Word: batista
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Cuba's troublesome wave of sporadic bombings, sabotage and bloodshed spread into its third month last week. Strongman Fulgencio Batista was still undisputed boss of the island, but a few more months of terrorism might well bring the hour when other army officers would gravely inform him that-"for the good of Cuba" -he must step down. To head off that hour. Batista acted. He broadened the existing partial suspension of civil rights to cover the entire island, extended the decree another 45 days. Then he sent censors to newspapers, cable offices, radio and television stations to place...
...quixotic little uprising in Cuba a month ago and its accompanying 82-man rebel invasion were never a major military threat to Strongman Fulgencio Batista, as even the revolutionaries would concede (TIME, Dec. 10). But the rebels did hope that a bold show of opposition might rally the government's disorganized enemies to guerrilla war and sabotage that would, if long continued, shake Batista's government down. Last week, with bombing, killing and arson on the rise, the regime was clearly fearful of such a possibility-and trigger-happy at the thought...
Strongman Batista conferred at length with his top military and police chiefs on ways to curb the spreading revolutionary fervor. Cops with rifles and machine guns went on guard at railroad stations and public buildings. Planes and warships patrolled the coasts...
Officially, the army blamed the killings on a falling-out among the rebels themselves, but many Cubans blamed government executioners. The anti-Batista Ortodoxo Party condemned "those in power who want to convert Cuba into a Hungary of the Antilles." The Auténtico Party, which Batista tossed out of power in 1952, blasted "the macabre spectacle of 21 Cubans slain precisely on the day of peace and Christian love, the day of our Lord's Nativity...
...sabotage went on, pointing up the fact that the rebel invaders (including their leader, Fidel Castro) who touched off the unrest were still at large, holed up somewhere in the Sierra Maestra range in Oriente. That they could still flaunt their flag of insurrection especially disconcerted Batista, for it seemed to show that his troops, sent to kill or capture the rebels, lacked the heart or the ability...