Word: batista
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Cubans hardly needed to be told. Political foes rushed to make deals with the new boss. Gangsters stopped shooting at each other. Employers reported an abrupt end to such familiar nuisances as wildcat strikes and absenteeism. Cubans remembered Batista. In the past, he had used castor oil, midnight arrests or gunplay; his soldiers had ruthlessly put down abortive rebellions. He could afford to be economical with the weapon of terror. "It is my destiny to make bloodless revolutions," he bragged-and added a significant qualification: "The only blood spilled will be that of those who oppose...
...days, Batista liked to roister long past midnight with ex-sergeant cronies. Now the ex-sergeants are out of the picture, and Batista is alone. The Strong Man is a big boy now. As one Cuban says: "Batista does not love and does not hate. He will sacrifice his best friend and pardon his bitterest enemy if it serves his purpose." This political formula has not made him popular, but it works. Smiles Batista: "I am a dictator with the people...
...Batista was still a sergeant at 30, as the great depression settled down on Cuba. Sugar then sold for ½? a pound, banks foreclosed on planters, cane cutters roamed the island seeking a few weeks' seasonal work at 20? for a dawn-to-dark day. Those were the years of the tyrannous President Machado and his infamous gangs of gunmen hired to repress the people by terror and torture. Rebellion was in the air. Students led strikes, and the ABC revolutionary society hurled bombs at Machado's hated police. President Roosevelt sent Sumner Welles to help ease Machado...
Battle of the National Hotel. Waving away the presidency, Batista put the students' idol, Professor Ramón Grau San Martin, at the head of the government. But the sergeant upped himself to colonel and chief of staff, and fired almost the entire army officers' corps. The ousted officers holed up in the National Hotel. Batista sent soldiers to disarm them. Welles, who lived at the hotel, stopped that showdown by seating himself midway between the rival forces in the long lobby and imperturbably discussing Emily Dickinson's poetry with Adviser Adolf Berle until the soldiers withdrew...
Back in Washington as Assistant Secretary of State, Welles arranged for U.S. recognition, a quota for Cuba in the U.S. sugar market, and abrogation of the odious Platt Amendment, which gave the U.S. the right to intervene to keep order in Cuba. Though Batista had endless trouble finding the right President (he tried out seven in seven years, and finally took over the job himself), order and prosperity gradually returned to the island...