Word: pr
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...dictator, with the people," he explained. "My destiny is to carry out revolutions without bloodshed. The only blood that will be spilled will be that of those who oppose us. No one will be persecuted. We ask only cooperation." Batista charged again that deposed President Carlos Prío had planned to stage a coup of his own in April to make sure that his candidate, Carlos Hevia, would win the June presidential election over Batista and the Orthodox Party's Roberto Agramonte. Said Batista of the ex-President: "He was protecting gangsters. Anarchy and chaos were sweeping...
...percentage of truth in the Strong Man's charges seemed to make little difference. Seven years of government by President Prío's Auténtico Party had clearly left the average citizen a little cynical about democracy. Few Cubans doubted that administration politicos had taken lavish liberties with the public purse. Last week, egged on by Batista's hastily reorganized propaganda department, the Havana press reported that men around Prío made off with $30 million from last year's $300 million budget. Batista men also charged, without documenting the claims, that...
...Prío 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...
...Order. After fighting Batista from exile, Hevia agreed to be his wartime price-control chief, only to resign after a year because of "interference." When President Prío took over in 1948, Hevia became Minister of State and Minister of Agriculture, then president of the National Development Commission, charged with carrying out a $50 million public-works program. He is an able administrator and organizer and a hard worker. He is a good friend of the U.S. Criticized as a conservative ("If law & order is conservative, then I am for conservatism"), Hevia's main worry before June...