Word: batista
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Laid low by grippe, Strong Man Fulgencio Batista last week wrapped himself in blue pajamas and a blue silk dressing gown and stuck close to the huge master bedroom at his Camp Columbia headquarters outside Havana. But his relaxed manner showed as clearly as his personal flag,* flying from every Cuban fort and armory, that he was boss of the island...
...himself learned the bitter facts on the morning of Batista's coup, when he fled Havana to organize resistance in eastern Cuba. Arriving by back roads at Matanzas, 100 miles east of Havana, he found Batista's captains and lieutenants already in command. On learning by telephone that garrisons further east were also in Batista's hands, he gave up and drove back to asylum in Mexico's Havana embassy. As he posed for photographers before taking off for exile in Mexico the next day, there were tears in his eyes...
...Mexico City, Prío & family put up at a second-class hotel. Batista's charge that the government planned a coup, he said, was a "lie." "In Cuba," he added, "no dictator has ever died in power, and the Cuban people will throw Batista out sooner or later." Denying the charges that he had enriched himself in office, Prío said that he had money enough to keep his family for a month or two, and after that "if necessary I can always sell my properties in Cuba. Everybody knows I have three estates-La Chata...
Double Usurpation. Back in Havana, Batista and his boys tasted the first fruits of victory. Soldiers' pay was doubled, police salaries were raised 50%. Three portly colonels, retired when Batista left the presidency in 1944, were observed at a tailor shop being fitted for new uniforms. A lieutenant (j.g.), promoted to captain, became chief of naval operations. To run the lottery, a traditional gravy bowl, Batista named the same henchman who handled the ladle eight years ago. And he put the customs service, source of most government revenue, under army control...
...melancholy figures last week were Candidates Hevia and Agramonte, both of whom had been favored over Batista in the now-canceled June election. At his Havana mansion Hevia numbly muttered: "A hard blow to Cuban democracy." Agramonte, freed after a few hours in jail, pointed out bitterly that some straw votes had shown him winning. "Batista not only took the government away from Prío," he cried, "but he took it away from me-a double usurpation!" Unmoved, the Strong Man grinned his victory grin, talked vaguely of elections "as soon as possible," and waited...