The architect of the cuban state : Fulgencio batista and populism in Cuba, 1937-1940

Journal of Latin American Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 435-459

  Whitney, Robert ^a  

^a MCGILL UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRATIZATION; POLITICAL HISTORY; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

CUBA;

EID: 0034085386     PISSN: 0022216X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X00005800     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. The term clases populäres was commonly used by journalists, politicians and social commentators to describe the two social groups within Cuban society during the first 40 years of this century. The clases populäres comprised all social sectors outside the political elite and large sugar, commercial and industrial classes, such as the urban and rural wage labourers, peasants, the lower middle-class groups of students, low level government employees and those involved in petty commerce. For an analysis of the concept of the popular sectors or 'el pueblo' or Mo popular', see Guillermo O'Donnell, 'Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State and the Question of Democracy', in David Collier (ed.), The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton, 1979), pp. 288-91.
2. General surveys of Cuban history between roughly 1900 and 1940 include Jorge Ibarra, Cuba, iSyS-iyii: (lasts sociales j partidos politicos (La Habana, 1992); Jörge Ibarra, Prologue to Revolution: Cuba, iSyS-iyj! (Boulder, 1998); Jules R. Benjamin, The United States and Cuba : Hegemony and Dependent Development, iSSo-iyjj (Pittsburgh, 1977) ; Jules R. Benjamin, The United States and the Origins of the Caban Revolution: An Empire of Liberty in the Age of National Liberation (Princeton, 1990); Louis Ferez, Jr., Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, ip02-i9jj (Pittsburgh, 1986); Hugh Thomas, Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom (New York, 1971).
3. On the 'oligarchic state see Laurence Whitehead, "State Organization in Latin America since 1930 ', in Leslie Bethell (ed.), Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. VI, Part (Cambridge, 1994), p. 9. For the purposes of this essay, the term 'oligarchy' refers to the Cuban political and sugar-growing elite and not to foreign capitalists resident in Cuba.
4. The machadato refers to the regime of General Gerardo Machado y Morales (1925-33).
5. The major works on the revolution of 1935 are: José Tabares del Real, La revolution del 0, sus dos Ultimos anas (La Habana, 1973); Leonel Soto, La revolution del}}, 3 vols (La Habana, 1977); Raûl Roa Garcia, La revolution del 30 se fut a bolina (La Habana, 1969); Luis E. Aguilar, Cuba iojj: Prologue to Revolution (Ithaca N.Y., 1972); David Raby, Tee Cuban Pre-Revolution of t))): An Analysis (Glasgow: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1975); Samuel Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, iyj}-i6o (Middletown Conn., 1976); Justo Carrillo, Cuba i))): Students, Yankees and Soldiers (New Brunswick N.J., 1994); Ricardo Adams y Suva, La gran mentira: 4 de septiembre iy)) y sus importantes consecuentes (Miami, 1947/1986); Enrique Lumen, La revolution cubana, i$oz-iy)4 (Mexico City, 1934); Enrique Fernândez, La raOn del 4 de septiembre (La Habana, 1935); Charles Thomson, 'The Cuban Revolution: the Fall of Machado', Foreign Policy Reports, n: 21 (18 December 1955); Charles Thomson, 'The Cuban Revolution: Reform and Reaction', Foreign Policy Reports, n: 32 (i January 1936).
6. A scholarly biography of Batista is sorely lacking. Fulgencio Batista was born in 1901 to lower-class parents. He spent his early life working as a barber, carpenter, canecutter, bartender, tailor, railroad worker and army stenographer. He joined the army in 1911 and became a sergeant in 1928. In the latter role he worked for General Machado's Chief of Staff, General Herrera. As a sergeant, he led the mutiny of noncommissioned officers on the 4 September 1933. Batista had been a member of the right-wing corporatist ABC Society [see note 18 below] in late 1932 and early 1933, but, in opposition to the ABC, he supported the Grau government from September 1933 to January 1934. At that point, with the support of President F. D. Roosevelt's personal emissary, Sumner Welles, Batista shifted his allegiance to Carlos Mendieta. Batista ruled from behind the scenes between 1934 and 1940. In 1940 he was elected president of Cuba and served until 1944. From 1944 to 1952 Batista retained a loyal following within the army and the police, though he was never a mass leader like Grau San Martin. Batista's political skill rested on his ability to make alliances with people and factions who did have a mass following. This skill, coupled with his strong support within the army, converted Batista into a permanent factor in Cuban politics. Batista engineered a coup against the autintico government of Pri'o Socarras in March 1952. Thereafter Batista and the young radicals of the 19505, led by Fidel Castro, entered into prolonged struggle. For biographical sketches of Batista see: Edmund A. Chester, A Sergeant Named Batista (New York, 1954); the section on Batista in Joseph C. Tardiff and L. Mpho Mabunda (eds.), Dictionary of Hispanic Biography, (Washington, 1996); and the entry for Batista in Robert J. Alexander (ed.) Biographical Dictionary of Latin American and Caribbean Political Leaders (New York, 1988). For Batista's political thought between 1933 and 1944 see Fulgencio Batista,
7. Revolution social o politica reformista (La Habana, 1944). A useful sketch of Batista's regime of 1952-58 is Jotge Domfnguez, 'The Batista Regime in Cuba', in H. E. Chehabi and Juan J. Linz (eds.), Sitltanistic Régimes (Baltimore, 1998), pp. 113-3:.
8. For recent contributions on the subject of mass mobilisation and political change in Cuba see: Barry Carr, 'Mill Occupations and Soviets: the Mobilisation of Sugar Workers in Cuba, 1917-1933', Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 28, (1996), pp. 129-58; Oscar Zanetti, 'The Workers' Movement and Labour Legislation in the Cuban Sugar Industry', Cuban Studies, vol. 25, (1996), pp. 183-205 ; Abel F. Losanda Alvarez, 'The Cuban Labour Market and Immigration from Spain, 1900-1930", Cuban Studies, vol. 25, (1996), pp. 147-64; Alejandro de la Fuente, 'Two Dangers, One Solution: Immigration, Race, and Labour in Cuba, 1900-1930', International Labour and Working Class History, no. 15 (Spring 1997), pp. 30-49; Robert Whitney, 'What Do the People "Think and Feel"? Mass Mobilisation and the Cuban Revolution of 1933', Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies vol. 3, no. 2 (December 1997), pp. 1-31; Marc C. McLeod, 'Undesirable Aliens: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism in the Comparison of Haitian and British West Indian Immigrant Workers in Cuba, 1912-1939", Journal of Modern History vol. 31, no. 3 (Spring 1998), pp. 599-623; Barry Carr, 'Omnipotent and Omnipresent: Labor Shortages, Worker Mobility, and Employer Control in the Cuban Sugar Industry, 1910-1934", in Aviva Chomsky and Aldo Lauria-Santiago (eds.), Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean (Durham, 1998), pp. 260-91.
9. The full English text of the Constitution of 1940 can be found in Russell H. Fitzgibbon, The Constitutions of the Americas (Chicago, 1948), pp. 226-96.
10. Rene Rayneri, 'Colonel Batista and Cuba's Future', Current History 95 (April 1939), p. 51-
11. In addition to the works cited in note 3 above, see: Louis Ferez, Jr. Army and Politics in Cuba, iS)S-iyji (Pittsburgh, 1976); Irwin F. Gellman, Roosevelt and Batista (Albuquerque, 1973); Harold Sims, 'Cuba' in Leslie Bethell and lan Roxborough (eds.), Latin America Between the Second World War and the Cold War, 1944-194$ (Cambridge, MA., 1992), pp. 217-42.
12. My perspective on populism is influenced by the following works: Alan Knight, 'Populism and neo-populism in Latin America, especially Mexico', Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 30, Part 2 (May 1998), pp. 223-48; Simon Collier, 'Trajectory of a Concept: "Corporatism" in the Study of Latin American Polities' in Peter H. Smith (ed.), Latin America in Comparative Perspective; Near Approaches to Methods and Analysis (Boulder, 1995), pp. 135-62; Roberto Schwarz, Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture (London, 1992), especially chapter i, 'Brazilian Culture: Nationalism by Elimination'; Carlos Vilas, 'Latin American Populism: A Structural Approach', Science and Society vol. 56, no. 6 (Winter 1992-1993), pp. 389-420; William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London, 1991), especially chapter 3, 'Popular Culture and Polities'; Leon Enrique Bieber, En torno al ortgen histôrico e ideolôgico del ideario nacionalisia populista latinoamericano (Berlin, 1982); Stanley Stein, Populism in Peru (Madison, 1980); Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London, 1977); Adam Anderle, Algunos problemas de la evoliiciôn del pensa/sien to anti-imperialista en Cuba entre las dos guerras mundiales: comunistas y apristas (Szeged, 1975).
13. Batista probably has more in common with Chilean presidents Arturo Alessandri (1920-24) and Carlos Ibânez (1927-3:) than he does with the 'classic' populist figures of the 19405 and jos such as Getulio Vargas, Juan Peron and Victor Haya de la Torre. As we will see below, however, the fact that Batista's emergence coincided with the rule of Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico proved to be important.
14. Important works on populist movements, leaders, and state organisation are Michael Conniff (ed.), Latin American Populism in Comparative Perspective (Albuquerque, 1982); Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena (Princeton, 1991); Paul Drake, Socialism and Populism in Chile, 1932-J2 (Urbana, 1978); Francisco Correa Weffort, O populisme na politico brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1980); John French, Tie Brazilian Workers' ABC: Class Conflict and Alliance in Modern Sao Paulo (Chapel Hill, 1992); Joel Wolfe, Working Women, Working Men: Sào Paulo and the Rise of Brazil's Industrial Working Class, ipoo-iytf (Durham, 1993); Barbara Weinstein, For Social Peace in Brazil, Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in Sào Paulo, 11/20-1964 (Chapel Hill, 1996); Robert M. Levine, Father of the Poor?: Vargas and His Era (Cambridge, 1998); Daniel James, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946-1976 (Cambridge, 1988).
15. Batista quoted in the Havana Post, 23 June, 1937, p. 10.
16. Mr Grant Watson to Mr Eden, Havana, 30 June 1937. FO/A/4946/6j/i4. British Foreign Office Papers: Public Record Office, London. Hereafter all British Foreign
17. Office Documents will be cited by the initials FO, followed by the Foreign Office registration numbers and then by the dispatch number, if provided. This article makes extensive use of the British Foreign Office Papers, because while it is true that US diplomatic correspondence is far more detailed than the British, the latter often reveals greater analytical distance from events. The US diplomats often lost sight of the forest for the trees, whereas the British were more adept at analysing Batista's objectives and tactics.
18. Chester, A. Sergeant Named Eatista, pp. 1-25 ; Thomas, Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom, p. 845.
19. Mr Rees to Mr Eden, Havana, 20 February 1937. Enclosure Document 21, 'The Labour Situation in Cuba and the British West Indies'. FO/A/i864/65/i4 (hereafter referred to as 'The Labour Situation in Cuba' (no page numbers).
20. 'Labor Law Must be Enforced', Havana Post, 2.2. May 1957, p. i.
21. 'Codify Labor Laws is Plea', Havana Post, 6 April 1937, p. i.
22. This argument was presented by the Labour Secretary, Portuondo. See 'Labour Secretary Analyses Cuba's Economic Troubles', Havana Post, 4 March 1937, p. I.
23. 'The Labour Situation in Cuba'.
24. Havana Post, 20 January 1937, p. i; Havana Post, 28 January 1937, p. 12.
25. 'The Labour Situation in Cuba"; Havana Post, 23 February 1937, p. i; Havana Post, 6 April 1937, p. i. ' 24 'The Labour Situation in Cuba'.
26. Mr Grant Watson to Mr Eden, Havana, 22 July 1937. FO/A/5010/65/14 No. 108.
27. 'The Labour Situation in Cuba'; 'Idle in Camaguey Forced to Work', Havana Post, 11 February 1957, p. i. In 1955, the Batista-Mendieta government established Labour Exchanges, which had been another initiative of the Grau government. The idea was to provide a clearing house for information about available workers and to register those seeking employment. By May 1935 the Mendieta government established labour exchanges in all five provinces.
28. 'The Labour Situation in Cuba'.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Líneas baticas del Programa del Plan Trienal (La Habana, 1957).
32. Diario de la Marina, 20 June and 27 June 1957, p. i in both editions. Also see Havana Post, 23 June and 25 June 1937, p. i for both editions.
33. Batista quoted in Mr Grant Watson to Mr Eden, Havana, i June 1937. FO/A/4239/65/14 No. 86.
34. Mr Grant Watson to Mr Eden, Havana, 27 December 1938. FO/A./262/262/14 No. 178; Thomas, Cuba, or tbi Pursuit of Freedom, pp. 708-9.
35. Gellman, Room-tit and Batista, p. 162.
36. Mr Grant Watson to Viscount Halifax, Havana, 30 August 1939. FO/A/5823/165/14 No. 96.
37. Mr Grant Watson to Mr Eden, Havana, 2 December 1937. FO/A/go 19/65/14 No. 171.
38. Thomas, Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom, p. 708.
39. 'Free Colonos', (editorial), Kevista Semanal Aticarera, (16 April 1938).
40. José Antonio Guerra y Dében, 'Recent Evolution of the Sugar Industry', appendix to Ramiro Guerra y Sdnchez, Sugar and Society in the Caribbean (New Haven, 1964).
41. Ramito Guerra y Sânchez, 'Sugar: Index of Cuban-American Cooperation', Foreign Affairs (July 1942), p. 751.
42. 'In Regard to a Proposed Law Regulating the Relations Between the Hacendados and the Colonos', ij April 1937. Braga Collection, Box 31, File: Colonos of Manati, Francisco and Elia.
43. Asociaciön Cubana de Fabricantes de Azücar, 'Open Letter', Havana, 6 November 1940. Braga Collection, Box 18, File: Asociaciön Nacional de Hacendados de Cuba. The letter was widely published in both Spanish and English. The quotation is taken from the English version.
44. Mr Grant Watson to Mr Eden, Havana, 30 June 1957. FO/A/4946/65/14 No. 98.
45. Mr Grant Watson to Mr Eden, Havana, 2 December 1957. FO/A/9019/65/14/ No. 171.
46. They were delayed again until general elections for a constituent assembly were held in November 1939, with presidential elections following in February 1940.
47. It is striking, for example, that in the Braga Brothers' collection very little mention is made of CNOC or SNOIA, even for the period from 1932 to 1933. Most of the 'contracts' the Cuba Cane Company signed with workers between 1933 and 1940 referred to the 'unions' by such names as 'the General Union of Workers at Manati' and the like. The general tone of the company's correspondence indicates concern, but it was far from panic stricken. The impression one gets from reading the company's documents is that while union organising could be troublesome, things were expected to return to normal, given time. Until more systematic work is done on the history of the union movement in Cuba little of substance can be offered on this issue.
48. The most important studies of the Batista-Communist alliance are: Jorge Garcia Montes and Antonio Alonso Avila, Historia delPartido Comunista de Cuba (Miami, 1970), especially chapters 9 and 10; Thomas, Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom, especially chapter LX; Boris Goldenberg, "The Rise and Fall of a Party: The Cuban C.P. (1925-1959)', Problems of Communism, vol. 19, (1970), pp. 61-80; Farber, Revolution and Reaction, especially pp. 84-7; and Harold D. Sims, 'Cuban Labor and the Communist Party, 1937-1958', Cuban Studies I Estudios Cubanos, vol. 15, no. i (Winter 1985), pp. 43-58.
49. For the Party's position on why the negotiations with the PRC-A and other groups failed see Marcos Di'az (Blas Roca), El PRCj los Frentes Populäres (La Habana, 419} 8). For the party's self-criticism see Manuel Ventura, ' The Second Party Congress of the CP of Cuba', International Press Correspondence, World News and Vieles, vol. 14, no. 34 (15 June 1934) and 'Report of Comrade Marin', World News and Views: International Press Correspondence vol. 15, no. 62 (21 November 1935), p. 910. For a sample of the bitter anti-communism of Grau's followers, see Alberto Baeza Flores, Las cadenas vienen de lejos: Cuba, America Latinaj la libertad (Mexico, D.F., 1960), especially pp. 100-112.
50. This point is supported by the British Embassy: see Grant Watson to Viscount Halifax, Havana, 26 May 1938. FO/A/46i8/202/i4 No. 52.
51. From 1937 to 1939 the autenticos were sharply divided along both political and personal lines. Gradually, in response to their defeat and isolation after 193 5, two wings emerged: the 'realists', who wanted to compromise with Batista in order to become legal and participate in the up-coming elections, and the 'revolutionaries', who thought that militant and even armed action was the only way to defeat Batista. Grau was vigorously courted by both sides, but he seems always to have been a ' realist '. On these events see Rüben de Leon, El origin del mal: Cuba, su tjtmplo (Miami, 1964), pp. 328-36. For the acts of violence and police raids against the PRC-A see Mr Grant Watson to Mr Eden, Havana, 18 November 1937. FO/A/86o3/05/i4 No. 168.
52. On these events see Radl Roa Garcia, // anas despiict (La Habana, 1950), p. 219.
53. Diario de la Marina, 16 September 1938, p. i ; Mr Buxton to Viscount Halifax, Havana, 22 September 1938. FO/A/7j43/202/i4, No. 93.
54. Garcia Montes and Alonso Avila, Historia del Partido Comunlsta de Cuba, pp. 234-7; Mario Riera Hernândez, Historial obren cabana, i}?f-i}6} (Miami, 1965), pp. 122-3.
55. Sims, 'Cuba', p. 221.
56. R. A. Martînez, "The Latin American Significance of the Cuban Democratic Upsurge', World News and Views, vol. 19, no. 18 (April 1939), p. 367; Evelio Tellern Toca, Congresos obreres en Cuba (La Habana, 1973), p. 302.
57. Mr Grant Watson to Viscount Halifax, Havana, 26 May 1938. FO/A/46i8/202/i4 No. 52.
58. Batista quoted in Mr Grant Watson to Viscount Halifax, Havana, i November 1938. FO/A/9U88/8684/I4 No.n8 (confidential).
59. Gellman, Roosevelt and Batista, pp. 167-8.
60. Mr Grant Watson to Viscount Halifax, Havana, I December 1938. FO/A/gESS/ 8684/14 No. 118 (confidential).
61. William Z. Foster, "The Congress of the CP of Cuba', World News and Views, vol. 19, no. 7 (February 1939), p. 147; Mr Grant Watson to Viscount Halifax, Havana, 4 March 1939. FO/2109/1586/14 No. 28 (confidential).
62. Mr Grant Watson to Viscount Halifax, Havana, 4 March 1939. FO/2109/1586/14 No. 28 (confidential).
63. Mr Grant Watson to Viscount Halifax, Havana, 5 April 1939. FO/A/296971586/14 No. 43.
64. Carta, 'Situaciön política', 18 September 1939, Braga Collection, Box 33, File: Cuba, Political Conditions.
65. George Messersmith to Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, (personal and confidential), Havana, 12 July 1940. Records of the United States Department of State, 1930-1944, 711/379.
66. Knight, 'Populism and neo-populism', p. 231.
67. Mr Grant Watson to Sir John Simon, Havana, 29 January 1934. FO/A/1127/29/14 No. 13 (confidential).
68. Batista quoted in the Havana Post, 15 January 1957, pp. t and 7.