Jan. 30, 1962 - Foreign ministers of the Organization of American States voted today by a two-thirds majority to exclude Cuba from participation in the inter-American system. The ministerial conference also voted to bar any arms traffic with Cuba. The decision was taken on the ground that Cuba’s Marxist-Leninist regime was “incompatible” with the democratic principles of the hemispheric system. The vote was taken after Cuban foreign minister Osvaldo Torrado (left) asserted that the exclusion of his nation would constitute the end of the Organization of American States as a regional system. He declared that it would convert the inter-American body into a “political-military bloc at the service of the United States.” “You may expel us but you cannot extract us from America,” he declared. “You may put us out of the O.A.S., but the U.S. will continue to have a revolutionary and Socialist Cuba 90 miles from its shores.”
