When Castro came to campus

“Maybe I was too innocent at the time — maybe I was just enthusiastic that he would turn out to be what we hoped for in succeeding [Cuban leader Fulgencio] Batista,” said Shaw, who made a special trip back to the University to see Castro speak on April 20, 1959. But Castro’s visit to Princeton actually foreshadowed little of what was to come under the rule of the communist dictator.

Castro’s presence on campus inspired feelings ranging from hope to apathy, but there was little of the outrage that is now so often associated with him, alumni said. They explained that U.S.-Cuba relations in 1959 had not yet reached the level of hostility they later would after the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the CIA’s numerable assassination attempts on Castro.

“There was a sense that he was going to liberate the people of Cuba,” said Donald Kramer ’60, who photographed Castro’s visit for The Daily Princetonian. “Your views change. You see what actually happens” over time, he said.

Castro’s visit to Princeton was only one stop in the 11-day tour of the United States he made at the invitation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Castro had just been sworn in as the prime minister of Cuba following his military takeover of the country in January and February of that year. In those 11 days, he engineered what historians now consider a carefully calculated public relations campaign to portray himself as a popular military hero, eating hot dogs and joking with reporters. The visit culminated with a visit to Washington, D.C., but then-President Eisenhower was notably absent from the capital and unable to meet with him.

Yet Castro found willing audiences elsewhere, including on campus. NBC and the National Press Club, among other organizations, eagerly booked the Cuban leader, and on March 10, 1959, the University formally invited “Dr. Castro” to speak on the theme of “The United States and the Revolutionary Spirit” at a conference of the American Civilization Program, led by former history professor Robert Palmer.

When Castro and his entourage arrived at Princeton Junction at 6:45 p.m., Kramer was present at the train station to take photographs for the ‘Prince.’

“That was an unusual event,” Kramer said in an interview. “I think people were pretty excited. He was an exciting character.” Kramer, who was “a couple hundred feet” from Castro when he exited the train, said Castro did not immediately strike him as an extraordinary figure, however. “He was just a guy in his fatigues.”

Gary Emmer ’59 recalled standing on Washington Road when Castro passed by in a limousine.

“I didn’t have to be in class, so I decided to walk over and see what was going on … There were people along Washington [Road]. He went by in a motorcade. He had his beard, and his fatigues and his cigar in his mouth — looked exactly as you would have expected him to look,” Emmer said.

“He was a more of a curiosity than an antagonist” at the time, Emmer said. “This was before Kennedy and Bay of Pigs. [He was] an unknown to most of us.”

During Castro’s visit to campus, “there were FBI men all over the place,” Emmer noted. “All the undergraduates thought it was very funny. We were wearing typical garb, and these guys were wearing suits and sunglasses. They stuck out like sore thumbs.”

The 29 male members of the Cuban press who accompanied Castro to Princeton stayed overnight at Cottage Club, according to an essay about the visit written by Thomas Bogenschild, a Latin American studies professor at the University of New Mexico.

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Castro spoke to a throng of students and faculty at the old Corwin Hall, and his entrance into the conference room was “one of the most bizarre things I ever saw,” Jack Curley ‘60 said, explaining that each member of Castro’s retinue wore ties from Cottage Club. “They came into the conference room wearing fatigues. Most had beards, most were scruffy looking, but [all] were wearing Cottage Club ties,” he said.

The speech included a confrontation between Castro and Palmer which, Curley said, foreshadowed the future of Castro’s repressive regime.

“[Castro] went on for quite a while, and at that point, Professor Robert Palmer stepped up and attempted to bring it to a conclusion, and Castro reached out his arm and pushed Palmer back,” Curley said.

“Here you have one of the most prominent historians in the world — and he was relatively a thin … person — and Castro just shoves him out of the way,” Curley noted. “Maybe [it was] a foretelling of some of the bad parts of what Castro did. He had to run the show — nobody else was going to run the show.”

Shaw, however, said he was struck by Castro’s moderate tone and calm demeanor.

“The most interesting part for me was that [Castro] was totally politically correct in his speech at the Woodrow Wilson School,” Shaw said. “He was very well behaved [and] cool in all his manners.”

But not every member of Castro’s entourage was so calm, Emmer said, recalling the tumult incited by an individual who threw a firecracker at the Cuban ruler.

“We thought it was funny,” Emmer said, explaining that after soaring over the heads of the crowd, the firecracker landed right near Castro’s convertible. “Boy, the FBI men jumped,” Emmer added. “They thought somebody had fired a gun.”

For other alumni, Castro’s visit was not an especially notable incident on campus.

“It wasn’t a real big draw,” said Philip Shambaugh ’61, who photographed the event for the ‘Prince.’ “If someone like that came today, you would have to use the biggest hall on campus.”

“The world is different today than it was then,” he explained. “America was much more insular.”

At the time of Castro’s visit to campus, the U.S. government was still not fully acquainted with the Cuban leader. Following a three-hour interview several days after Castro’s visit to Princeton, then-U.S. vice president Richard Nixon noted that Castro was “either incredibly naive about communism or under communist discipline.”

“My guess is the former,” Nixon added.

Castro’s conservative behavior through his Princeton visit portended little of the authoritarian control that would characterize his rule of Cuba, Shaw said. Only one year after his visit to campus, Castro’s actions would lead President Eisenhower to authorize a covert anti-Castro operation, according to George Washington University’s National Security Archives.

“Since Castro wasn’t a declared communist, and he was a romantic figure, people were curious to see what he was really like,” Shaw said. “He turned out to be like everyone else — didn’t really show his true personality.”

Two days later in New York, though, Castro showed a darker side, Shaw said. This Castro was “incendiary,” said Shaw, who was one of the 35,000 people who flocked to see the prime minister at Central Park. “It was a moment of revelation that he wasn’t going to be the nice, meek, democratic leader that he was at Princeton University.”