Word: batista
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...last week, Fidel Castro boldly and brutally crushed his puppet President, Manuel Urrutia. With an expert and cynical maneuver, Strongman Castro set a mob on the Presidential Palace, then went on television to denounce Urrutia as a "traitor." Not since the time in the 1930s when Dictator Fulgencio Batista went through five puppets in two years had a President of Cuba been treated with such contempt...
...such an atmosphere, a puppet President was expected to join in the chorus. But Urrutia, a slow-moving former city judge, has a stubborn streak of independence. (He caught Castro's eye and got elevated to the presidency because he once defied Batista and declared from the bench that Cubans have the right to rebel against tyranny.) Even while Diaz Lanz was testifying in Washington, Urrutia called a television press conference and said: "I reject the support of the Communists, and I believe that any real Cuban revolutionary should reject it openly...
Castro ignored him. That night on TV, his favorite medium for lecturing the country, Castro said in a four-hour harangue that he had differences with Urrutia that were both "moral and civic." For a starter, Urrutia was drawing "exactly the same salary as Batista" ($10,000 a month), while all the Cabinet members had voluntarily taken a cut to $700. Urrutia was buying a $40,000 house, while "I have no house; I have bought no house."† Waving and tapping a yellow pencil, Castro stepped up the pace of the attack until his voice grew shrill and sweat...
...through South America in Havana, where a fortnight ago plans were announced for a Communist-line Chinese-language daily for Cuba's 30,000 Chinese.*Radio Peking bragged of the warm welcome the team got from Army Boss Raul Castro. "China had Chiang Kai-shek and Cuba had Batista," the station quoted Raúl. "Mao Tse-tung is one of the most respected figures among Latin American youth...
...veteran foreign correspondent and champion of causes, scored an enviable news beat in 1957, when he made his way into the mountain fastness of Cuba's Oriente province, became the first U.S. newsman to interview Rebel Leader Fidel Castro. Matthews reported not only that Castro was alive (the Batista government had been claiming him dead), but that he represented Cuba's future. Wrote Matthews: "He has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the constitution, to hold elections...