Fulgencio Batista

General Rubén Fulgencio Batista (IPA: [fəlˈhɛnsio bəˈtistə], [fulˈxensio baˈtihta̩]) y Zaldívar (January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was the de facto military leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1940, and thus the eminence grise of Cuban politics for that period of time, and the de jure President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 after having won election. He then became the country's leader after staging a coup, from 1952 to 1959. His authoritarian government during this subsequent period generated opposition despite his attempt to placate critics with a "show" election in 1954 when he ran without opposition. The actual opposition included the entire coalition that had overthrown President Gerardo Machado in 1933, including Fidel Castro's guerrilla movement, by which Batista was overthrown, in what is known as the Cuban Revolution.
Contents
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* 1 Youth and the Revolution of 1933
* 2 Term as President (1940-44)
* 3 Term as a Senator and the 1952 Elections
* 4 The Second Coup
o 4.1 The Coup and the Constitution of 1940
o 4.2 Economic Stewardship
+ 4.2.1 The Gambling Sector
o 4.3 Political Unrest and the Revolution of 1959
* 5 Aftermath
* 6 See also
* 7 Books written by Batista
* 8 Bibliography on Batista
* 9 History of the era

[edit] Youth and the Revolution of 1933

Fulgencio was born in Banes, Holguín Province, in 1901 to Belisario Batista Palermo [2] and Carmela Zaldívar González, Cubans who fought for independence from Spain. Of very humble origins, Batista began working from an early age. A self-educated man, he attended school at night and is said to have been a voracious reader. Batista was considered socially a mulatto (mixed African and European blood). He bought a ticket to Havana and joined the army in 1921. [3] Sergeant Batista was the union leader of Cuba's soldiers, and the leader of the 1933 "Sergeants' Revolt" that replaced the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, at the request of the coalition that had recently ousted President Machado. It is generally conceded that U.S. Special Envoy Sumner Welles approved of this since it was a fait accompli. Céspedes was a well-respected civil engineer and the most successful minister in the Machado government but lacked a political coalition that could sustain him. Initially a presidency composed of five members, one each from the anti-Machado coalition, was created, but within days the representative for the students and professors of the Universtity of Havana, Ramón Grau, was made president and Batista became the Army Chief of Staff, with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the presidency [citation needed]. The majority of the commissioned officer corps was "forcefully retired" (meaning executed).[citation needed]

During this period, Batista violently suppressed a number of attempts to defeat his control. This included the quashing of an uprising in the ancient Atarés fort (Havana) by Blas Hernández, a rural guerrilla who had fought Machado. Many of those who surrendered were executed. Another attempt was the attack on the Hotel Nacional in which former army officers of the Cuban Olympic rifle team (including one Enrique Ros) put up stiff resistance until being defeated. Again, Batista's troops executed many who surrendered. The irony is that many of these officers had helped overthrow Machado. There were many other often minor and almost unrecorded attempted revolts against Batista that were bloodily suppressed. These minor revolts included one in Guamá, a place in the Sierra Maestra south of Guisa, where the followers of an anti-Batista guerrilla leader known as Gamboa (apparently a member, or former member, of the Antonio Guiteras anti-Machado guerrillas) were defeated and dispersed.

Grau was president for just over 100 days before Batista forced him to resign in January 1934. He was replaced by Carlos Mendieta y Montefur and within five days the U.S. recognized Cuba's new government, which lasted 11 months. Succeeding puppet governments were led by José Barnet y Vinajeras (5 months) and Miguel Mariano Gómez (7 months) before Federico Laredo Brú managed to rule from December 1936 to October 1940.

Batista was well liked by American interests, who had feared Grau's socialistic reforms and saw him as a stabilizing force with respect for American interests. It was in this time period that Batista formed a renowned friendship and business relationship with gangster Meyer Lansky that lasted over three decades.

Through Lansky, the mafia knew they had a friend in Cuba. Gangster Lucky Luciano, after being deported to Italy in 1946, went to Havana with a false passport. A summit at Havana's Hotel Nacional, with mobsters such as Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Santo Trafficante Jr., Moe Dalitz, and others, confirmed Luciano's authority over the U.S. mob and coincided with Frank Sinatra's singing debut in Havana. It was here that Lansky gave permission to kill Bugsy Siegel for skimming construction money from the Flamingo in Las Vegas.

Many of Batista's enemies faced the same fate as the ambitious Siegel. One of his most bitter opponents, Antonio Guiteras (founder of the student group Joven Cuba) was gunned down by government forces in 1935 while waiting for a boat in Matanzas province. Others just seemed to disappear into thin air.

[edit] Term as President (1940-44)

Batista's chance to sit in the president's chair came in 1940. Supported by a coalition of political parties, which included the old Cuban Communist Party, he defeated his rival Grau in the first presidential election under the new Cuban constitution that he had guided to ratification.

During his presidency, trade relations with the U.S. increased, and a series of war taxes was imposed on the Cuban population. Following Grau's election in 1944, Cuba experienced its first peaceful transfer of power in two decades.

[edit] Term as a Senator and the 1952 Elections

While living luxuriously in Daytona Beach, Florida, Batista ran for and won a seat in the Cuban Senate in 1948. Four years later, he ran for president, but a poll published in the December 1951 issue of the popular magazine "Bohemia" showed him in last place. Not expected to win[citation needed], Batista staged a coup to take by force what he could not achieve again at the ballot box.

The 1952 election was a three-way race. Roberto Agramonte of the Ortodoxos party led in all the polls, followed by Dr. Aurelio Hevia of the Auténtico party, and running a distant third was Batista, who was seeking a return to office. Both front runners, Agramonte and Hevia in their own camps, had decided to name Col. Ramon Barquín who was a diplomat in Washington DC to head the Cuban Armed Forces after the elections. Barquín was a top officer who commanded the respect of the professional army and had promised to eliminate corruption in the ranks. Batista feared that Barquin would oust him and his followers, and when it became apparent that Batista had little chance of winning, he staged a coup on 10 March 1952 and held power with the backing of a nationalist section of the army as a “provisional president” for the next two years. Justo Carrillo told Barquín in Washington DC on March 1952 that the inner circles knew that Batista had aimed the coup at him; they immediately began to conspire to oust Batista and restablish the democracy and civilian government in what was later dubbed La Conspitacion de los Puros de 1956 (Agrupacion Montecristi).

[edit] The Second Coup

[edit] The Coup and the Constitution of 1940

On March 10, 1952, almost twenty years after the Revolt of the Sergeants, Batista took over the government once more, this time against elected Cuban president Carlos Prío Socorras. The coup took place three months before the upcoming elections that he was sure to lose. Also running in that election (for a different office) was a young, energetic lawyer named Fidel Castro. On March 27 Batista's government was formally recognized by U.S. President Harry Truman.

Shortly after this recognition, Batista declared that, although he was completely loyal to Cuba's constitution of 1940, constitutional guarantees would have to be temporarily suspended, as well as the right to strike. In April, writes Hugh Thomas in The Cuban Revolution, "Batista proclaimed a new constitutional code of 275 articles, claiming that the 'democratic and progressive essence' of the 1940 Constitution was preserved in the new law."

[edit] Economic Stewardship

Under Batista, Cuba continued the strong economic growth that had marked the preceding decade.

[edit] The Gambling Sector

Batista opened the way for large-scale gambling in Havana. He announced that his government would match, dollar for dollar, any hotel investment over $1 million, which would include a casino license. Havana became the "Latin Las Vegas," a playground of choice for many gamblers. Opposition was swiftly and violently crushed, and many began to fear the new government.

In 1956, in midst of the revolutionary upheaval, the 21-story, 383-room Hotel Riviera was built in Havana at a cost of $14 million. It was known as mobster Meyer Lansky's dream and crowning achievement. The hotel opened on December 10, with a floor show headlined by Ginger Rogers. Lansky's official title was "kitchen director," but he controlled every aspect of the hotel. He complained that Rogers "can wiggle her ass, but she can't sing a goddamn note!"

[edit] Political Unrest and the Revolution of 1959

Just over a year after Batista's second coup, a small group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada Army Barracks in Santiago on July 26, 1953. Having easily defeated the rebellion, and with Castro and most of the others in jail or dead, business was back to normal in Cuba.

Due to popular unrest, and to appease the United States government, Batista held an election in which he was the only legal candidate. He won, becoming president of Cuba in 1954.

The distinguished Colonel Cosme de la Torriente, a surviving veteran of the Cuban War of Independence, emerged in late 1955 to offer compromise. A series of meetings led by de la Torriente became known as "El Diálago Cívico" (the civic dialogue). Writes Hugh Thomas: "This Diálago Cívico represented what turned out to be the last hope for Cuban middle-class democracy, but Batista was far too strong and entrenched in his position to make any concessions."

Batista was so confident of his power that on May 15, 1955, he released Castro and the remaining survivors of the Moncada attack, hoping to dissuade some of his critics. Within weeks it was rumored that Batista's military police was looking to kill Castro, so the rebel went to Mexico to plan the revolution.

The Havana Post, expressing the attitude of the U.S. business community after a survey of the four years of Batista's second reign, alluded to the disappearance of gangsterism and said: 'All in all, the Batista regime has much to commend it." Hugh Thomas disagrees with that commentary. "In a way," Thomas writes, "Batista's golpe formalized gangsterism: the machine gun in the big car became the symbol not only of settling scores but of an approaching change of government."

By late 1955 student riots and anti-Batista demonstration had become frequent. These were dealt with in the violent manner his military police had come to represent. Students attempting to march from the University of Havana were stopped and beaten by the police, and student leader José A. Echeverría had to be hospitalized. Another popular student leader was killed on December 10, leading to a funeral that became a gigantic political protest with a 5-minute nationwide work stoppage.

Instead of loosening his grip, Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and established tighter censorship of the media. His military police would patrol the streets and pick up anyone suspected of insurrection. By the end of 1955 they had grown more prone to violent acts of brutality and torture, with no fear of legal repercussions.

In March of 1956 Batista refused to consider a proposal calling for elections by the end of the year. He was confident that he could defeat any revolutionary attempt from the many factions who opposed him.

In April 1956, Batista had given the orders for Barquin to become General and Chief of the Army. But it was too late. Even after Barquin was informed, he decided to move forward with the coup to rescue the morale of the Armed Forces and the Cuban people. On April 6, 1956, a coup by hundreds of career officers led by Col. Barquin (then Vice Chair of the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington DC and Cuban Military Attache of Sea, Air and Land to the US) was frustrated by snitch amongst the troops, Rios Morejon. The coup broke the backbone of the Cuban Armed Forces when Batista tried in vain to negotiate the denial of the so colled conspiracy. The officers were sentenced to the maximum terms allowed by Cuban Martial Law. Barquin was sentenced to solitary confinement for 8 years. La Conspiración de los Puros resulted in the imprisonment of the top commanding brass of the Armed Forces and the closing of the military academies. Barquin was the founder of La Escuela Superior de Guerra (Cuba's War College) and past director of La Escuela de Cadetes (Cuba's Military Academy - West Point). Without Barquin's officers the army could not sustain a fight. In the words of scholars like Justo Carillo, Felipe Pazos, Jose Miro Cardona, Hugh Thomas and Louis Horowitz: "Al frustrarse la Conspiración de los Puros a Cuba le toco perder. Sin Batista no hay Fidel (With the frustrated coup Cuba lost. Without Batista there is no Fidel)."

Batista continued to rule without concerns, even after the landing of the Granma in December of 1956 (which brought the Castro brothers back to Cuba along with Che Guevara and marked the beginning of the armed conflict).

Due to its continued opposition to the dictator, the University of Havana was temporarily closed on November 30, 1956. (It would not reopen until early 1959, after a revolutionary victory.) But that did not end the flow of student blood, including Echeverría's, who was killed by police after a radio broadcast on March 13, 1957.

Batista's police also tracked down and killed Frank País, a coordinator with the 26th of July Movement, inciting a spontaneous strike in the three easternmost provinces of Cuba.

Another election in 1958 placed Andrés Rivero Agüero in the president's chair, but losing the support of the U.S. government meant his days in power were numbered.

On January 1, 1959, after formally resigning his position in Cuba's government and going through what historian Hugh Thomas describes as "a charade of handing over power" to his representatives, remaining family and closest associates boarded a plane at 3 a.m. at Camp Colombia and flew to Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

Throughout the night various flights out of Camp Colombia took Batista's friends and high officials to Miami, New York, New Orleans and Jacksonville. Batista's brother "Panchín," governor of Havana, left several hours later, and Meyer Lansky, suffering from ill health, also flew out that night. There was no provision made for the thousands of other Cubans who had worked with Batista's regime.

[edit] Aftermath

Batista later moved to Portugal and then Marbella, Spain, where he lived and wrote books the rest of his life. He was also the Chairman of a Spanish Life Insurance company which invested in property and mortgages on the Spanish Riviera. He died of heart attack on August 6, 1973.

He was married to Elisa Godinez-Gomez (1905-?) on July 10, 1926 and they had three children, Mirta Caridad (April 1927), Elisa Aleida (B. 1933), and Fulgencio Ruben Batista Godinez (b 1933). He later married Marta Fernández-Miranda (1920-2006) and they had Jorge and Roberto Francisco Batista Fernández.

Marta Fernández de Batista, Batista's widow, died on October 2, 2006. Roberto Batista, her son, says that she died at her West Palm Beach home. She had a heart attack on September 8. Batista was buried with her husband in San Isidro Cemetery in Madrid after a mass in West Palm Beach.

Raoul G. Cantero, III, born in Spain, naturalized in the US, a graduate of Harvard Law School, a judge on Florida State Supreme Court, is the grandson of Fulgencio Batista.