America's embassy in Cuba never really closed

America's embassy in Cuba never really closed
Peter Weber
August 14, 2015

On Friday, the three U.S. Marines who lowered the American flag for the
last time at the U.S. Embassy in Havana 54 years ago will raise the flag
again over the reopened embassy. Secretary of State John Kerry,
officials from the Pentagon and other U.S. departments, and eight
members of Congress will also be there, the highest-ranking delegation
to Cuba in 70 years. "We're doing something that not too many Marines
have ever done," one of the now-retired Marines, Larry Morris, 75, tells
The New York Times. "It's thrilling."

Morris and the other two Marines, James Tracy (now 78) and Mike East
(76), had just spent hours incinerating piles of government documents
when they went out to lower the flag on Jan. 4, 1961. President Dwight
D. Eisenhower, in one of his last acts in office, had just severed
diplomatic relations with Cuba, and Fidel Castro had given the U.S. 48
hours to vacate the island and the embassy, a six-story Modernist
building in a compound across the street from the ocean along Havana's
Malecón.

This is how the embassy, opened in 1953 and designed by U.S. firm
Harrison & Abramovitz, looked in 1973, according to a pictorial history
in Architect Magazine:


And here's how it looked in 2001, after renovations completed four years
earlier:


And leave America did. From 1961 until 1977 — when President Jimmy
Carter negotiated a slight thawing of relations and opened the "U.S.
Interests Section" in Havana (while Cuba opened a "Cuban Interests
Section" in Washington) — the U.S. had no diplomatic presence in Cuba.

But the U.S. Embassy didn't close, exactly, and it didn't lie vacant for
16 years. On Jan. 7, 1961, U.S. chargé d'affaires Daniel Braddock handed
the keys over to the Swiss embassy in Havana, and the Swiss held on to
the building and the ornate 35,000-square-foot U.S. ambassador's
residence until America returned in 1977.


That wasn't an easy job, according to Swiss historian and political
scientist Thomas Fischer. When the U.S. cut diplomatic ties to Cuba in
1961, it asked Switzerland to represent its interests as a protecting
power. (The U.S. Interests Section continued to be under Switzerland's
protection until July 20, when the U.S. and Cuba officially restored
diplomatic ties. Cuba's interests in Washington were initially protected
by Czechoslovakia.)

In the 16 years that the Swiss were America's sole diplomatic stand-in
in Cuba, Castro threatened to nationalize and take over the embassy
building at least twice, Fischer wrote in a 2010 research paper at the
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
The first time was in February 1964, when the Swiss ambassador was a
gifted diplomat named Emil A. Stadelhofer.

The Cubans had originally approached Stadelhofer informally in late 1963
to feel him out on the possibility of nationalizing the former U.S.
embassy or at least leasing it, Fischer writes. Stadelhofer said no way,
"referring to the absolute character of Article 45 of the Vienna
Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, strictly prohibiting such a
step by the host government. He even stated that this would potentially
be considered by Swiss authorities the most unfriendly and severest act
against Swiss foreign policy since the existence of the Confederation."

But after the U.S. confiscated four Cuban fishing vessels off Key West
on Feb. 2, 1964, Havana pressed the issue. Citing historian W.S. Smith,
Fischer recounts that Cuban officials "appeared at the entrance of the
former U.S. Embassy in Havana, determined to take possession of the
building for the purposes of the Cuban Ministry of Fishing." He continues:

Ambassador Stadelhofer was only just... able to prevent this measure by
barring the door and declaring that this was diplomatic property, and
would be violated only over his body. Apparently, in the end, the Cubans
relented and no further efforts were made to seize the building at the
time. [Fischer]

Two years later, Fischer notes, the Swiss had about 50 people working in
the U.S. Embassy, with much of their energies dedicated to processing
the requests of Cubans who wanted to emigrate to the U.S. in a massive
airlift. But in 1970, when Alfred Fischli was Swiss ambassador, Cuba
tried again.

A U.S.-based Cuban exile group called Alpha 66 had sunk two Cuban
fishing boats and was holding their crews prisoner on a Caribbean
island, prompting tens of thousands of Cubans to surround the U.S.
Embassy building, trapping the Swiss embassy workers inside for three
tense days. That incident ended peacefully when Alpha 66 released its
prisoners, but the episode "triggered a renewal of the discussion on the
ownership structure of the former U.S. Embassy building," Fischer
writes, continuing:

Cuban authorities considered American claims on the premises as
forfeited, and had only tacitly agreed to the use of the building by the
Swiss protecting power in the past years. The most insistent démarches
by the Swiss embassy referring to the rules of the Vienna Conventions on
Diplomatic Relations were necessary to prevent the Cubans from another
attempt to definitely occupy and [nationalize] the building in the
circumstances. [Fischer]

Even when the U.S. flag is once again flying over the American Embassy
in Havana on Friday, relations between Cuba and the U.S. won't exactly
be normal. Old wounds heal slowly, and the Republican-led Congress
doesn't seem eager to confirm an ambassador to Havana or end the
decades-old trade embargo. But amid all the muted festivities of the
historic occasion, it's worth taking a moment to thank the Swiss for
making sure America still has an embassy to fly the Stars and Stripes above.

Source: America's embassy in Cuba never really closed -
http://theweek.com/articles/571632/americas-embassy-cuba-never-really-closed