Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Batista famously courted foreigners who could assist in making him personally wealthy and neglected the needs of the population at large. Given that he seized power in a coup and then conducted a corrupt and brutally repressive regime, I think that all of the ingredients for a revolution were in place irrespective of racial factors.
You pretty much summed it up in this post. Batista was good buddies with the American mobsters. Guys like Lucky Luciano, Emilio Traficante, and Meyer Lansky. Batista let them build casinos in Cuba and it became a major American tourist hotspot. I recall hearing stories from some of my elder relatives who are long gone now that they used to vacation in Cuba back in the 50's. They thought Cuba was a wonderful place under Batista. I guess they were blind to the fact that Batista was brutal towards his own people. One of the Godfather movies was centered around this event. Was it the original Godfather?
One of the Godfather movies was centered around this event. Was it the original Godfather?
Godfather Part Two was the one which included events of the Baptista rule and Castro revolution. Meyer Lansky was represented by the Hyman Roth character. They included a scene where an AT&T executive presents Batista with a solid gold telephone and that was quite real, AT&T did do that.
Godfather Part Two was the one which included events of the Baptista rule and Castro revolution. Meyer Lansky was represented by the Hyman Roth character. They included a scene where an AT&T executive presents Batista with a solid gold telephone and that was quite real, AT&T did do that.
That phone is still on display in the Museum of the Revolution.
Fidel Castro was a young, white intellectual IIRC who got swept up in the long-standing anti-Batista movement, and ended up becoming its leader. As with many revolutions, what started out as a fairly simple political rebellion against a heavy-handed dictator turned into a social and economic revolution with lots of collateral damage and unintended consequences.
The bulk of the Cuban population today are probably materially better off than the bulk of the population of the rest of the Caribbean basin. If Batista had successfully thwarted attempts to overthrow his government, they would probably be on a par with the Dominican Republic.
Cuba's current GDP per capita is similar to that of Jamaica's, a little higher than the Dominican Republic's.
Cuba under Batista was economically on a similar level to Costa Rica, which is currently better off than Cuba. Cuba was better off than Spain until 1958, and was in better shape than Portugal and Japan in the 1950s.
Indeed, and in better shape than Canada, doubled the Spanish GNP and sugar paid the annual balance. In 1959, Cuba had a serious problem with illegal immigrants from Spain and Italy. At that time, the richest countries in Latin America were Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela and Cuba, but Cuba was at the top in technological innovation and tourism due to proximity to the US.
Batista was indeed a corrupt leader, but as they say nowdays in Cuba..."he didn't mess with you if you didn't mess with him"....not the case of the communist dictator that came afterwards. Batista, just as the governor of Nevada, received 90 millions yearly from Casino managers (not owners), he promoted a lot of public projects (so he received his cut), but those projects were the last successful projects made in Cuba. Indeed, Batista was rebuked by most of the middle class and rich because he was a mulatto of humble origins, while Castro was adored because he was white and rich, and everybody assumed he was socialdemocrat.
What differentiated Cuba from their neighbours was the very important presence of European (Spanish) immigration, that continued during the 20th Century..while stopping in Puerto Rico (another former Spanish colony until 1898). Communists destroyed all the business, intellectual and tourism fabric and scared away most of middle class-rich people, intellectuals and technocrats...and Cuba lived during 30 years out of Soviet handouts, that were pilfered in the strangest projects or in propaganda, all this artificial world sustained by soviet money collapsed in 1989-1990 (periodo especial).
Castro committed so many atrocities that the same government recognizes them as "errors of the past", and in some respects, the current government presided by Raul Castro (with his brother as some sort of sleeping or not so sleepy owl) is trying to correct many "excesses", while realising that it might be too late, as the same Fidel Castro wrote in his "reflexiones". The country is wasted, everything is 50 or 70 years old, even cars and washing machines.
Cuba is a fascinating place for all those that love Doris Day movies, fascinating country, no relation whatsoever with neighbours, maybe with Miami. Just the other day I saw a group of "internationalist students" (medicine students studying for free in Cuba, Chavez pays the bill) from Latin America, they were the oddest vision I remember in Cuba because they did look out of place entirely.
You pretty much summed it up in this post. Batista was good buddies with the American mobsters. Guys like Lucky Luciano, Emilio Traficante, and Meyer Lansky. Batista let them build casinos in Cuba and it became a major American tourist hotspot. I recall hearing stories from some of my elder relatives who are long gone now that they used to vacation in Cuba back in the 50's. They thought Cuba was a wonderful place under Batista. I guess they were blind to the fact that Batista was brutal towards his own people. One of the Godfather movies was centered around this event. Was it the original Godfather?
They managed Casinos, not property. Meyer Lansky was the only one that had a hotel, the Riviera. In fact, even though the mob felt safer in Cuba because the country was a tax haven, and was away from American authorities, the mob had to dance to the fiddle of Batista's populist policies.
They did not build any casinos, the casinos were in place since the late twenties, but Cuba (or Las Vegas, or Monaco) could not attract large amounts of gamblers without the mob. Before, during the twenties and thirties, casinos were in the hands of local entrepeneurs that were not able to manage them (unfair practices, swindlers, etc.
About Batista being brutal to people, I don't think that Batista was more brutal than Machado, an earlier dictator, or as corrupt (and that is to say a lot) than Prio, or as utterly destructive as the Castros. Batista captured Fidel Castro after the attack on Cuartel Moncada 50 years ago, and he let Castro go....I doubt very much that Castro would have done the same.
Don't know if Batista ever admired Peron. Castro did. He credited a speech by Peron at Havana University with getting him interested in politics.
Fidel Castro admired above all Mussolini, he mimicked him all the time. His bedside book was Mein Kampf, he repeated parts of the book all the time. During the trial after his attack on the Moncada Garrison 50 years ago, he identified himself with Hitler after the Putsch and he repeated "Condemn me, I don't care, history will absolve me", Hitler said in the trial after the putsch..."Declare us guilty one thousand times, that the godess of history will smile and break in pieces the decisions of the attorney general because history will absolve me."
Such an admiration is also present among propaganda ministers, one of the curious and interesting things in Cuba are that propaganda boards repeat the phrases of Goebbels all the time.He is also a great admirer of Francisco Franco, in fact, his main commercial partner after the USSR. Castro had no ideology, his brother and Guevara did. They made him understand that the only way to stay in power during a limitless period was to align with the USSR.
The USSR thought that Castro and Guevara were nutcases, so they tried to remove them in 1962, I believe (microfacción). Castro detected the conspiracy, so he got rid of Che, among many others with considerable heterodoxy
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
