Word: batista
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Uruguay wrote Castro to condemn the "savage" executions. Costa Rica's ex-President Jose ("Pepe") Figueres, an early Castro supporter, sent a short note "suggesting" that Castro postpone his planned Costa Rica visit. Castro was annoyed but unmoved. "Have you seen the pictures of the Cubans murdered by Batista?" he demanded. "Ave Maria Purisima! The dead shout out for justice...
...basic fault was a lack of careful groundwork. During the seven years of Dictator Fulgencio Batista's iron regime, and during the two years of Rebel Fidel Castro's mountain-locked resistance, Cuba got too little attention from the daily press. Scant word of Batista atrocities-of the Cubans who died at the hands of his army and his police-filtered past his porous censorship. The strength of the Castro position, after the revolt lapsed into a tropical stalemate, was misjudged...
When at year's end the Batista regime suddenly collapsed, few were prepared for the event. The A.P. in Havana moved a Dec. 31 dispatch-based on but not credited to a Batista bulletin-to the effect that Castro's rebels were on the run. While this story was rolling off U.S. presses, Batista fled Cuba...
Mustered in a hurry, the journalist army trained its eyes on the riotous color of Cuba in ferment. Rivers of copy surged onto the front pages, but the meaning of Cuba's sudden agony was left to deskbound editorial writers. They fired from the hip. Batista, the deposed tyrant, was condemned. Castro, the idealistic liberator, rated approving choruses, relieved only here and there by a suspicious question. In the next phase, as the tattoo of rebel firing squads stitched a new pattern on the face of Cuba, and the landscape was no longer boldly black and white, U.S. readers...
Needed: Understanding. Some old professionals on the scene in Cuba distinguished themselves with colorful yet thoughtful reporting that gave the reader a sound base for judgment. One was Scripps-Howard's Andrew Tully, who wrote of the Sports Palace trial of a Batista army officer: "The American Bar Association would have held up its hands in horror. For it was, largely, a spectacle -a circus-in which the accused was considered guilty and was dared to try to prove his innocence...