Castro at the Hotel Theresa

by Carlton Jackson on Friday, April 25, 2008

Fidel Castro's revolution was scarcely a year old when he visited New York in l960 for a meeting of the United Nations. Anxious for propaganda ruses to assure continued support from the Soviet Union, he used deteriorating race relations in the United States, punctuated by forced integration of several Southern universities, as a hand to play with. Though he explained events otherwise, it seems clear that Castro came to New York with the express purpose of embarrassing the federal government. He succeeded, only to a small extent, with New York's historically premiere black hotel, the Theresa, in the center.
Castro and his entourage of about eighty traveled from Idlewild to downtown Manhattan. Waving to a crowd of supporters, Castro stuck his arm out the car window, only to have it, he said, “roughly pushed back in”. The Cuban president filed a complaint (the first of many) about his reception in New York.
Things did not improve at the Cuban delegation's first hotel, The Shelburne. Differences between Castro's party and the hotel's owner, Edward Spatz, cropped up immediately. Spatz displayed a large American flag outside the hotel; the Cubans thought it should have been their's. According to Castro Spatz demanded $l0,000 of “up-front” money to cover any damages the Cubans might cause.

There were press reports about how the Cubans treated their rooms at The Shelburne. It was widely asserted that they brought live chickens into the rooms and plucked and dressed them at 3 and 4 in the mornings. Also, they supposedly threw lighted cigars onto expensive carpets, and even cooked food on camp stoves set up in the bathrooms. After Spatz's complaints, and with an air of desperation, Fidel announced that he was leaving The Shelburne. A frustrated U. S. Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, offered to put up the Cuban delegation free of charge at the Hotel Commodore. (By order of the federal government, the Cubans could not leave the Manhattan area). Castro angrily refused, saying he would rather “pitch tents in Central Park” than to give in to “charity.”
Castro and his delegation stormed out of The Shelburne at about midnight on September 20. He told reporters that “if the United States cannot guarantee the safety and comfort of visiting U.N. delegates, then the United Nations should be moved elsewhere, perhaps to Havana.”
On the way to the Theresa, in Harlem, the Cuban motorcade was besieged by Spanish-speaking demonstrators, many in favor of the dictator's policies. The New York police were perturbed by the move because the Theresa was six miles further from UN Headquarters than The Shelburne, complicating an already difficult task of protecting the Cubans. Also, thousands of black citizens now lined the streets and called out to Fidel Castro.
By l:30 a.m. the Cubans were ready to move into their rooms at the Theresa. They were met by manager Love B. Woods, who had reserved forty rooms on the top floor of the eleven-story Theresa for the Cubans, giving Fidel two suites on the eighth floor.

Apparently, the only unflappable person around that night was Love Woods himself. Pleased at Castro's stay because of the notoriety it gave his hotel, the only problem was that he could barely understand Castro's “official” translator and the translator couldn't understand Woods's “Black English.”
Nevertheless, Woods joked with Castro, asking him if he raised chickens in Havana, an obvious reference to the chicken plucking stories out of The Shelburne. Castro told Woods that Cubans did raise chickens, along with cows, hogs, and other farm animals. Castro wanted to host a party for Woods and the Theresa staff, and he presented Woods with a bust of Cuban hero, Jose Marti. He was glad, he said, to be among the black proletarians of America, and wanted to meet as many black people in Harlem as possible.

Several notables came to see Castro at the Theresa. One was Gamul Abdul Nasser of Egypt, whom Fidel regarded as noble for standing up to Western powers in the Suez crisis of l956. India's Jawaharlal Nehru “humbled” himself by visiting Castro at the hotel. Other callers included sociologist C. Wright Mills, from Columbia University, who was writing a book on the Cuban revolution, “Beatnik” poet Allen Ginsberg, and “left-wing” poet, Langston Hughes. Malcolm X, who had an office in the Theresa, also dropped by.

The most important visitor, however, the one for whom Fidel had been waiting, was Nikita Khrushchev. Indeed, Castro's entire United Nations performance was primarily to impress the Soviet leader. Khrushchev, said “Time,” “jammed into the rickety old elevator and creaked to Castro's suite”. The two leaders stood up while they cracked jokes for 20 minutes, then came down for a public nuzzling for cameramen.

Dignitaries, statesmen, and politicians were not the only people to visit Fidel Castro at the Theresa. At least one was a prostitute. It was a case of “senoritas de la noche” wanting to visit the Castro delegation than the Cubans inviting them to their rooms. It became a game among New York hookers to see who could breach security and get into the Cuban quarters.
One black prostitute did get into Fidel's room. He was putting on airs of black paternalism, and, of course, ordered his staff to do likewise. She was taken for one of the hotel workers, and allowed through security lines. Fidel thought she was a member of the black proletariat, and quickly gave the autograph she requested. Castro asked her what job she had at the hotel. She replied, “I do not work here at the Theresa. I work the streets.” Castro went red in the face, stood sharply to his feet and asked the guards to lead her out of the room. He said to her that “we have eliminated that sort of thing in my country.”
When Castro gave his speech at the United Nations on September 26, l960, he claimed that he and his delegations had “been forced” to seek “inferior housing” in New York. He sarcastically reported that “to some gentlemen, a modest hotel in Harlem where the Negroes of the United States live, could not be anything but a brothel.”
After this outburst, Castro's speech went “on, and on, and on.” “By the fourth hour,” one correspondent wrote, “even his admirers were falling asleep.”
More than a generation has passed since Fidel Castro's “proletarian” visit to New York
City. If he did embarrass the U.S. government, it was short-lived. If he did “proselytize” any American blacks into Cuban ideologies, they were few in number. He was the one who hurt the most in the post USSR world. Recently as well, he has given up the Cuban presidency to his brother, Raul.

The Shelburne is still in business on Lexington Avenue. The Theresa has long been closed as a hotel. Its building, however, still stands on 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, just doors away from the famous Apollo Theatre, where so many black singing and acting careers have begun. Today, the Theresa is a municipal government office building. Even so, often is the occasion that when New Yorkers walk or ride in front of it, their memories flash back to the time when Fidel Castro first came to town.