Word: batista
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...amazing that the two current heroes of certain segments of the American public are Fidel Castro and Anastas Mikoyan. Castro made war on the Cuban people for years -burning their homes and crops and sabotaging their roads, bridges and communications. This hero justifies his wholesale executions by saying that Batista did the same thing. As to the other hero, Mikoyan, who ordered the mass murder of many Hungarians, he was wined and dined, and his opinions eagerly sought. Apparently, it all depends on who commits the atrocities...
Thus one night last week began Fidel Castro's showpiece trial, first of a planned 1,000 trials in the Havana area, for a captured underling of exiled Dictator Fulgencio Batista. The defendant was Captain Jesus Sosa Blanco, 51, a brutal killer who commanded the Batista garrison at Holguin. Charged by Rebel Prosecutor Jorge Serguera with 56 murders, he faced certain conviction. He faced it with flair...
...went on; 45 witnesses offered facts, hearsay, gossip. "This is the worst criminal in the world!" screamed Maria Jacinta Galvez Martinez. "He killed every member of the Argote family -my neighbors." Argelio Argote, 12, confirmed that Sosa Blanco "came and took my father away." A wrinkled woman named Tomasa Batista Castillo fought to get at the prisoner: "I begged you not to kill my husband, because of our eleven children. You said the rebels could raise them." A soldier of Sosa Blanco's said calmly that he had seen the prisoner shoot 17 defenseless farmers...
After 1933, Cuba had seven Presidents in seven years, dependent always on the kingmaker, Fulgencio Batista, an orderly-room sergeant who filled the vacuum after Machado. Said he: "I think it would be criminal to take advantage of the power I have achieved; I can never become President." In 1940 he became President. After four years Batista allowed his hand-picked successor to be defeated in Cuba's first honest election and retired to Daytona Beach to enjoy his graft. The administrations of Ramón Grau San Martin. (1944-48) and Carlos Prío Socarr...
Despite the looting, Cuba kept growing. Machado's graft-ridden, 700 mile cross-island highway became the avenue for thriving commerce; Batista's bribe of high wages to workers widened the consumer class, gave Cuba a living standard not far short of booming Puerto Rico's. Today Cuba is 75% literate, boasts some of the most advanced social and labor legislation in the hemisphere...