Word: batista
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Cuba (pop. 6,100,000). President Fulgencio Batista gives far more freedom than the other three strongmen. But Cubans are restive. University students, courting martyrdom, clash constantly with Batista's police, who often react hotheadedly. A fortnight ago a 22-year-old girl student was cruelly tortured, and the regime, rightly or wrongly, got the blame. To relieve the heat and pressure, Batista may have to make the concession that his opposition demands: free elections soon...
...Drew Pearson thumped the bongo drums for President Fulgencio Batista too fervently. In return, Havana's leading newspapers and magazines last week were busy thumping Pearson. "If Truman called Drew Pearson a liar," declared Mario Kuchilán in Prensa Libre, "he was being generous." Columnist José Pardo Llada, who once hailed Pearson as an "ideal commentator," wrote in Diario National: "Our illustrious friend Drew Pearson has defrauded us." So fulsome was Pearson's praise for the Batista regime that even a Batista booster, Diario National's Luis Manuel Martinez, objected. He called Pearson a "gringo...
Penthouse Reporting. In Havana, Pearson stayed in a luxurious penthouse placed at his disposal by Amadeo Barletta Jr., son of a rich Batista crony. The columnist visited Strongman Batista twice and was steered around town by Batista's American Pressagent Edmund Chester. Pundit Pearson irritated Cuban readers with his naive reporting and prize factual boners, e.g., Pearson wrote that Batista "once threw out Cuba's most hated dictator," although, as every Cuban schoolchild knows, Batista had nothing to do with Dictator Gerardo Machado's ouster in 1933. Quipped El Mundo Columnist Carlos Robreno: If Batista...
Pearson also pictured Batista as a staunch foe of Communism, but neglected to mention that the President had legalized the Communist Party and won its support in the 1940 elections before finally outlawing the party. When Pearson wrote that "not even an armed sentry paced outside" the presidential palace-which is guarded night and day by up to six sentries in plain view-Diario National Columnist Luis Conte Aguero exploded: "Too ridiculous to comment." Although intensive security precautions are taken to protect Batista wherever he goes, Pearson wrote that the President "had no secret service" at a political rally...
President Batista's "forgive and forget" law will allow some 335 exiles and fugitives to return home, will set free 65 oppositionists jailed for such crimes as armed rebellion, terrorism, gunrunning, insulting government officials and distributing propaganda. Specifically excluded from the pardon: Cuba's Communists...