August 22, 1961
Hungarian Embassy in Havana, Report on Secret US Documents
This document was made possible with support from Leon Levy Foundation
The Embassy of the Hungarian People’s Republic
to Comrade Foreign Minister Endre Sík
Budapest
TOP SECRET!
Havana, 22 August 1961.
57/1961./top secret
Subject: The secret documents of the State Department of the United States.
Encl.: three documents[1]
Cuban Minister of Industry Che Guevara made two secret documents of the United States public at the CIES [Inter-American Social and Economic Council—ed.] conference in Montevideo [i.e., Punta del Este, Uruguay, in August 1961].[2] The documents were passed to the Cuban government by “friendly hands” in a way not specified further. One of the documents is addressed to the United States’ ambassador to Venezuela, [Teodoro Moscoso—ed.,] in which the members of the US State Department present the principles concerning Venezuelan economic policy. The other secret document contains a summary report on the position of Latin-American states and the Latin-American public opinion concerning Cuba.
Both documents are extremely valuable. Their authenticity cannot be doubted, as even the American delegate [C. Douglas] Dillon participating at the Montevideo conference did not dare to doubt their authenticity.
The publication of the documents made an extremely great impression both at the conference and in Venezuela. The Venezuelan America-friendly government protested in a note to the Cuban government, they considered the publication of the document interference in their internal affairs. In their reply to the note, the Cuban government explained it in detail that the publication of the document took place just in the interest of Venezuela and other Latin-American peoples. (I have sent the press cuttings of the notes in a letter.)
I do not wish to make any special comment on the documents themselves, they speak for themselves.
I suggest that their exact Hungarian translations should be sent to all our embassies to Latin-America or maybe to all our embassies to capitalist countries. Our embassies to Latin-America and Washington should study the documents thoroughly by all means. I request you to inform our Embassy also about the opinions concerning this.
I have expressed our gratitude in a note to the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs for sending the document.
Miklós Vass
chargé d’affaires ad interim
[1] Not published—ed.
[2] Guevara actually made these documents public during his speech on 8 August 1961 to the conference in Punta del Este, Uruguay. See Guevara, “Economics Cannot Be Separated from Politics,” 8 August 1961, and reproduced at www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1961/08/08/1961.htm—ed.
Chargé d’ affaires ad interim Miklós Vass reports on secret US State Department documents that Cuban Minister of Industry Ernesto “Che” Guevara acquired. The documents reveal US principles on Venezuelan economic policy and US positions on Latin American states and Latin American public opinion on Cuba. Vass advises that the secret documents be translated officially into Hungarian and sent to Hungarian embassies throughout Latin America. The document included three enclosures; Vass references two secret documents repeatedly.
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