Philip Bonsal

The Bonsals descended from English Quakers who participated in founding the colony of Pennsylvania in 1682.

His mother was Henrietta Morris, a descendant of Gouverneur Morris, a leader in the American Revolution.

He had three brothers, including New York judge Dudley Baldwin Bonsal.

Bonsal's early education took place in the Philippines and Switzerland.

His father was Stephen Bonsal (1865–1951), a well-known journalist who served several years in the US diplomatic corps, wrote several books, and won a Pulitzer Prize.

Philip Wilson Bonsal (May 22, 1903 – June 28, 1995) was an American career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State.

Bonsal was born in New York City on May 22, 1903.

He graduated from Yale in 1924.

Bonsal married Margaret Lockett of Knoxville, Tennessee, circa 1929.

After living in Cuba for several months as a student trainee with the Cuban Telephone Company, Bonsal worked in Spain and Chile for its parent company, International Telephone & Telegraph, rising to become chief of its Latin American Division.

He then entered government service as a specialist in telephone services with the Federal Communications Commission, where he remained from 1935 to 1937.

Bonsal was fluent in Spanish.

Bonsal joined the State Department in 1937.

He was Vice Consul and Third Secretary in the US embassy in Havana in 1938 and 1939, followed by a year in Washington as Cuban desk officer at the State Department.

While on the staff of the US embassy in Bolivia in 1944, he tried without success to persuade the State Department to ignore the rhetoric of Bolivia's radical opposition parties, which he excused as reflexive opposition to the recently ousted pro-American regime of Enrique Peñaranda.

He told Secretary of State Cordell Hull that the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) embodied the "legitimate and respectable... aspirations of certain sectors of the Bolivian people."

Instead, the US forced President Gualberto Villarroel to remove members of the MNR from his cabinet.

It has been argued that the choice of Bonsal signaled an intention on the part of the State Department to defuse the Cuban Revolution in the same way that it had defused the Bolivian Revolution of 1952.

Bonsal attempted to find a working arrangement with the leader of the new government.

Bonsal admitted that "animosity was inevitable" but that he was hopeful that "at some point we can get down to a reasoned dialogue."

Castro was critical of the arrival of Bonsal in the Cuban press and compared him to a colonial viceroy, and dialogue was not easily forthcoming.

Bonsal served as an adviser at the 1954 Geneva Conference on Korea and Indochina.

Eisenhower nominated Bonsal as United States Ambassador to Colombia in February 1955.

The US Senate confirmed the appointment on February 11, and he presented his credentials on April 1.

He maintained friendly relations with opposition politicians, angering Colombian dictator General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who persuaded the State Department to reassign him.

In January 1957, representing the US at the United Nations General Assembly's Special Political Committee, he supported a Philippine proposal, endorsed by representatives of Peru, Nepal, and other nations, for the UN to modify its confrontational approach in fighting apartheid in South Africa and to shift to tactics that would promote discussion and recognize the problem of racial discrimination in other countries as well.

Eisenhower nominated him as United States Ambassador to Bolivia on March 18, 1957.

He concluded his service in Colombia on April 24, 1957.

Bonsal served as United States Ambassador to Bolivia from 1957 to 1959.

He wholeheartedly supported the US economic assistance program under way there, which he later described as a "pioneer" and "solitary example" of what was required of the US in Latin America.

A specialist in Latin American affairs, he served as United States Ambassador to Cuba from February 1959 until October 1960, the first months of the Castro regime.

In January 1959, Eisenhower named Bonsal United States Ambassador to Cuba just days after Fidel Castro came to power.

The New York Times called his appointment "a splendid choice" and described him as "a distinguished career diplomat" with "every qualification that could be asked for the difficult and gratifying task he is taking on."

Bonsal's predecessor, Earl E. T. Smith, had maintained friendly relations with Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and was quickly recalled by the State Department after Batista's ouster.

When Bonsal testified before a closed session of the House Committee on Foreign Relations in May 1959, he explained why the revolution had such widespread popular support: "the corruption and the sadism of many Batista henchmen united most Cubans against the regime."

He described how Batista's security forces had killed many while "many, many more were arrested on no charges and kept in jail for indefinite periods."

In August, he protested to Secretary of State Herter that Cuban-American relations were being poisoned by the fact that the US was allowing several hundred Batista allies to live in the country, which appeared to the Cubans as harboring counter-revolutionaries.

He urged them to be forced to "move on to some other country."

On September 3, 1959, Bonsal met with Castro and express concern that American businesses, which had complied fully with the Land Reform Law, were concerned that government agents were acting arbitrarily and without legal sanction.

He complained of anti-American comments by Guevara, who was then on a world tour.