael Finney Republic of New Afrika membersliving as exiles in Cuba were hijackers but maintained that they were unaware that the two menwere wanted for the slaying of a US police officer Don Bullis ldquoNMSP Officerrsquos Killers RemainFree in Cubardquo Rio Rancho Observer May 10 2006


at University of C



ownloaded from

those that might be justified as acts of expediency by Americans fleeing legitimatepolitical repression Cuba adamantly defended its right to grant asylum to for-eigners as a matter of ldquosovereign prerogativerdquo and the governmentrsquos official policywas to grant asylum to persons who ldquobeing politically persecuted had no choicebut to resort to such an extreme remedy when his life was in dangerrdquo48 As articu-lated Cubarsquos prerogative conformed to the language of Article 14 of the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the UnitedNations in 1948 which asserted that ldquoeveryone has the right to seek and enjoy inother countries asylum from persecutionrdquo and the General AssemblyrsquosDeclaration of Asylum unanimously adopted in 1967 which stated that ldquoit shallrest with the state granting asylum to evaluate the grounds for the grant of asylumrdquoincluding determining whether the asylum seeker was fleeing genuine politicalrepression49

However by the fall of 1969 the Cuban government regarded only ldquoa fewrdquo ofthe perpetrators of hijackings from the United States to Cuba as ldquopersons in realdanger as a result of their political activitiesrdquo The rest according to Cubarsquosantihijacking Law No 1226 of September 1969 drafted in an attempt to deterhijackers were carried out by ldquocommon criminals corrupt individuals mentallyunbalanced persons and socially unadapted persons anxious to change their coun-try of residence or prompted by strictly personal motivations which cases [sic]cannot be considered as being of a revolutionary naturerdquo50 How Cuban immigra-tion and intelligence officials interpreted the highly subjective and relative cate-gories of ldquocriminalrdquo and ldquorefugeerdquo could determine whether hijackers ended upfree on the streets of Cuba or confined sometimes for years in Cuban jails Mostcommonly Cuban officials regarded hijackers as potential FBI or CIA agentsseeking to infiltrate Cuba51

Hijackers affiliated with US black liberation organizations presented a delicatesituation for the Cuban government in light of Havanarsquos historical position ofsupport for the African American freedom movement Although the Cuban gov-ernment remained committed to a position of support for the Black Panther Partyuntil the grouprsquos dissolution in the mid-seventies there was no guarantee thatindividual Panthers acting on their own volition would be well received by theislandrsquos immigration officials if they reached Cuba via an airline hijacking Forits part the Black Panther Party never condoned or encouraged air hijackingsmdashnotwithstanding several hijackings that were executed by Panthers or affiliates

48 Major Claudio Rey Marina Head of the Delegation of the Republic of Cuba speech at theXVII Special Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization Montreal Canada June1970 Presentation published as a pamphlet ldquoHijacking of Aircraft A Boomerang Hurled at Cubaby the Imperialist Government of the United States of Americardquo (Havana c 1970)

49 See L C Green ldquoHijacking and the Right of Asylumrdquo in Aerial Piracy and InternationalLaw ed Edward McWhinney (New York 1971) 7ndash8

50 Marina ldquoHijacking of Aircraftrdquo 197051 Reitan The Rise and Decline of an Alliance 107


at University of C



ownloaded from

of the organizationmdashand members were by no means immune from imprisonmentin Cuba

Screenings by Cuban officials were also complicated by dynamics internal tothe Black Panther Party as the case for William Lee Brent reveals A member ofthe Partyrsquos original Oakland chapter beginning in 1968 Brent rose quicklythrough the ranks but was indicted on charges stemming from a shoot-out withSan Francisco police in 1969 Brent high on pills sleep deprived and carrying anautomatic weapon in his capacity as a bodyguard to Panther leaders writes that hewas attempting to obtain change for a twenty-dollar bill at a San Francisco gasstation when the station attendant noticed the gun in his waistband Fearing thatBrent was attempting a robbery the attendant panicked and handed him a largenumber of bills from the register Dazed Brent claims that he did not notice thelarge amount of ldquochangerdquo and walked away with the cash52 The Black PantherPartyrsquos leadership however summarily expelled Brent from the organization forldquorecklessnessrdquo and violating the organizationrsquos policy on drug use53 The incidentDavid Hilliard later wrote represented ldquoanother episode in the lsquostupid revolu-tionrsquordquo in which individuals impersonating the organizationrsquos members and some-times Panthers themselves committed crimes that undermined the organizationrsquospublic image According to Hilliard Brentrsquos robbery which received significantmedia attention ldquoconfirm[ed] every charge of the media painting us as hypocritesand opportunists members of an outlaw organization using politics to justifypetty thieveryrdquo54 Apprehended at the gas station by uniformed police Brentwrites that he believed that he was about to be killed and fired at the approachingofficers wounding two Facing serious charges and now politically isolatedBrent hijacked TWA flight 154 from Oakland to Havana on June 17 1969In Cuba Brent expected to be welcomed as a political refugee Instead he wasconfined in a Cuban prison for twenty-two months as a suspected spy Brentrsquosplight mirrored that of numerous other hijackers To Cuban officials Americansarriving unannounced as hijackers fit the profile of spies to Panther leadershipBrentrsquos gas station heist inadvertent or not fit the profile of a police agentprovocateur attempting to smear the Partyrsquos image55

Although precise statistics are unavailable African Americans comprised themajority of American hijackers who received formal political asylum on the islandThe racial dimensions of US-to-Cuba hijacking are therefore central to theepisodersquos significance including its reverberations within the diplomatic arenaWhereas the Castro government has justifiably been portrayed as censorious to

52 Brent Long Time Gone 119ndash2053 According to Brent Huey Newton personally reinstated him back into Black Panther

Party in 1975 when Newton was staying in Havana as a political asylee Brent Long Time Gone235ndash36

54 David Hilliard This Side of Glory The Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of theBlack Panther Party (Chicago 2001) 157ndash58

55 Hilliard This Side of Glory 162


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ownloaded from

racial nationalist politics within Cuba its support for North American black na-tionalist organizations including through its provision of formal asylum to theirmembers complicates the notion that the regime was uniformly hostile to blacknationalism The Castro governmentrsquos ambivalent relationship to black national-ism may be viewed with regard to factors both unique to Cubarsquos postrevolutionaryperiod and those emerging from far older currents within the nationrsquos history Therevolutionary regimersquos articulation of communist revolution in class-based termsconceptualized racism per a classical Marxist analysis as primarily a function ofeconomic forces Racial equality could thus be achieved through the constructionof a classless economically egalitarian society Campaigns to dismantle the ves-tiges of formal racial segregation left over from the Batista era during the earlymonths of 1959 as well as the Castro governmentrsquos investment in massive socialprograms benefitted Afro-Cubans disproportionately and achieved advancestoward racial equality that were unprecedented in the nationrsquos history As MarkSawyer contends in an otherwise critical study of Cuban racial policy ldquo[t]he regimehas done more than the government of any other nation perhaps to address theproblem of racial inequality yet it has taken some misstepsrdquo56 A decade afterthe 1959 revolution racial inequities in many areas of Cuban society persistedthe Cuban government in turn continued to oppose race-specific solutions toresolve them Insisting that the rising tide of socialist equality would lift allboats and that the institutional underpinnings of racial inequality had beenresolved the Cuban government foreclosed further public discussions of racialdiscrimination on the island going as far as to shut down all black social religiousand political organizations57

In this climate organizing around race as a political principle was framed asunnecessary at best and counterrevolutionary at worst And while the Castrogovernment justified its opposition to race-based politics by highlighting thegains of the revolution in the arena of racial equality its opposition to independentAfro-Cuban political initiatives evinced recognizable continuities with Cuban na-tionalist discourses dating back to the late 1800s Formulating the Cuban nation asa ldquoracelessrdquo entity that subsumed racial identities within an inclusive ldquonation forallrdquo the early intellectual architects of Cuban nationalism argued that nationalunity depended upon black Cubans relinquishing calls for racial justice58 Thusby the late sixties while forging a significant break with the islandrsquos segregationistpast the Castro governmentrsquos version of nationalism was nevertheless structured

56 Sawyer Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba 2005 xvii57 See Alejandro de la Fuente A Nation for All Race Inequality and Politics in

Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill 2000) esp 259ndash96 and Sawyer Racial Politics inPost-Revolutionary Cuba 2005

58 See Alejandro de la Fuente ldquoRace National Discourse and Politics in Cubardquo LatinAmerican Perspectives 25 no 3 (1998) 44 See also de la Fuente A Nation for All Ada FerrerInsurgent Cuba Race Nation and Revolution 1868-98 (Chapel Hill 1999) and Aline Helg OurRightful Share The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill 1995)


at University of C



ownloaded from

by older ideas of race and nation that explicitly limited the capacity of black Cubansto autonomously address racial concerns

Ironically however black nationalist ideologies provided a means of legibilitybetween US black nationalist hijackers and the Cuban government through theldquointernal colony thesisrdquo a political idea with a long history within communisttheory59 The notion that southern African Americans constituted a colonizedblack ldquonationrdquo within the heart of America was articulated in especially ambitiousterms during the late sixties by the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) a blacknationalist movement that advocated the creation of an independent territorialnation for people of African descent in the US south as an alternative to subjectstatus within the American white supremacist nation state60 Employing aninternationalist pan-African ldquoMalcolm X doctrinerdquo that conceptualized peopleof African descent in America as occupying an internally colonized political sub-jectivitymdashmembers of a subordinate nation within the nation of AmericamdashtheRNA formulated themselves as ldquoNew Afrikansrdquo instead of Americans or AfricanAmericans citizens of an independent black nation who could be positioned underinternational law to negotiate for external protection and universally guaranteedhuman rights61 The RNA conducted themselves as members of a sovereign blacknation who could negotiate with Cuba as sovereign agents a political subjectivitythat Cuba honored in the same way that it treated members of SNCC and theBlack Panther Party as official representatives of African Americans62

HIJACK ERS IN CU BA

American hijackers arriving in Cuba faced a variety of obstacles Cuban immigra-tion and intelligence officials tended to view American hijackers with skepticismregarding most as simple criminals potential spies or mentally unstableindividuals63 Although hijackers who considered themselves revolutionaries

59 For black communism in North America and the ldquonation within a nationrdquo thesis see MarkSolomon The Cry Was Unity Communists and African Americans 1917-1936 (Jackson 1998)Robin D G Kelley Hammer and Hoe Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (ChapelHill 1990) See also Nikhil Pal Singh ldquoThe Black Panthers and the lsquoUnderdeveloped Countryrsquo ofthe Leftrdquo in The Black Panther Party Reconsidered Reflections and Scholarship ed Charles E Jones(Baltimore 1998) 57ndash105

60 Gaidi Obadele RNA co-founder War in America 196761 Dan Berger ldquoThe Malcolm X Doctrine The Republic of New Afrika and National

Liberation on US Soilrdquo in New World Coming The Sixties and the Shaping of GlobalConsciousness (Toronto 2009) See also Singh ldquoThe Black Panthers and the lsquoUnderdevelopedCountryrsquo of the Leftrdquo 57ndash105

62 Robert F Williams a political asylee in Cuba during the early sixties assumed the RNArsquostitle of Chief of State in 1968 See Robert Carl Cohen Black Crusader A Biography of RobertFranklin Williams (Seacaucus 1972)

63 These three factors were commonly invoked by hijackers interviewed by USmedia See for example Martin Schram and John Wallach ldquoUnhappy Landingsrdquo PenthouseOctober 1973


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ownloaded from

often expected to be welcomed by Cuban authorities many were disappointed64

Greeted on the airport tarmac by heavily armed Cuban soldiers hijackers whosuccessfully reached Cuban soil were usually imprisoned in immigration jailspending evaluation and held on charges of ldquoillegal entryrdquo Once released hijackerswere invariably challenged by the everyday realities of life in Cuban society TheldquoTuller gangrdquo hijackersmdashfather sons and family friendmdashwho had initiallydescribed themselves as revolutionaries and entertained romantic notions of aninsurgent Cuban society changed their minds after spending months in the ldquolivinghellrdquo of a Cuban prison and stints laboring in sweltering sugarcane fieldsEventually the hijackers were placed in an aging hotel by the Cuban governmentand issued ration cards for basic necessities like Cubans used However the Tullersdid not fare well in socialist Cuba Bryce once known by teachers at TC WilliamsHigh School in Alexandria as an activist for student rights had become rabidlyanticommunist65 And while little is known of the experiences of hijacker MichaelLynn Hansenmdashthe Fargo man protesting US aggression against Vietnammdashwhile in Cuba according to the FBI he had been jailed in Cuba for over threeyears before being released Abruptly released from prison he was arrested by USsky marshals in Barbados soon after in June 1975 and was taken to New York toface air piracy charges66

For some hijackers the circumstances of the act itself could influence theirreception by the Cuban government Former Black Panther Anthony Bryantwho hijacked a plane from New York to Cuba on March 5 1969 writes that hedecided in mid-flight to rob the passengers allowing ldquothe blacks and those whohad little money to keep itrdquo but ran afoul of his Cuban interrogators in Havanawhen they learned of the heist67 Complicating matters further one passenger whohad been carrying a substantial sum of money turned out to be an employee of theCuban government Bryant went on to become one of the most famously un-happymdashand virulently anticommunistmdashAmerican hijackers stranded in CubaDetained in Cuban prisons and forced to work in agricultural labor collectivesfor political dissidents he eventually returned to the United States writing a bookabout his experiences and becoming a key figure in the Miami-based paramilitaryanti-Castro group Comandos L68

Such changes of heart occurred frequently among hijackers whose dreamsof life in Cuba were dashed by the government in Havana The Miami Herald

64 Hijackers who expected to be welcomed by Cuba include ex-Black Panthers William LeeBrent Raymond Johnson Farland Jesus Grant and Richard Duwayne Witt who had volunteeredfor the Panthers but never joined See Martin Schram and John Wallach ldquoUnhappy LandingsrdquoPenthouse October 1973

65 Athelia Knight and Ron Shaffer ldquoTullers Chose to Risk Jail Rather Than Live in CubardquoWashington Post July 15 1975

66 ldquoHijacking Suspect Returned By Cubardquo New York Times June 15 1975 37 ldquoCuba OffersReturn of Air Ransomrdquo Milwaukee Journal June 17 1975

67 Anthony Bryant Hijack 1984 868 Alan Diaz ldquoTony Bryant Cuban Exilesrsquo Herordquo Sun-Sentinel December 19 1999


at University of C



ownloaded from

repeatedly ran articles about disillusioned American hijackers who hadromanticized life in ldquocommunist Cubardquo before setting foot on the island A June1969 article entitled ldquoLife Worse in Cuba Unhappy Black Panthers Wailrdquo de-tailed the travails of several Black Panthers who said that they had been ldquoisolatedand imprisonedrdquo after separately hijacking planes to Cuba the previous yearRaymond Johnson a twenty-two-year-old Party member from AlexandriaLouisiana maintained that he had been suspended from Southern University forldquodemonstratingrdquo in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jrrsquos assassination andthat he was facing arson charges there that he maintained were fabricatedHijacking an aircraft from New Orleans Louisiana Johnson hoped to receivepolitical exile in Cuba and a haven from Louisiana racism69 Allegedly changinginto a ldquoblack leather jacket black shirt black trousers and a black beretrdquo in theairplanersquos restroom Johnson emerged with a 38-caliber revolver and ordered thecrew to fly to Havana On the way he relieved the passengers of $405 in cashHowever Johnsonrsquos hopes for exile in Cuba were soon dashed Cuban authoritiesreturned the stolen money to the passengers and Johnson later reported that heand four other Black Panthers in Cuba were forced to work in labor collectives inremote sections of the island

Johnson speaking to a US reporter stated that he hoped that the plightof himself and his comrades would reach the Black Panther Party in the UnitedStates ldquoso the party will know the unrevolutionary way we are being treatedrdquo70

Citing experiences with what he perceived to be Cuban racism Johnson attributedthe Cuban governmentrsquos hostility to the attempts by him and his comradesto organize on behalf of the Black Panther Party in Cuba encourage Cubansto wear natural hairstyles and promote awareness of African heritage in Cuba71

ldquoWe think therersquos racial discrimination in Cubardquo Johnson told the reporterldquoItrsquos a peculiar kind of racial discrimination In some ways itrsquos comparable toattitudes in the United States White Cubans have a subconscious conspiracy tomaintain control of the island We feel the Cubans have a misunderstandingof the political cultural and revolutionary thinking of the black revolutionrdquoJohnson maintained that Cuban authorities had repeatedly jailed him andthe other Panthers after they protested the conditions and expressed their desireto leave the country72

69 Summary Calendar United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit Appeal from theUnited States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana Raymond Johnson pro seJuly 22 1987

70 Fenton Wheeler ldquoLife Worse in Cuba Unhappy Black Panthers Wailrdquo Miami HeraldJune 26 1969

71 Brent Long Time Gone 17472 Wheeler ldquoLife Worse in Cuba Unhappy Black Panthers Wailrdquo Charlie Hill for his part

suggests that Johnson who had never traveled outside of the United States before was unpreparedfor life in Cuba and resented the Cuban governmentrsquos detention of hijackers for security clearanceHill interview by author September 9 2012 Havana


at University of C



ownloaded from

Treatments of hijacking in the Herald in particular reveal the ways in whichUS newspapers were far from neutral observers Indeed the Miami-based news-paperrsquos coverage of hijacking must be read against the paperrsquos institutional invest-ment in maligning the Cuban revolution an editorial position that was influencedby the cityrsquos growing population of Cuban exiles during the sixties The Heraldrsquoscoverage of hijacking to Cuba which tended to portray the perpetrators univer-sally as psychopathic criminals even when they claimed to be fleeing politicalrepression provided a counterpoint to the political investments of the Cubanstate media which tended to portray Cuban emigres to the United States univer-sally as counterrevolutionaries and criminals even when they articulated claims ofpolitical repression against the Castro government that mirrored those leveled byUS hijackers against America US media coverage of hijacking ultimately pro-vided Washington with a rare coup in its war of image with Havana on the questionof racial equality While Cuba had won handily in the battle for African Americanpublic opinion since 195973 negative reports about Cuba from hijackers such asJohnson allowed US newspapers to construct a counter-narrative to Cubarsquos repu-tation for racial equality74 Newspapers such as the Herald seized upon theexperiences of disgruntled black hijackers as ostensible proof of both the lie ofCuban racial equality and the poor judgment of hijackers in imagining Cuba as arevolutionary paradise and a haven from white supremacy75

Hijackersrsquo dreams of a new life in Cuba however were sometimes fulfilledSome hijackers were eventually released from Cuban detention and allowed to takejobs enroll in university classes and even participate in political civic associationssuch as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution Initially jailed as asuspected spy hijacker William Brent was eventually granted the opportunity towork and live in Cuba indefinitely After being released from prison some hi-jackers were sent to ldquohijack houserdquo as Brent dubbed a converted prerevolutionarymansion in a formerly wealthy Havana neighborhood which functioned as a kindof half-way house for American radicals who had arrived in Cuba clandestinely Atleast two of its occupants were fleeing charges stemming from separate shoot-outswith San Francisco police One American of Salvadorian descent had come toCuba according to Brent ldquohoping to make connections with Salvadorian rebels

73 See Benson ldquoCuba Calls African American Tourism Race and the Cuban Revolution1959ndash1961rdquo and Besenia Rodriguez ldquolsquoDe la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubanarsquo US blackRadicals the Cuban Revolution and the Formation of a Tricontinental Ideologyrdquo Radical HistoryReview 92 (2005) 62ndash87

74 For his part Michael Finney repeatedly declined interviews with US press outlets aftergrowing to resent the tendency of reporters to use hijackersrsquo perceptions of life in Cuba to slanderthe Cuban government Interview Esther Finney (widow of Michael Finney) Havana Cuba June26 2013

75 Although Cuba has been marginal to most studies of the Cold Warrsquos influence on USracial politics a significant body of work has examined this question more broadly in ways thatprovide useful context See especially Mary L Dudziak Cold War Civil Rights Race and the Imageof American Democracy (Princeton 2000) and Carol Anderson Eyes off the Prize The United Nationsand the African-American Struggle for Human Rights 1944-1955 (Cambridge 2003)


at University of C



ownloaded from

[in Cuba] and be sent to El Salvador to fight for his peoplerdquo76 These foreignersstaying in Cuba were housed and fed courtesy of the Cuban government likely atconsiderable expense lodging food clothing and basic necessities were providedat no cost to the Americans of ldquohijack houserdquo who were treated as political refu-gees and official guests of the government Other hijackers were allowed to live forfree in Havana hotels77

Even ldquoTuller gangrdquo associate William White Graham described his stay inCuba in favorable terms in stark contrast to his former comrades In a 1975

interview with the Washington Post Graham confirmed that he had beenimprisoned after arriving in Cuba but said that he had also voluntarily participatedin a ldquomicrobrigaderdquo of Cuban workers constructing houses in the Havana suburbsSince then he had been allowed to stay for free at a dilapidated Havana hotel andwas studying Spanish literature and history at the University of Havana Grahamalso maintained that he had broken with the elder Tuller and sons whom heclaimed had shot the bank employee and the ticket agent ldquoI donrsquot want tobe associated with them See I consider myself a kind of revolutionary andtheir actions have graphically demonstrated that they are nothing of thekind Revolutionaries arenrsquot murderersrdquo Although marooned in Cuba forthe time being Graham claimed that he still entertained his fantasy of returningto the United States as a revolutionary commando78

The Cuban government ultimately proved most hospitable to hijackers whodisplayed a genuine desire to adapt to life in Cuba and who respected its nationalsovereignty This included refraining from political organizing in Cuba especiallyon racial or black nationalist terms79 Brent initially enduring twenty-two disillu-sioning months in Cuban prison was eventually released and put up at ldquohijackhouserdquo in Havana Vowing never to return to prison in Cuba or anywhere elseand interested in the political possibilities of Cuban-style socialism Brent volun-teered with two others from ldquohijack houserdquo to cut sugarcane with the NuestraAmerica Brigade organized by the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con Los PueblosmdashICAPmdashthe Cuban Institute for Friendship Between Peoples Initiated in 1960ICAP coordinated international solidarity delegations from abroad arriving tosupport the Cuban Revolution often through volunteer agricultural and construc-tion work Brent went on to work at a pig farm and then a soap factory beforeearning his Bachelor of Arts in Hispanic Languages from the University of

76 According to Brent recounted in Long Time Gone 167ndash88 While in Cuba Brent wouldmeet a number of other would-be American revolutionaries seeking military training in Cuba

77 One of the hijackers was rumored in 1973 to be teaching at the University of Havana SeeMartin Schram and John Wallach ldquoUnhappy Landingsrdquo Penthouse October 1973

78 Jay Mathews ldquoHijacker Wanted in Murder Enjoys Cuba Liferdquo Washington Post January7 1975

79 Hill interview by author September 7 9 2012 Havana Other African American visitorsto Cuba during the period made similar reports See especially John Clytus Black Man in RedCuba (Miami 1970) Brent alleges that Eldridge Cleaver ran afoul of Cuban officials when heattempted to organize a chapter of the Black Panther Party in Cuba


at University of C



ownloaded from

Havana He eventually settled into life in Cuba permanently becoming a high-school English teacher in Havana marrying US writer Jane McManus who hadcome to live in Cuba legally and airing a regular music program on RadioHavana80

In 1975 Brent met with Huey Newton who had received political asylum onthe island Asked by Newton why some of the black Americans who had come toCuba illegally had become disillusioned with Cuba while Brent had not Brentattributed the difference partly to their unrealistic expectations of Cuba ldquoPart ofthe problem is they came with stars in their eyes hoping the Cubans would trainthem in guerrilla warfare arm them and sneak them back to the States to engage inarmed struggle or help them get to Africa It didnrsquot happen and theyrsquore prettypissed off about itrdquo81 Charlie Hill a hijacker who came to Cuba in 1971 as amember of the RNA with two other members confirmed Brentrsquos summationmaintaining that many hijackers who experienced significant problems in Cubawere those who had come with ldquounrealisticrdquo and ldquoromanticrdquo expectations of Cubaand those who tried to organize politically and racially within Cuba an activity thatthe Cuban government regarded as an infringement upon its sovereignty82

However hijackersrsquo ambitions to forge informal links with political movementsabroad were more successful Attracted to Cuba in part by the islandrsquos image as aconfluence of global revolutionaries black and Latino hijackers from the UnitedStates were frequently awed by Havanarsquos wide array of radical visitors studentsand volunteers from across the decolonizing world many of whom were receivingfree education or technical instruction courtesy of the Cuban government Yearslater Hill recalled his experience of Cuba in the early seventies as an epiphany onthe potentials of global solidarity Experiencing Havanarsquos global radical public hesaid was ldquolike when Malcolm went to Meccardquo Outside of official channels CharlieHill participated in an ad hoc political study group composed of leftists mostlyyoung people such as himself from Africa and Latin America But the Americanshowever internationalist were repeatedly turned down in their attempts to joinforeign movements by both the Cuban government and representatives of foreignmovements themselves Although Hill and a number of other black Americanhijackers had initially hoped to travel on to Angola or Guinea-Bisseau theirattempts were precluded by both the Cuban governmentsrsquo wariness of the dirediplomatic implications of training Americans to participate in armed political

80 Democracy Now ldquoWilliam Lee Brent 1930-2006 A 1998 Conversation in Havana with theFormer Black Panther on His Plane Hijacking Life in Cuba and Much Morerdquo November 222006 See also Larry Rohter ldquoHavana Journal 25 Years an Exile An Old Black Panther Sums UprdquoThe New York Times April 9 1996 Brent died of pneumonia in a Havana hospital in 2006 at the ageof seventy-five

81 Brent Long Time Gone 23582 Hill interview by author September 9 2012 Havana Hillrsquos companions Michael Finney

and Ralph Lawrence Goodwin are now deceased Goodwin is reported to have drowned at a beachwhile trying to rescue a young girl from the water Finney who spent many years working at RadioHavana Cuba died of lung cancer in 2005 See also Eugene Robinson ldquoExilesrdquo The WashingtonPost July 18 2004


at University of C



ownloaded from

movements and by the African governmentsrsquo similar wariness in accepting them asrecruits83

CRACK DOW N THE USndashCU BA ANTIHIJACK ING A GRE EMENT

In February 1969 soon after hijackings rates began increasing US Secretary ofState William Rogers warned that the emerging epidemic presented ldquoan increas-ingly serious problemrdquo for the American government84 Although Rogers con-ceded that ldquonone of these incidents has as yet involved us in a serious internationalproblemrdquo he warned that the risks included an air ldquoaccident with loss of liferdquo and ascenario in which ldquowe are unable to obtain the return of the aircraft or the pas-sengers and crewrdquo85 Pilots also exerted pressure calling for an international strikeon June 19 1972 unless the United Nations took decisive action to halt airlinehijackings occurring globally86

The costs to aviation corporations were also significant The New York Timesreported in November 1972 that US airlines had paid $93 million in just fifteenmonths to hijackers The highlights included a July 1972 incident in which a teamof five hijackers had obtained $1 million in cash for the release of the planersquospassengers the hijackers then forced the plane to fly to Algeria87 Less than amonth later a hijacker in Reno who said he was protesting the Vietnam Warhad demandedmdashand received part ofmdash$2 million in cash and gold bars to beused he said in the treatment of wounded Vietnamese children88 InNovember Southern Airways reported that it was in dire financial straights afterpaying $2 million to three Havana-bound hijackers The year before a manreferred to as ldquoDB Cooperrdquo had famously hijacked a Northwest Airlines flightparachuted out of it at high altitude after receiving $200000 in cash and thendisappeared into thin air89 Scrambling to raise large sums of money to appeasehijackers or bomb-threat extortionists airline companies went to great lengths toprocure hard currency sometimes long after bank hours in one case sendingcompany representatives on a nocturnal mission to a Reno Nevada gamblingcasino to locate enough cash to meet a hijackerrsquos $250000 demand90 Althoughthe money might eventually be returned lenders charged a premium for suchhigh-risk loans ldquoThe hijackerrdquo lamented the chairman of the Civil Aeronautics

83 Hill interview by author September 7 2012 Havana84 William P Rogers Memorandum for The President ldquoHijacking of Aircraftrdquo February 6

1969 declassified June 2004 US Department of State website85 Rogers went as far as to praise the Cuban governmentrsquos cooperation stating ldquoSo far the

Cubans have been meticulous about returning relatively promptly hijacked aircraft passengers andcrewrdquo Rogers Memorandum for the President February 6 1969

86 Associated Press June 9 197287 ldquoUS Jury Indicts Five in $1 Million Hijackrdquo Washington Post August 4 197288 ldquoHijacking Bicyclist Gets Ransom Shot by FBIrdquo Washington Post August 19 197289 Gray Skyjack 201190 Robert Lindsey ldquo2-Million Ransom Imperils Airlinerdquo New York Times November 16

1972 1


at University of C



ownloaded from

Board in November 1972 ldquohas his gun not only against the pilotrsquos headbut trained on the whole air transport system and its economic well-beingrdquo91

By January 1973 the Federal Aviation Administration ordered comprehen-sive antihijacking measures implemented in 531 commercial airports focusingespecially on bag searches and X-ray machines at a cost of $46 millionTotal yearly antihijacking expenditures for airlines were projected as high as$300 million92

Cubarsquos reception of hijackers depended ultimately upon the circumstances ofthe act and the disposition of the perpetrator Americans who appeared in Cubawithout warning placed the Cuban government in a disadvantageous positionUnable to readily differentiate between dissidents fleeing legitimate politicalrepression and common criminals on the lam the Cuban government grew in-creasingly frustrated by the tide of unwanted airborne visitors The prevalence ofhijackers who appeared to be adventuristic mentally unstable or violent ultimatelycast a shadow of suspicion over all Americans showing up at Cuban airportsincluding those arriving on regularly scheduled flights from third countriesHijackers who blurred the distinctions between political activism and criminalopportunism however relative and contested those categories ultimately createdan image problem for both American leftists traveling to Cuba by conventionalmeans and the Cuban government itself Hijackers whose actions appeared to lackcompelling political motivations contributed to the prevailing depiction of Cuba asa global haven for outlaws Such hijackers unwittingly became fodder for mediacritics who portrayed all American travelers to Cuba as criminal deviants irre-spective of the actual circumstances of their travel93 Rejecting the nationrsquos seem-ingly irresistible appeal to Americans on the lam the Cuban government assertedthat it had ldquoabsolutely no interest nor does it desire in any way that Cuban ter-ritory be used as a refuge by persons responsible for common criminal acts thatoccur in any part of the United States territoryrdquo Cuba reiterated its willingness tonegotiate an antihijacking agreement with the United States94

US officials were well aware of Cubarsquos disadvantageous position ldquoNo self-respecting nationrdquo Robert A Hurwitch opined ldquowants to be in the internationallimelight as a haven for these depraved and irrational peoplerdquo95 According toscholar Jorge Domınguez ldquothe Cuban government may also have believed that

91 Ibid92 ldquoThe Rising Cost of Piracyrdquo Time January 1 197393 See for example Georgie Ann Greyer and Keyes Beech ldquoCuba School for US Radicalsrdquo

Long Island Press October 15 197094 Bernard Gwertzman ldquoUS Says Pact with Cuba to Curb Hijacking is Nearrdquo New York

Times February 14 1973 See also Henry Kissinger Memorandum for The President ldquoSecretaryRogers to See Swiss Ambassador to Cuba on Monday to Hand Him US Draft Proposal onHijackingrdquo December 3 1972 Declassified June 2004 US Department of State website

95 Hearing before the Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs of the Committee onForeign Affairs House of Representatives Ninety-Third Congress First Session February 201973 (Washington 1973) 16


at University of C



ownloaded from

hijacking violated its own norms Hijacking threatened non-elite combatants anddid not increase support for a revolutionary cause Most hijackersmdashclearly notrevolutionariesmdashembarrassed the Cuban governmentrdquo96 Yet while Cuba contrib-uted to its hijacking problem through its policy of granting them asylummdashor atleast refusing to turn hijackers over to the Americans and instead imprisoning themon the island while their cases were evaluatedmdashCubarsquos unwanted image as a havenfor outlaws was also bound up with US policy In a perceptive editorialthe Washington Post argued that hijacking was an outgrowth of Washingtonrsquosldquoattempts to stigmatize Castro as an outlaw and to expel him from the inter-American systemrdquo Hijacking thus reflected as much the consequences of theUnited Statesrsquo own hostile diplomacy as it did Cubarsquos decision to grant politicalasylum to foreign dissents

There can be no serious argument that it was the American policy of ldquoisolatingrdquoCuba which forced the Cubans into the unwanted role of being viewed byAmerican criminals and psychopaths as a good place the only convenientplace to hijack a plane Such people Havana has correctly observed ldquosawour country as a site where the US itself had destroyed all legal internationalinstruments to act against themrdquo Through 85 ldquosuccessfulrdquo hijackings theUnited States tolerated these consequences of its isolation policy without ofcourse conceding that they were the consequences97

The mutual discomfort of the US and Cuban governments led to bilateral talksbrokered by the Swiss Embassy in Havanamdashthe two nations maintained no embas-siesmdashof uncommon civility to reach a mutually beneficial pact to curb airlinehijacking Citing a general ldquoclimate of insecurity in air and ocean navigationrdquocaused by rampant hijackings the Cuban government had issued ldquoLaw No 1226rdquoon September 16 1969 which stipulated that hijackers would be held ldquocriminallyliable under Cuban criminal lawsrdquo Hijackers would now be prosecuted in Cuba orreturned to the United States to face the legal system and US officials hoped thatsuch a threat if well publicized would act as a deterrent against future hijackings98

It was however not the first time that one of the nations had attempted to cometo a mutual understanding regarding hijacking Writing to newly inauguratedPresident Nixon on February 7 1969 Henry Kissinger cautioned that

I think you should be aware of one historical aspect of this problem which mayprove embarrassing to us In 1961 when there were several cases of ships andplanes seized by Cubans escaping to the United States we did not respond to aCuban note proposing a mutual agreement to return the persons responsiblefor those actions to the country of registry of the ship or plane In effect we

96 Domınguez To Make a World Safe for Revolution 12297 ldquoAfter 87 Hijackings an Agreementrdquo Washington Post February 16 197398 US Department of State Telegram ldquoUS Proposal to Cuba on Hijackingrdquo November

21 1969 Declassified June 2004 US Department of State website


at University of C



ownloaded from

refused to consider essentially the same proposal we have now made to theCubans99

Indeed Cuba had weathered a long history of air and sea hijackings to which theUnited States had not responded Accusing Washingtonrsquos antihijacking proposalof being over a decade late Cuba reminded US officials of over 200 of instancesin which Cubans had hijacked aircrafts and boats to the United States sometimeskilling passengers or crew before being welcomed into the United States aspolitical refugees A paper presented by a Cuban delegation at the 1970 meetingof the Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization in MontrealCanada charged that ldquoThe Government of the United States [has] encouragedthe illegal exit from our country by every possible means with utter disregard forthe life and security of persons and especially through the illegally occupiedterritory of the US Naval Base in Guantanamo which has also contributedto the aforementioned climate of insecurityrdquo100 Cuba had in 1961 managedto negotiate the return of twenty-four hijacked ships and planes that the UnitedStates had initially refused to return101 Yet in the overwhelming majority of casesCuba paid the highest price in hijackings as a result of hostile noncooperation fromWashington According to Jorge Domınguez Cuba ldquolost 264 planes and boatswhich had not been returned through hijacking to the United States between 1960

and 1970rdquo102 By the late sixties Cubarsquos record of returning hijacked planes andships was so much better than that of the United States that Henry Kissingercontrasting Cubarsquos response to hijacking with Syria Lebanon and Jordanconceded that ldquoCuba has now become one the best-behaved of the hijackingstates since it immediately allows the planes and passengers to return and oftenjails the hijackersrdquo103

Kissingerrsquos inadvertent admission that Americarsquos response to hijacking was lessldquobehavedrdquo than Cubarsquos revealed another facet of Washingtonrsquos diplomatic excep-tionalism The choice of one wordmdashldquobehavedrdquomdashinvoked the structure of feelingof a century of US policy toward Cuba in which the resolve of Cubarsquos bigger andstronger northern neighbor to dictate its will in the Caribbean found expression ina range of racial and gendered metaphors visible in both official rhetoric andpopular culture that depicted Cuba as infantile and rebellious in need of pater-nalistic guidance and benevolent control As scholars such as Louis A Perezand Lars Schoultz have demonstrated these expressions of dominance rooted

99 Henry Kissinger Memorandum to the President ldquoAircraft Hijackingrdquo February 7 1969Declassified June 2004 US Department of State website

100 Marina ldquoHijacking of Aircraftrdquo 7101 Schoultz That Infernal Little Cuban Republic 258102 Domınguez To Make a World Safe for Revolution 227103 Henry Kissinger Memorandum to Peter Flanigan ldquoPossible Actions Against Countries

Which Are Uncooperative on Hijackingrdquo October 31 1970 Declassified June 2004 USDepartment of State website


at University of C



ownloaded from

in symbolism have displayed remarkable continuities over time104 The Cubangovernmentrsquos insistence on demanding ldquostrict reciprocityrdquo from the UnitedStates with regard to hijacking was thus situated self-consciously within a longhistory of unequal diplomatic power and imperial arrogance a history that Havanahad no intention of repeating Similarly US double standards with regard tohijacking mirrored aspects of USndashCuba immigration policy in which officialUS policy classified US citizens commandeering airplanes to Cuba as criminalsand Cuban citizens commandeering airplanes and water craft to South Floridaunder almost identical circumstances as political refugees In spite of its poorrecord of reciprocity with regard to Cuban hijackers the US delegation at theMontreal meeting of aviators proposed without apparent irony that nationstaking no action against hijackers should be subject to an international airboycott105

In October 1972 the ldquoTuller gangrdquo murder-hijacking together with a success-ful $2 million ransom-motivated hijacking of a Southern Airways flight to Cubathe next monthmdashthe 100th and 101st hijacking attempts to Cuba respectivelymdashswitched negotiations between the two countries into high gear However Cubacontinued to press for reciprocity insisting that the United States agree to crackdown on violent paramilitary anti-Castro groups composed of Cuban exilesoperating with relative impunity in South Florida The evolving diplomatic lan-guage of mutualitymdashnothing had yet been agreedmdashwas tested on December 61972 when three armed Cubans forced a Cuban fishing vessel to take them to KeyWest in a bid to reach the political sanctuary that US law extended to Cubansaccording to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act Reciprocity prevailed the Cubanswere arrested and for the first time since 1959 anti-Castro Cubans who hadreached the United States seeking sanctuary were ordered to return to CubaTo some however the breaching of the longstanding US policy was unaccept-able ldquoIf the price of a skyjacking accord with Castro is the deportation of threetrusting menrdquo said one State Department official ldquothen the price is too greatrdquoThe three Cubans appealed the deportation order and were eventually released inFlorida on bond106

Cuba and the United States signed the CubandashUnited States Memorandum ofUnderstanding on Hijacking of Aircraft and Vessels and Other Offenses onFebruary 15 1973 It was the first accord of any kind between the two nationssince Castro took power in 1959 As a five-year agreement both parties agreedto prosecute hijackers to the fullest extent ensure the protection of passengersand planes and give serious consideration to the extradition of hijackers to their

104 See Perez Cuba in the American Imagination Schoultz That Infernal Little Cuban Republic105 See ldquolsquoGoodrsquo v lsquoBadrsquo Hijackersrdquo Time September 28 1970 Talks in 1969 and 1970 had

foundered largely upon the problem of reciprocity with the Cuban government demanding thatthe United States return some the Cuban exiles including hijackers who had illegally traveled tothe United States in return for tougher measures against US hijackers See ldquoAir Pirates CastroPulls Welcome Matrdquo US News and World Report December 4 1972

106 ldquoThe Cuban Dilemmardquo Time January 15 1973


at University of C



ownloaded from

country of origin107 As a ldquomemorandum of agreementrdquo however the arrange-ment was distinct from a treaty as the US government did not formally recognizethe government of Cuba As such the agreement was not legally binding It wasalso not retroactive and it did not apply to previous hijackings nor at least intheory did it affect the status of those Americans who were already in Cuba

Hijackings by Americans seeking to reach Cuba forced Washington to abandon diplomaticintransigence and begin a rare series of high-level talks with Havana negotiations in which theCuban government successfully leveraged the crisis to demand diplomatic equality Image cour-tesy of The Buffalo News

107 ldquoCuba-United States Memorandum of Understanding on Hijacking of Aircraft andVessels and Other Offensesrdquo February 15 1973


at University of C



ownloaded from

whether in prison or on the streets Significantly the agreement also provided bothnations with a loophole for persons seeking political asylum

The party in whose territory the perpetrators of the acts described in ArticleFirst arrive may take into consideration any extenuating or mitigating circum-stances in those cases in which the persons responsible for the acts were beingsought for strictly political reasons and were in real and imminent danger ofdeath without a viable alternative for leaving the country provided there was nofinancial extortion or physical injury to the members of the crew passengers orother persons in connection with the hijacking108

This was an exceedingly narrow set of criteria Speaking to the US Houseof Representatives Sub-Committee on Inter-American Affairs during a specialsession devoted to the hijacking agreement Deputy Assistant Secretary of Stateof Inter-American Affairs Robert A Hurwitch voiced his confidence thatthe terminology would not be applicable to future US hijackers ldquoWe cannotvisualize any such instance happening in our country where a person is immi-nently in danger of death and is forced to hijack to escaperdquo109 SomeAmerican radicals who had sought asylum in Cubamdashor would seek it inthe futuremdashwould likely have disagreed Nonetheless air hijackings from theUnited States to Cuba declined dramatically after the Memorandum ofUnderstanding in February 1973

Only two successful hijackings of aircraft from the United States to Cuba occurredduring the remainder of the decade Although Cuba would continue to accept asmall number of American radicals seeking political asylum after 1973 only one isknown to have arrived as a hijacker110 The 1968ndash1973 hijacking episode provokeda shallow crack in the diplomatic stalemate between the United States and Cubaand the 1973 agreement is often regarded as one of the early signs of the modestimprovement in relations between the two nations that occurred under the Nixonand Ford administrations111 But while mutual cooperation to respond to hijackingpreceded the more significant Carter-era thaw in USndashCuba relations hijacking

108 ldquoCuba-United States Memorandum of Understanding on Hijacking of Aircraft andVessels and Other Offensesrdquo February 15 1973 See also Bernard Gwertzman ldquoUS and CubaHijack Pact But Thatrsquos All Nowrdquo New York Times February 18 1973 For analysis from the USgovernment side see Serban Vallimarescu Memorandum for General Scowcroft ldquoHijackingAgreement with Cubardquo National Security Council February 13 1973


110 William Potts interview with author Havana September 13 2012 William Potts hi-jacked a commercial plane to Cuba in 1984 See also ldquoCuba Thaw Good or Bad US FugitivesUnsurerdquo New York Daily News January 16 2009

111 See for example Garcıa Havana USA 138


at University of C



ownloaded from

did not itself cause the thaw nor did the episode ultimately represent a watershedin foreign relations between the two nations112 Indeed Cuba nullified theantihijacking agreement in 1976 after the bombing of Cubana de Aviacion flight455 over Barbados by CIA-linked operatives an act of terrorism that killed all 78

people aboard although Cuba continued to honor the agreement in practice113

Rather the historical significance of the hijacking episode lies in the way in whichthe phenomenon marked the unlikely meeting point where the erarsquos radical pol-itical protest movements the Cuban Revolution and USndashCuba foreign relationscollided in the late sixties Although the US government had since the earlysixties recognized Cubans who hijacked sea and air vessels to the United Statesas Cold War refugees from communism its unwillingness to regard Americanhijackers to Cuba as anything other than common criminals revealed the pater-nalistic contradictions of Americarsquos Cold War policies toward Cuba This contra-diction once rooted in a history of uneven diplomatic relations between the twonations long preceding Cubarsquos 1959 revolution and the nationrsquos entry onto thefraught terrain of the global Cold War shows the continuities between Cubarsquos pastand present relations with its larger northern neighbor The durability of thesedynamics of unequal power relations that ultimately find their origins in theislandrsquos history of colonization and foreign possession reveal the limits as wellas the continuities of the Cold War as a frame to examine USndashCuba relationsduring the Castro era

Americarsquos air pirates in the Caribbean also illustrate some of the limitations ofviewing historyrsquos ldquooutlawsrdquo within the narrow frameworks of criminality or ter-rorism As Marcus Rediker has argued with regard to eighteenth-century seapiracy a phenomenon that is not dissimilar from its later airborne counterpartin the Caribbean the ldquovillainsrdquo of any era occupy a moral and legal status that ishighly relative shifting in relation to the parameters of nation-states and politicaldiscourses114 Whether their bids for political asylum in Cuba were successful orresulted in lengthy stays in Cuban prisons US air pirates seeking political asylumattempted to formulate themselves as independent agents within the transnationalspaces afforded by international air travel negotiating the legalities of multiplenation-states as sovereign agents Some hijackers who leveraged political demandsor imagined themselves as outlaws with ideals may fall within Eric Hobsbawmrsquosframework of ldquosocial banditryrdquo115 Other hijackers might more meaningfullybe regarded as a kind of transnational lumpen proletariat especially in the waythat Frantz Fanon rehabilitated Marxrsquos concept to uncover the latent revolutionary

112 Morley Imperial State and Revolution 250113 Domınguez To Make a World Safe for Revolution 122 230114 See Marcus Rediker Villains of All Nations Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston

2004)115 See Eric Hobsbawm Bandits (New York 2000) Although Hobsbawm does not examine

air hijacking the timing of the bookrsquos original publication in 1969 coincided with the explosion ofUSndashCuba air piracy


at University of C



ownloaded from

potential of the societyrsquos ldquohooligansrdquo ldquopetty criminalsrdquo and ldquohopeless dregsrdquoa reading of Fanonrsquos The Wretched of the Earth that found special resonancefor the Black Panther Party whose affiliates hijacked over a dozen planesto Cuba116

Whatever they may be hijackers as a group must be understood as historicalactors who played an audacious role in USndashCuba relations Americans whohijacked planes to Cuba in the late sixties overwhelmingly articulated their actionswithin prevailing tropes of social protest and left-wing political activism of theera a politics that they imagined sometimes accurately and sometimes wishfullywas congruent with the Cuban revolution and the policy aims of the Cubangovernment Whether they imagined Cuba as an ldquooutlaw nationrdquo beyond thereach of US imperial apparatus a sanctuary from criminal charges a havenfrom American racism or political repression or a portal to revolutionarymovements abroad American hijackers constructed Cuba in ways that paralleledlongstanding American imaginings of the island

116 Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth (New York 1963) 130 Singh in particularexamines the import of Fanonrsquos idea to the Panthers See ldquoThe Black Panthers and thelsquoUnderdeveloped Countryrsquo of the Leftrdquo 57ndash105 For an analysis of discourses about the roleand romanticization of criminality within radical social change movements of the sixties seefor example Eric Cummings The Rise and Fall of Californiarsquos Radical Prison Movement (Palo Alto1994)


at University of C



ownloaded from

to ldquohelp the revolution of Fidel Castrordquo4 a father-and-sons team who robbinga bank to fund a ldquorevolutionary commando organizationrdquo hijacked a plane toCuba to escape murder charges5 and a man who wanted to go to Cuba becausehe was ldquotired of TV dinners and tired of seeing people starve in the worldrdquo6

Formulating themselves as beleaguered idealists and political refugees left-winghijackers imagined Cuba as an ldquooutlaw nationrdquo a clandestine revolutionary stateexisting defiantly outside the orbit of US influence to secure personal liberationand global belonging beyond the borders of America

As the phenomenon grew air hijacking referred to variously as ldquoair piracyrdquo andldquoskyjackingrdquo became a fixture of American public life Extorting tens of millionsof random dollars from airline corporations and occasionally threatening toblow up planes hijackers commanded political attention and popular fascinationCommercial airline pilots threatened to strike en masse and emergency fundingwas allocated to build a nation-wide airport security apparatus costing $300 mil-lion Hijacking invaded popular culture becoming fodder for comedic televisiongags as pundits debated the epidemicrsquos connection to the erarsquos social ferment In acharacteristic segment NBC News surmised that far from being left-wing politicalrefugees or idealistic youth the air pirates were psychopathic and mentally ill ldquoawax museum of freaks perverts criminals and assorted social misfitsrdquo7 Hijackersrsquofascination with the communist Caribbean nation was evidence right-wingcommentators charged of the decadence of the erarsquos rebellious youth and ofthe perilously seductive aura of Cubarsquos revolutionary mystique

Yet the Cuban government was little more enthused by the arrival of self-styledAmerican revolutionaries some of which exhibited signs of mental illness8 ldquoMostof the hijackersrdquo Fidel Castro opined a year into the episode ldquoare not completelynormal peoplerdquo9 Imprisoning many as common criminals or suspected CentralIntelligence Agency (CIA) spies Cuban officials treated hijacking as a both anuisance and national security problem Nonetheless Cuba refused to extraditeits uninvited American guests As US officials fulminated over their inabilityto retrieve fugitives from Castrorsquos island Cuba afforded many of them the

4 US News and World Report December 9 19685 Alfred E Lewis and Jay Mathews ldquoFather Son Give Up in rsquo72 Killingsrdquo The Washington

Post July 8 19756 National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals Disorders and

Terrorism Report of the Task Force on Disorders and Terrorism (Washington 1976) 5157 NBC January 30 19698 ldquoAmericanrdquo is a fraught and imperfect term in the transnational context of the Americas

Nonetheless to facilitate ease of reading I employ the term in this article to indicate the nationalorigin of a hijacker who is a US citizen While Cubans are also Americans in the hemisphericsense most citizens of Cuba refer to themselves as Cubanaos in everyday parlance they in turnfrequently refer to citizens of the United States as Americanaos

9 Quoted by the Swiss Ambassador who had spoken with Castro Memorandum HenryKissinger to the President ldquoAircraft Hijackingrdquo February 7 1969 3 declassified June 2004US Department of State online archive


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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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1972 1


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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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1972 1


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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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1972 1


at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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at University of C



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1972 1


at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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1972 1


at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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1972 1


at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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at University of C



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1972 1


at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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at University of C



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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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1972 1


at University of C



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HIJACK ERS IN CU BA








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Take Me to Havana! Airline Hijacking, U.S.–Cuba Relations, and Political Protest in Late...

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Transcript of Take Me to Havana! Airline Hijacking, U.S.–Cuba Relations, and Political Protest in Late...