Hero or villain?
A young Batista came to power on a wave of populist support – not unlike the revolutionaries that chased him out of Cuba. So what went wrong?
How should history view Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista?
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar. The very name conjures the image of a failed and corrupt Caribbean dictator, a man who placed personal gain above the needs of his people. He is probably best known for his early morning escape into exile, along with several dozen family members and generals, on 1 January 1959 – paving the way for the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
Following the insurgency, Batista was depicted as a stooge and a lackey of the US mafia and government by revolutionary journalists and scholars. He occupies a special spot of revulsion in Cuban history books, and his image is on display in the Cretin’s Corner (Rincón de Los Cretinos), along with US presidents Reagan and the two Bushes, at the Museum of the Revolution in Havana.
On the face of it, he seems like a run-of-themill historical villain, but there is much more to his story than is widely known. Batista was born into abject poverty in eastern Cuba in 1901 to a mixed-race family with a polyglot of Afro-cuban, Indigenous and European roots. His father was a part-time sugar cane cutter for the United Fruit Company and the family home was a simple thatched hut with a dirt floor. Batista’s formal studies were cut short after the death of his mother forced him to work at a variety of odd jobs to help support his three younger brothers.
From this modest beginning, Batista went on to dominate Cuban politics for over 25 years. Starting his career as a stenographer for the military, he worked his way up the ranks. His big political break occurred in the aftermath of the collapse of the Us-backed government of President Gerardo Machado in 1933. In the weeks after Machado fled Cuba, the island was plunged into chaos, and opposing political factions engaged in open warfare in the streets.
By this time, Batista was a sergeant in the army and part of a conspiracy of enlisted men to topple another Us-backed government. Their efforts succeeded on 4 September 1933 and the uprising, known initially as the Sergeants’ Revolt, ushered in Cuba’s first revolution of the 20th century – the Revolution of 1933. Astute enough to know that the enlisted men did not have the skills and knowledge to run the government, Batista formed an unlikely alliance with the students and faculty at the University of Havana.
“In the weeks after Machado fled Cuba, the island was plunged into chaos and political factions engaged in open warfare”
This revolution ushered in a wide range of labour reforms and challenged the United States’ dominance of the island – best symbolised by the hated Platt Amendment, which gave the US the right, by treaty, to intervene in Cuban affairs when its interests were at risk. So, Batista started his political career as a revolutionary, much reviled by the United States. Some argue that his drift to villainy began in the months following the takeover when he began secret negotiations with the United States to end the presidency of Professor Ramón Grau San Martín.
On the negative side of his ledger, Batista took part in a political coup to remove Grau in January 1934, but still kept all of the ousted president’s reforms. The United States even agreed to rescind the Platt Amendment later that year. The revolutionaries, Batista included, deserve considerable credit for securing greater autonomy for Cuba at that time.
The late 1930s and early 1940s marked the pinnacle of his career and the closest he came to being perceived as a hero on and off the island. In 1936, Batista, now a colonel, initiated a rural education programme led by the military. The programme emphasised literacy and public health and as a result, over 1,000 schools were built in isolated regions across the island. In some ways, this resembled the literacy campaign championed by Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. This effort included a campaign to provide better treatment facilities for those suffering from tuberculosis, a disease that had seemingly claimed the life of his younger brother. Batista’s rural education programme catapulted him to popularity, and he began to evolve into a civilian political leader. He even began wearing suits instead of his usual military uniforms.
But his rural education programme met with opposition from the then president, Miguel Mariano Gómez, and when the two clashed, Batista used his political and military ties to have Gómez impeached and removed from office. In addition to the rural education program, Batista arguably aided the cause of civil rights on the island by racially integrating the officer corps of the Cuban military, which had been dominated by Cubans of European descent prior to 1933.
In 1939, Batista took two dramatic steps on his path to becoming a civilian leader. He allowed a Constitutional Convention to draft a new constitution – even when the delegates he backed were defeated – and he decided to resign as a military leader in late 1939 so that he could run for the presidency in 1940 against his old nemesis Grau. The election was one of the fairest in Cuban history and Batista won, handily. He served as president of Cuba during most of World War II and he even managed to secure a series of infrastructure improvements from the United States in return for Cuban support of the war effort.
His greatest moment came in defeat. The new Cuban Constitution prevented him from seeking a second consecutive four-year presidential term in 1944 and there was widespread speculation that he would not allow a fair election. Instead, he backed a candidate – and when that candidate lost to Grau San Martín, he did not interfere with the transfer of power. In late October 1944, Batista handed power over to his archrival and left on an extended Latin American tour. Throughout the continent he was hailed as a great leader and the man who had fostered democracy on the island nation.
“Although his government gained quick diplomatic recognition, the people of Cuba never accepted him as their legitimate leader”
If his career had ended in
1945, the designation of hero would be appropriate – but his darkest moments were yet to come. After several years in self-imposed exile in Daytona Beach, Florida, Batista was elected to a seat in the Cuban Senate in 1948 as a prelude to a second presidential run in 1952. His popularity faded and public opinion polls indicated he was unlikely to win the presidency but instead of accepting that outcome, Batista tapped into his old military contacts and toppled the democratically elected government on 10 March 1952.
As if playing a role in a Greek tragedy, Batista destroyed his life’s work by seizing power in a coup. It is at this point that the Batista we know emerged. Although his government gained quick diplomatic recognition, the people of Cuba never accepted him as their legitimate leader. He tried to couch the coup in constitutional terms by keeping large parts of the governing document in place but few recognised him as the rightful president.
At first, Batista claimed that his rise to power was temporary and that he would quickly re-establish the normal order. But he clung to power for nearly seven years – even running unopposed in the elections of 1954. Civilian leaders formed political coalitions to negotiate his peaceful departure but all of their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. As political opposition to his government intensified and a rural and urban guerrilla movement emerged, he responded with ever-greater violence. Political opponents were frequently tortured and their mutilated bodies were discarded in public areas to quell dissent.
As violence escalated, so did political corruption. Batista did not invent the institutional corruption that pervaded Cuban politics but he took it to unprecedented new levels. It worked in several ways. Major building and infrastructure projects required approval at several levels of government and a bribe was frequently required to push a project through to completion. Gambling in its many forms, from the national lottery to the casinos, was controlled in Havana by government officials, who were kept happy with backhanders from casino operators and a small number of mobsters from the US. Corruption went all the way to the top and Batista is known to have used it for personal gain. Some claim that he may have amassed a fortune exceeding $100 million as a result of corruption.
Batista’s actions plunged Cuba into a civil war with Fidel Castro and his fellow revolutionaries. Despite the impact on the island, Batista held onto power as long as he could. It was not until mid-december 1958 that he decided to abandon Cuba – and only after he discovered that some of his generals appeared to be plotting against him. When he fled, he left the island in chaos and closed the door of democracy for generations to come. Hundreds of his mid- and low-level supporters were later executed by the Castro government.
He lived out the rest of his life, till 1973, in relative luxury in Portugal and Spain, and he wrote a number of books trying to reclaim and recast his legacy. He argued that he brought about economic development in Cuba, but conveniently never fully addressed his unconstitutional power grab.
The second half of his career clearly places
Batista in the villain category, but it is interesting to note that there were two distinct Batistas. The earlier one laid claim to a revolutionary populist pedigree as a mixed-race child of the poorest of the poor. He made significant contributions to the rural poor of Cuba and, perhaps most importantly, paved the way for a fragile democracy. However, his lust for power destroyed his achievements and the people of Cuba are still living with that today.