A busy week, the one ending on this day in 1980:
President Carter broke diplomatic relations with Iran today, gave Tehran’s diplomats 36 hours to get out of America and took steps to keep other Iranian citizens from entering the country. Carter also announced a new effort to keep American goods from being exported to Iran and said even food and medicine shipments will be affected. In addition, he said he will make it easier for families of the 50 American hostages and others with claims against Iran to process financial damages-and possibly get some of Tehran’s assets in the United States. Carter made the announcements personally during an appearance in the White House press room.
Meanwhile, about 4,000 Cuban exiles, carrying food supplies atop their heads and waving antiCastro banners, converged on a Spanish-language radio station early today in an outpouring of support for Cubans seeking refuge in the Peruvian embassy in Havana. The exiles poured from their homes by the hundreds to collect and buy food and medicines at latenight markets Sunday, then cart the supplies in boxes to station WQBA just off Calle Ocho, the main thoroughfare through Miami’s Little Havana section. By 1 a.m. today, the spontaneous rally overflowed into the streets, with dozens of flag-waving Cubans marching around the building housing the radio station. Youths carrying a banner that read “Viva Cuba! Abajo Fidel! (Long live Cuba! Down with Fidel!)” led the impromptu parade.
Radios all over Little Havana were tuned to Spanish-language stations carrying news of the Peruvian embassy, where more than 10,000 Cubans hoping to leave their country have taken refuge. “They (Cuban exiles) feel great concern for the people in the embassy, but also great joy,” said Rodolfo Nodal-Tarafa, an attorney and politician. He tried to explain the exiles’ feelings to American news reporters astonished by the size and fervor of the sudden rally. “After 20 years, the Cuban people here, no matter how well they’re doing, have not forgotten their country of origin,” Nodal-Tarafa said. “It’s also a recognition of something that has been in the air for quite some time in Cuba the beginning of the end is near.
“The Cuban people aren’t going to take it any more. The situation there from a human and material standpoint can’t be tolerated any more.” The happy throngs jammed vehicle traffic on four busy thoroughfares near the radio station. People were so tightly packed they carried their boxes of donations on their heads and formed “bucket brigade” lines of people to move the supplies hand-to-hand to a small storeroom that soon became packed. A semitrailer truck was donated to handle more supplies.
And from the Moscow Olympics front – The White House has called on allied nations to follow the lead of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) in endorsing President Carter’s call for a boycott of the Summer Games in Moscow. “Now that the U.S. Olympic Committee has made clear that it will not take part in the Moscow Games, we are confident that other leading nations of the free world will join in this demonstration that no nation is entitled to serve as host for an Olympic festival of peace while it persists in invading and subjugating another nation,” presidential press secretary Jody Powell said in Washington yesterday. The USOC’s House of Delegates voted 1,607 to 797 with two abstentions Saturday to support the boycott, which President Carter has been urging following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
All that, and a lot more for this April 13, 1980 as reported on The World This Week from CBS Radio
