“We can serve Yanqui imperialism or serve the people, the interests of the two are not compatible.” Antonio Guiteras, 1933138
Introduction
In September 1933, Ramón Grau San Martín, the popular physiology professor at the University of Havana, was chosen as acting president of Cuba by the student directory of the rebelling forces after the ousting of Cuban President Gerardo Machado.139 Unacceptable to U.S. policy makers, due to his nationalist agenda, Grau’s government would go unrecognized by the United States. By the end of September 1933, U.S. Ambassador Sumner Welles was already conspiring with another leader in the anti-Machado revolution, a young sergeant named Fulgencio Batista.140 More than anyone else, Batista would define Cuban politics for the next quarter century, largely through a multipronged alliance with U.S. interests. Understanding his continued leadership depended largely on the support of U.S. officials, over time Batista torqued his political, economic and cultural priorities toward the interests of Anglo-American residents and institutions and away from the needs and desires of the Cuban people.
138 Argote-Freyre, Fulgencio Batista, 90.
139 Much like Batista, Gerardo Machado is often described as a populist leader who invested heavily in his own
people’s well-being before becoming a tyrant controlled by U.S. interests who refused to yield power. Ibid., 36.
Batista and Roosevelt (1933-1944)
Figure 6. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Fulgencio Batista Shake Hands in Washington, 1942141
Fearing radical change, Washington acted quickly in 1933 to prevent President Grau from consolidating power. The Roosevelt administration ordered warships to Cuba and Key West, alerted U.S. bombers and marines, all the while refusing to recognize the new Cuban government. Yet Grau continued to push forward with a number of nationalist reforms to aid impoverished Cubans. Between September 10, 1933, and January 15, 1934, the Grau
government implemented an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage. Grau deported Haitians and West Indians in great numbers as they competed for work at Cuban and foreign corporations with the rural and urban Cuban poor. Grau and his political allies invested in a breakfast program
for children in the nation’s schools. He held companies accountable by declaring a ban on voucher pay systems throughout the island.142 Further, he cut electric rates and temporarily took control of the U.S.-owned Cuban Electric Company.143 These challenges to foreign capital and the structures of informal empire would not be tolerated by the Roosevelt administration.
Ambassador Welles described the Grau government as a “lunatic asylum,” having “communistic” ideas.144 In late 1933 and early 1934, Welles and Batista partnered to map out Cuba’s future. Batista’s biographer Frank Argote-Freyre explains, “Batista, to maintain his own power, broke with the students and installed a government more to the liking of the United States and its internal political allies.”145 The Cuban strongman worked to prevent collateral damage in the removal of Grau, and rejected ideas for a U.S. invasion proposed by Welles. Batista
recognized the potential anger that could be unleashed against the United States if they invaded Cuba.146 U.S. policy makers rewarded the coup orchestrated by Batista in January 1934 by quickly affirming Batista’s selection for Cuban president, Carlos Mendieta y Montefur. With a friendly government installed by their ally Batista, on May 29, 1934, the Treaty on Relations
142 Argote-Freyre, Fulgencio Batista, 92.
143 The Cuban Electric Company held close ties to the Machado government, with its parent company American &
Foreign Power Co., investing $500,000 in Machado’s 1924 campaign for president. High rates and an alliance with the increasingly unpopular Machado government led to a national boycott of the company in 1931 and a bombing of Cuban Electric’s headquarters in Cienfuegos in March, 1933. William J. Hausman and John L. Neufeld, “The Cuban Electric Company, 1922-1960: from American Subsidiary to State Owned Enterprise,” European Business History Association Annual Meeting, Vienna, Austria, August 24-26, 2017, Accessed, July 31, 2018,
http://ebha.org/public/C7:paper_file:9.
144 Argote-Freyre, Fulgencio Batista, 93.
145 Ibid., 79.
between Cuba and the United States abrogated the Platt Amendment, one of the central demands of the deposed Grau government.147
Growing up poor in Banes, Oriente, a United Fruit and Sugar Company mill town, Batista saw an allegiance with Anglo-Americans as a way to improve his personal fortunes and perhaps also the fortunes of the Cuban people. Batista attended the Banes Friends School run by Quaker missionaries and he graduated fourth-grade at the age of twelve in 1913.148 As a youth, he cut cane for the UFSC and understood in body and mind, the company’s power, and the influence of the United States in Cuba more generally.149 Argote-Freyre writes that in 1933 “Batista touted himself as the man who established order. As he viewed it, an accommodation with the United States was part of the political equation.”150 Rather than rebel against the
influence of the United States, Batista embraced U.S. support as fundamental to Cuban stability. In 1933 Batista skyrocketed from an unknown Cuban sergeant to the most significant figure in Cuban politics for a quarter of a century, in large part due to his early recognition of, and subservience to, U.S. authority on the island.
While allied with Anglo-American executives and diplomats in Cuba, Batista was particularly vexed by Cuban elites, whom he viewed as an obstacle to his leadership due to the scorn they held for his ethnicity--Batista was believed to be of Spanish, African, Taíno and/or Chinese descent--and his class background. His first major confrontation with the Cuban elite
147 Franklin, Cuba and the United States, 13.
148 Argote-Freyre, Fulgencio Batista, 10.
149 With Cubans suffering during the decline of sugar prices in the 1920s, President Machado violently put down
unions, including at Banes on UFSC property in 1925. Within a few years Cubans across the country came to view Machado as a reviled dictator. Zanetti, “La United Fruit Company en Cuba,” 250-1.
came in 1933. As a sergeant in the Cuban Military, Batista organized enlisted men to overthrow their officers after the military brass failed to meet a number of their demands. Cuban officers, for decades, had treated the enlisted men harshly and without respect, as little more than servants. The officers, under attack, sought intervention from the United States. The Roosevelt administration refused. With the collapse of the Machado government and conflict in the air, Washington understood that power now lay with Batista. Ambassador Welles wrote in October 1933, “[T]here does not exist at the present time in Cuba any authority whatever except [Batista] and that in the event of further disturbances which may endanger the lives and properties of Americans or foreigners in the Republic, it seems to be essential that this relationship be maintained.”151
His successful overthrow of the military order did not garner Batista acceptance with high-society Cubans. An incident at the Sans Souci nightclub on New Year’s Eve, 1933, proved particularly stinging for the Cuban strongman eager to be embraced by the nation’s elite. Upon the arrival of Batista and his entourage, the upper-class patrons of the club, almost in unison, got up from their seats and walked out of the establishment.152 Though he continued to desire
admittance into the circles of Cuba’s aristocracy, Batista found it prudent to cultivate ties with Anglo-Americans. He purchased a home in Daytona Beach, sent his children to Anglo-American schools, joined social clubs frequented by Anglo-Americans and wielded authority to strengthen Anglo-American business partnerships with the Cuban government.153
151 Ibid., 102.
152 Ibid., 124.
153 Jim and Margaret Benson, interview by author, September 12, 2016, Fuquay-Varina, NC; Chris Baker, interview
Batista’s efforts at forging alliances with Anglo-Americans proved fruitful. Welles’ successor, Special Representative Jefferson Caffrey, took his predecessor’s advice and cultivated a close personal friendship with Batista. They cemented ties to preserve the influence of the Roosevelt administration and secure the authority of Batista in Cuba.154 In 1936, in the midst of a confrontation between Batista and the elected President Miguel Mariano Gómez over funding priorities, the United States remained silent as Batista orchestrated Gómez’ removal.155 Batista stabilized U.S. interests in Cuba, and Washington reciprocated with continued support for Batista’s leadership.
By the mid-1930s, with Batista in charge, Anglo-American power brokers could influence Cuban affairs without the need for a display of military might. When workers took over the Preston mill in the 1930s, United Fruit executive Walter Schuyler and UFSC lawyer Mario Lazo met with then Army Chief-of-Staff, Fulgencio Batista. Lazo recalls, “Brief and to the point…” Batista asked, “How many soldiers did Schuyler believe were needed?” The 50-60 requested would be ordered through a “trusted sergeant [who] proceed[ed] with an army detail from Santiago to Preston that same day.” Lazo remembers: “Within seventy-hours, order was restored in both Preston and Banes without bloodshed or violence. During the following weeks, this experience was repeated over and over throughout the country. As a consequence, the conservative elements of Cuban society rallied behind Batista.”156
By the time the Platt Amendment was abrogated in 1934, Anglo-American capital controlled more than half of Cuban sugar production, along with Cuban rail, electrical and
154 Argote-Freyre, Fulgencio Batista, 123.
155 Ibid., 228.
telephone lines. Batista understood well the importance of remaining in step with U.S.
geopolitical and economic priorities. Mario Lazo and his Anglo-American clients found Batista an eager ally on “war projects for the U.S. government, including the fifteen-million-dollar San Antonio de los Baños Air Base twenty-five miles south of Havana, with its mile-long concrete runways….” Batista approved “a multi-million-dollar nickel plant, financed and owned by the United States government” at Moa Bay and granted millions of dollars in tax exemptions for these U.S. projects. Lazo obviously appreciated the partnership: “In every instance my firm received from the President immediate and cordial cooperation.”157
Batista’s deal-making with Anglo-American capital led him into direct conflict with those progressive Cuban leaders who sought autonomy from the United States. Antonio Guiteras, a rival leader who emerged following the revolution of 1933, became disgruntled with Batista’s cozy relationship with U.S. officials. Guiteras explained, “We can serve Yanqui imperialism or serve the people, the interests of the two are not compatible.”158 Guiteras advocated nationalizing all corporations that did not provide a living wage to their workers. Pushing for confrontation with U.S. capital, Guiteras raised the ire of State Department officials who nicknamed him “Cuba’s Public Enemy No. 1” for his challenges to Anglo-American interests and his budding rivalry with Batista. Guiteras, later celebrated as a hero by the Cuban Revolution, would be eliminated by Batista’s forces in May 1935, at the age of twenty-nine.159
Batista is remembered as a brutal dictator who prioritized U.S. capital for his time in power between 1952 and 1958. And yet in the 1930s and 1940s, Sergeant--then Colonel,
157 Ibid., 77-78.
158 Argote-Freyre, Fulgencio Batista, 90.
General, and later President--Batista sought to initiate progressive social change to improve the lives of poor and rural Cubans. Impoverished by the sugar economy as a child, Batista was moved to initiate a number of social reforms to address the suffering of the campesinos. In 1936 he mobilized the army to bring education to rural communities by developing a plan to hire “sergeant-teachers” who established escuelas rurales cívico-militares. He launched health initiatives leading to the creation of the Technical Public Health Service and the National Tuberculosis Council, and directed the Civic Military Institute to construct orphanages
throughout the island to serve the orphaned children of state workers. Batista pursued rights for colonos who leased or owned land to grow sugar cane that they sold to large mill operations.160 Many Anglo-Americans recognized in Batista’s policies a spirit of the New Deal programs advocated by the Roosevelt Administration in the United States. Through his expansion of a social safety net, Batista gained a solid reputation throughout the diverse subsets of the Anglo- American colony. In 1938, Methodist missionary Sallie Lou MacKinnon admitted, “Col. Fulgenicio Batista…appears to be a beneficent dictator sincerely interested in the welfare of the common people.”161
Though he rose in large part through the support of U.S. interests, in his 1939 campaign for the presidency Batista could be heard criticizing U.S. excesses. A rising populist to the Cuban electorate, he advocated “absorbing monopolies” and argued for the dignity of small nations. Nevertheless, Anglo-Americans remained unconcerned, confident that a Batista presidency would protect their interests. Batista continued to solicit and receive contributions from leading
160 Ibid., 200-205, 250.
161 Sallie Lou Mackinnon, “The Outlook for Cuba is Different,” World Outlook, XXVIII, no. 11 (November 1938):
Anglo-American colony members and Anglo-American corporations. Elected in 1940 to serve as the first president under the 1940 Constitution, Batista’s term ended with a peaceful transition of power to President Ramón Grau after Batista’s preferred candidate Carlos Saladrigas Zayas lost the election of 1944.A champion of progressive ideas and greater equity for Cubans, between 1933 and 1944, Batista attempted to advance the welfare of his people even as he refused to question the role of the United States in Cuban affairs. Following his term in office, Batista moved to his home in Daytona Beach, Florida.162
Batista Returns to Power (1952-1959)
Figure 7. Time Magazine Covers Batista’s Coup with the Headline, “He Got Past Democracy’s Sentries,” April 1952 163
162 Argote-Freyre, Fulgencio Batista, 240, 260, 274.
From the late 1920s until the reemergence of Batista in the 1950s, the size of the Anglo- American population decreased. While 7,195 U.S. residents remained in 1931, this represented a substantial decrease from the 9,555 U.S. nationals who lived in Cuba in 1917.164 The number of U.S. residents would drop further still through the 1930s and into the early 1940s. For a number of reasons, Cuba grew less attractive to foreign investment and for Anglo-Americans seeking to establish new lives abroad.165 The “Ley del 50%” adopted by Grau, and the Constitution of 1940 codified protections for Cuban workers, making labor more expensive for Anglo-American corporations, while requiring them to hire a greater number of Cubans and fewer foreigners.166 The Global Depression of the 1930s further encouraged Anglo-Americans to return to their home societies. The Cuban share of sugar production rose from 22.4 percent in 1939 to 58.7 percent in 1955. Cubans would control 60.2 percent of bank deposits in 1950, a sharp rise from 16.8 percent in 1939.167 The withdrawal of U.S. capital combined with the entry of the United States into World War II left just 3,800 U.S. residents in Cuba in 1943, as the number of British
residents fell to 1,887, from 3,095 twelve years earlier in 1931.168 However, in coordination with Fulgencio Batista, the reach of foreign capital was significantly reinvigorated after 1952.
164 These numbers exclude Puerto Ricans. Junta Nacional del Censo, “República de Cuba, Informe general del
Censo de 1943” (La Habana, Cuba: P. Fernández y CIA., S. en C., 1943), 878-879.
165 Junta Nacional del Censo, República de Cuba, Informe general del censo de 1943 (La Habana, Cuba: P.
Fernández y CIA., S. en C., 1943), 878-879.
166 Enrique Gay Calbó and Herminio Rodríguez von Sobotker, “A Statement of Cuban Law in Matters Affecting
Business in it Various Aspects and Activities,” (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Commission, 1946), CHC.
167 United States Bureau of Foreign Commerce, “Investment in Cuba,” 9-10, CHC.
168 No data was provided for Canadian citizens. Junta Nacional del Censo, “República de Cuba, Informe general del
Anticipating defeat in the 1952 presidential campaign, on March 10 Fulgencio Batista, with the support of the Cuban military, staged a coup to overthrow the democracy he helped create twelve years earlier. Without the legitimacy garnered by the democratic process, the new Batista government was deeply dependent on U.S. support for its survival. While some Anglo- American residents expressed distress over Batista’s overthrow of Cuban democracy in 1952, others applauded the move. As a community, they were comforted by Cuba’s new leadership. The coup empowered Fulgencio Batista, whom they were confident would lead an overtly pro- U.S. administration.
On United Fruit and Sugar Company property, Anglo-American employees held a celebration of the March 1952 coup that deposed President Carlos Prío Socarrás because the overthrow of Cuban democracy by Batista “was good for the company.” A North American housewife of a UFSC executive invited Virginia M. Schofield’s family to join in the festivities at the social club in Guaro because Walton Schofield, of British descent, served as a middle
manager for United Fruit. Schofield recalls, upon answering the phone to receive the invitation, “My [Cuban] mother was insulted. I remember [her] asking, ‘and how would you feel if
something like this happened in your country?’…. [The North American housewife] answered: ‘But, my dear, this could never happen in the U.S.’”169 The woman was of course accurate in her assessment of what would be “good for the company,” though very bad for labor and democracy in Cuba. Real wages for workers decreased by 16 percent in 1955 alone, while the cost of living remained constant.170
169 Virginia M. Schofield to Louis A. Pérez, October 1, 1991, WL, Louis A. Pérez Jr., Papers, Letters 1991-1992,
Folder 1.
Between 1952-1958 Batista dangled lucrative opportunities in mining, energy,
agriculture, communications and tourism before foreign capital, including the U.S. mafia.171 As North American and British corporations and individuals found favorable terms of investment, the number of Anglo-Americans on the island grew. The 1953 census signaled a significant influx of Anglo-Americans with 6,503 residents from the United States, up from just 3,800 U.S. residents a decade earlier.172 By 1957, 12,168 U.S. citizens had established residency in Cuba.173 The alliance between foreign capital and President Batista encouraged North American and British immigration, empowered Anglo-American corporations, while agitating a widening collection of Cubans.174
Anglo-Americans’ positive reactions to Batista’s political reemergence catalyzed significant anti-U.S. sentiment throughout Cuba. By extending recognition to the Batista government just seventeen days after the coup, Washington exposed a blatant disregard for Cuba’s political institutions and a hypocritical commitment to “democracy” abroad. The military support provided to the Cuban government until 1958 by the Eisenhower Administration aided
171 Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered, 31.
172 Two-hundred-seventy-two Canadians and nearly 15,000 members of the British Commonwealth also resided in
Cuba in 1953. In this Cuban census, British citizens from England and British subjects from the Caribbean were