Trustee nomination of Castaneda ’73 angers alum

Castaneda has been accused of working with Cuban intelligence during his service with the Mexican government in the late 1970s and early 1980s, though he has repeatedly denied the reports, calling them “categorically false” in a 2008 interview with the Los Angeles Times.

In a February 2008 article, the Mexico City newspaper El Universal stated that between 1979 and 1985, Castaneda worked with the Cuban intelligence agency Direccion General de Inteligencia and pressured his father, the Mexican secretary of foreign affairs, to adopt pro-Castro policies. Castaneda served as Mexico’s foreign secretary from 2000 to 2003.

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Castaneda denounced the reports that he had served as a spy.

“These are part of Mexican gutter politics,” he said. “Fortunately, the editor or managing director of the paper was subsequently fired, and obviously the accusations were all false.”

History professor Jeremy Adelman, who said he knows Castaneda personally, said he doubted the accuracy of the reporting behind the initial article in El Universal.

“Mexican politics is pretty nasty stuff,” Adelman said. “To be sure, the traditions of investigative journalism are complicated in Mexico, and oftentimes, political battles are waged ... I would take this with a grain of salt … The fact that it is in El Universal may not mean anything.”

Still, Michael Scharf ’64 said in an interview that he was displeased with Castaneda’s nomination.

“It’s disturbing,” he said. “We have a plethora of talented, distinguished alumni all over the country and all over the world. Why take a person with this disturbing a background?”

Scharf said in an e-mail that Castaneda’s denial of any espionage activity did not change his position on Castaneda’s nomination. “Don’t forget that Alger Hiss always denied that he was a spy, despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the gaggle of administrators that run the place seem to be trying to diminish [Princeton’s] greatness and remove the fun,” Scharf added. “[They] cater to every aberrational kind of behavior, and I find it quite disturbing ... It’s like a big joke. Why not put [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad on the Board? He didn’t go here, but why not?”

Adelman noted that accusations like those in the El Universal article were likely based on the tense history between Mexico and the United States.

“From the ’70s through to the mid-’80s, there was quite a disjuncture between Mexico and Washington,” Adelman explained. “They were very strained, and Cuba was one of the irascible points. The United States was very isolated on Cuban policy, and the ’70s was kind of the high-water mark of Latin American nationalism.”

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Early on in his political career, Castaneda was a member of the Mexican communist party, though he no longer is. He attempted to run for the presidency in Mexico as an independent candidate in 2006.

Since Mexican law prohibits independent candidacies, Castaneda took the case to the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica, where he said he “was able to obtain the first condemnation ever of Mexico for violating the human rights of one of its citizens.”

Castaneda also said he did not have ties to Cuba as an operative at any point during his political career.

“They never even tried to [recruit me], because they knew they would’ve gotten nowhere,” he told the Times.

Still, Scharf said Castaneda’s nomination to the Board “defied belief.”

“The University is so besotted with diversity,” he said. “Is this the ultimate in a diversity tick? I think we would be better off with a raccoon than this individual.”

Scharf added that he had spoken with members of his class about Castaneda, but Leslie Gutierrez ’84, chair of the Committee to Nominate Alumni Trustees, said he had not been contacted by Scharf.

“I have not heard back, so it was curious to me to hear that there are some objections,” Gutierrez said, noting that the deliberation process for candidate nomination is confidential. “I do know [Castaneda] is a public figure, and he has a pretty distinguished career which is pretty well documented in the public record.”

Castaneda said he thought he would be well-suited for a position as trustee because of his long history of working between the United States and Latin America. “Someone has to be doing the translating,” he said. “I think that my bicultural background allows me to do this. It’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for the last 30 years.”

He noted that he has returned to the University on multiple occasions as a professor and that he tries to come back to campus every year to lecture. “I think that [a position on the Board] is not such a difficult fit for me, in the sense that I think I can be directly involved and useful to the University and the Board of Trustees, because of this close contact I’ve maintained,” he added.

Alumni will be able to vote for the position until mid-May, Gutierrez said. The other candidates for Region II alumni trustee are Julia Gottsch ’76 and Carter Roberts ’82.