Fulgencio Batista

Cuban president and dictator (1940–1944, 1952–1959)

• Born: January 16, 1901
• Birthplace: Banes, Cuba
• Died: August 6, 1973
• Place of death: Guadalmina, Spain

Cause of notoriety: Batista, after leading a brutal military dictatorship, was overthrown by Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution.

Active: 1933–1959

Locale: Cuba, mostly Havana

Early Life

Born in a small town to an extremely poor family in the Oriente province of Cuba, close to the home of his future nemesis, Fidel Castro, Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was of uncertain heritage; his family lineage possibly contained Caucasian, African, and Chinese ancestry, an important fact in a race-conscious society like Cuba. Orphaned at age eleven and having very little formal education, the young Batista toiled at numerous jobs, including sugarcane cutter, before joining the army, where he rose from private to sergeant and was assigned to stenography. From this position he was able to create a network of privates and noncommissioned officers (NCOs), who would later serve him well in his political career.

Political Career

The overthrow of President Gustavo Machado y Morales in 1933 by students and elements of the middle class put Cuba into political turmoil. Machado’s successor, Ramón Grau y San Martín, was deemed too radical by the American ambassador in Havana, and the United States withheld diplomatic recognition from the new regime. Batista saw in this power vacuum a chance to seize control of the Cuban government. He organized the Sergeants’ Coup of September 4, 1933, mobilizing NCOs throughout the island to bring him to power in Havana. Batista, a political unknown whose racial and class background made him a dubious candidate for the nation’s highest office, lacked the legitimacy to capture the presidency for himself. However, during the next seven years, he ruled Cuba from behind the scenes, installing and unseating puppet presidents. By 1940, he felt secure enough to run for the presidential office, winning a bitterly contested election.

President Batista created a mixed record. He oversaw the writing of what came to be known as the Constitution of 1940, which forbade immediate presidential reelection; revamped the Cuban political system on the American model of separation of powers between three branches of government; and incorporated labor and education reform laws that were inspired by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era New Deal programs. In order to secure support from the Left, Batista asked members of the Cuban Communist Party to join his cabinet and personally appointed the leaders of some of Cuba’s most important trade unions. At the same time, Batista helped himself to a large share of the public treasury, particularly the national lottery and lucrative government contracts, and used some of these funds to outfit the army with uniforms.

In 1944, because he was forbidden to run for reelection by law and because his handpicked successor lost the presidential election, Batista went into self-imposed exile in Miami. The former president was unable to alter the course of Cuban politics through flunkies, as in prior decades. In 1952, although Batista proclaimed himself a candidate for president, polls showed him trailing badly. However, returning to Cuba, he staged a coup in March of 1952 that made him president by force of arms. Many within the Cuban middle and working classes turned then to Castro, a young lawyer who had denounced Batista’s unconstitutional capture of power and called on the Cuban people to take up armed struggle against the dictator.

At first, Batista felt little worry concerning Castro. The rebel’s attempt to start a national uprising by taking control of the Moncada Barracks in Oriente had failed, and Castro and his followers were sent to prison. Batista gained new allies in the anticommunist administration of U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower and also among the American Mafia, particularly gangster Meyer Lansky. Mobster investment in Havana casinos earned the dictator millions in skimmed profits. However, a popular outcry forced Batista to grant amnesty to Castro and his partisans, who soon regrouped and fostered a guerrilla campaign in Oriente and urban insurrection in Havana. Batista’s army was neither trained nor equipped to fight a counterinsurgency war. Moreover, the middle class and U.S. government distanced themselves from Batista once news of gross human rights violations against political prisoners surfaced. Therefore, completely isolated in the Cuban political scene and with his army retreating hastily before Castro’s troops, Batista resigned from office and fled the country on January 1, 1959. The remainder of his life was spent in opulent exile, first in the Dominican Republic and then in Spain, where he died in 1973.

Impact

Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar dominated Cuban politics for a quarter of a century, from 1933 to 1958, first as president and later by installing himself as military dictator. His shrewd political instincts helped him hold on to power by juggling allies ranging from the army to American gangsters. However, his personal corruption and his dismissal of Cubans’ longing for clean government and democracy paved the way for Castro’s revolution in 1959.

Bibliography

Argote-Freyre, Frank. Fulgencio Batista: From Revolutionary to Strongman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Print.

Argote-Freyre, Frank. Fulgencio Batista : The Making of a Dictator. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 27 June 2016.

Batista y Zaldívar, Fulgencio. Cuba Betrayed. New York: Vantage Press, 1962. Print.

DePalma, Anthony. “The Cuban Revolution.” New York Times Upfront 146.9 (2014): 18. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 27 June 2016.

Kapcia, Antoni. Fulgencio Batista, 1933–1944: From Revolutionary to Populist. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. Print.

Whitney, Robert. State and Revolution in Cuba: Mass Mobilization and Political Change, 1920–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Print.