The Great Game in Cuba

January 7, 2013
In this plodding tale of political intrigue and greed, Temple University professor Mellen (A Farewell to Justice) recounts a story of the ways that the wealthy and powerful influence political decisions that protect their self-interest. In 1951, Robert J. Kleberg Jr. rode herd over the largest private ranch in the United States, Texas’s King Ranch. By the mid-1950s, Kleberg was a “figure of planetary power—without portfolio—forging alliances with foreign entrepreneurs” from Australia to Morocco. Although his empire spread around the world, the satellite ranch in Cuba that he established in the 1950s, Becerra, was closest to his heart, and his goal there was to “bring the best beef to the world’s hungry at fair prices.” Kleberg counted Lyndon Johnson, Allen Dulles, and J. Edgar Hoover among his friends, and he had easy access to the ears of powerful politicians. Kleberg hired Alberto Fernández, a powerful Cuban rancher, to oversee the ranch, and maintained it until 1959, when Castro expropriated the property upon his takeover of the government. Kleberg demanded that the CIA oust Castro and help him regain his property, but the CIA remained uninterested in liberating Cuba. Mellen’s monotonous retelling of this little-known story fails to pack any punch.