The most memorable evening for me was a dinner at Bill and Rose Styron’s, where the guests of honor were the superb Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes and my literary hero, Gabriel García Márquez. García Márquez was friends with Fidel Castro, who, in an effort to export some of his problems to us, was in the process of unleashing a mass exodus of Cubans to the United States, reminiscent of the Mariel boat lift, which had caused me so many problems in 1980. Thousands of Cubans, at great risk to themselves, had set out in small boats and rafts for the ninety-mile voyage to Florida. García Márquez was opposed to the U.S. embargo on Cuba and tried to talk me out of it. I told him that I would not lift the embargo, but that I supported the Cuban Democracy Act, which gave the President authority to improve relations with Cuba in return for greater movement toward freedom and democracy there. I also asked him to tell Castro that if the influx of Cubans continued, he would get a very different response from the United States than he had received in 1980 from President Carter. “Castro has already cost me one election,” I said. “He can’t have two.” I relayed the same message through President Salinas of Mexico, who had a good working relationship with Castro. Not long afterward, the United States and Cuba reached an agreement by which Castro pledged to stem the exodus, and we promised to take twenty thousand more Cubans each year through the normal process. Castro faithfully observed the accord for the remainder of my term. Later, García Márquez would joke that he was the only man who was friends with both Fidel Castro and Bill Clinton.
After we discussed Cuba, García Márquez lavished most of his attention on Chelsea, who said she had read two of his books. He later told me that he didn’t believe a fourteen-year-old girl could understand his work, so he launched into an extended discussion with her about
The only business I did on vacation involved Ireland. I granted a visa to Joe Cahill, a seventy-six-yearold hero to Irish Republicans. In 1973, Cahill had been convicted of gunrunning in Ireland, and he continued to promote violence for years afterward. I gave him a visa because he now wanted to promote peace among the IRA’s American supporters, as part of an understanding under which the IRA would, at long last, announce a cease-fire. Cahill came to America on August 30, and the next day the IRA announced a total cessation of violence, opening the way for Sinn Fein’s participation in the peace talks. It was a victory for Gerry Adams and for the Irish government.
When we returned from our vacation, we moved into Blair House for three weeks while the White House air-conditioning system was being repaired. A massive stone-by-stone restoration of the nearly two-hundred-year-old exterior, begun during the Reagan administration, was also still going on. A portion of the White House would be covered by scaffolding all through my first term. Our family always enjoyed the time we spent in Blair House, and this extended visit was no exception, though it caused us to miss a dramatic moment back across the street. On September 12 an inebriated man who was disappointed with his life broke into a small airplane and took off for downtown Washington and the White House. He was trying either to kill himself by crashing into the building or to stage a landing on the South Lawn, like the one executed by a young German pilot in Moscow’s Red Square a few years earlier. Unfortunately, his little Cessna hit the ground too late for the landing, bounced over the hedge and under the giant magnolia tree on the west side of the entrance, then slammed into the large stone base of the White House, killing him instantly. A few years later, another troubled man with a pistol vaulted the White House fence before he was wounded and apprehended by officers of the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service. The White House was a magnet for more than ambitious politicians.
The crisis in Haiti came to a head in September. General Cedras and his thugs had intensified their reign of terror, executing orphaned children, raping young girls, killing priests, mutilating people and leaving body parts in the open to terrify others, and slashing the faces of mothers with machetes while their children watched. By this time, I had been working for a peaceful solution for two years, and I was fed up. More than a year earlier, Cedras had signed an agreement to give up power, but when the time came to leave, he simply refused to go.
