Eduardo René Chibás Ribas

Cuban politician with a long career. Founder and leader of the Cuban People's Party (Orthodox).

Born in Santiago de Cuba, he was the son of engineer Eduardo Chibás Guerra, from a wealthy family of Guantánamo, and Gloria Ribas Agramonte, from Camagüey, whose family background traced back to prominent figures in the independence movement.

He completed his primary education at the Dolores school in Santiago de Cuba, and his secondary education at the Belén school in Havana, where his family moved in 1923. He traveled with his parents throughout Europe and the United States. In 1925 he graduated as a bachelor from the Institute of Secondary Education in Havana.

In 1926, after enrolling in law studies at the University of Havana, he began to participate in student political activities, and in particular in demonstrations in support of the hunger strike then being carried out by Julio Antonio Mella. The following year, when the University Student Directorate (DEU) was created in opposition to the constitutional reform that extended the powers of President Gerardo Machado and other elective positions in the State, Eduardo Chibás stood out as one of the principal leaders of the movement.

He participated in various forms of protest and signed public declarations, carrying out actions that, at the end of 1927, earned him expulsion from the University for four years. Involved in conspiratorial activities against the dictatorship, he was imprisoned in 1929, after which he had to emigrate. In New York he created an organization of exiles and harshly attacked dictator Machado through the press.

Following the student march of September 30, 1930—in which student Rafael Trejo was assassinated by the forces of the dictatorship—Chibás returned clandestinely to Cuba, joined the new Student Directorate, and worked on various insurrectional projects. As a result of his revolutionary activity, he was imprisoned again.

Opposed to the political "mediation" promoted by the United States ambassador, Benjamin Sumner Welles, during the crisis of the dictatorship, he remained in opposition after Machado's overthrow and supported the military uprising of September 4, which would bring university professor Ramón Grau San Martín to the provisional presidency of the republic.

He initially figured among the principal supporters of the Government of the Hundred Days, but ended up withdrawing his support due to the impunity with which the head of the army, Colonel Fulgencio Batista, acted, and in particular because of the assassination of student Mario Cadenas by military forces, which he denounced vigorously. Nevertheless, at a meeting of the so-called "Revolutionary Junta of Columbia" held on January 15, 1934 to force President Grau's resignation, he sided with those who urged him to resist and remain in the presidency.

He fought the oligarchic government of Carlos Mendieta Montefur, and participated in the strike of March 1935. Linked to the Revolutionary Left organization, after the defeat of the strike he remained underground and became one of the most ardent critics of militarism.

His criticism of the Three-Year Plan would achieve particular resonance—a demagogic proposal sustained by Batista with the populist aim of gaining mass support for his disguised dictatorial regime.

Chibás was one of the most vigorous promoters of the campaign for democratization and the call for an assembly that would draft a new constitution for the republic. He finally joined the Cuban Revolutionary Party (Authentic), by whose list he was elected delegate to the Constitutional Assembly of 1940.

His voice was raised in the debates around the new constitutional text, in defense of his party's theses. He engaged in fierce polemics with delegates from the Communist Revolutionary Union—among others, the one triggered by his proposal to condemn the Soviet invasion of Finland—and also with figures from the government political bloc.

Elected in 1940 as a representative to the Chamber by the Authentic Party, he opened a space on the radio, a medium he used as a vehicle for political mobilization, to such an extent that his program became the one with the largest audience in Cuba. With his effective propaganda campaign, he would be one of the architects of the overwhelming triumph of the "authentic" presidential candidate, Ramón Grau San Martín, in the general elections of 1944.

Elected senator by a significant majority of votes in those same elections, Chibás participated in legislative work, but without directly involving himself in the administrative management of the Authentic Party. Upon observing the growing corruption of many figures in the governing team, he initiated a critical campaign within "authenticism," whose meager results eventually led him to split.

On May 15, 1947, seconded by a group of unblemished "authentic" personalities, he founded the Cuban People's Party (Orthodox), with which he began a rapid campaign as presidential candidate for the 1948 elections. Although he was defeated, he obtained more than 20% of the votes, a notable proportion given the almost improvised electoral machinery that "orthodoxy" had deployed.

Converted into leader of the opposition, he lashed out at the new government of "authenticism" presided over by Carlos Prío Socarrás, through constant denunciations of its arbitrariness and corruption.

In the 1950 elections, he recovered his senate seat after a resounding victory that augured his victory in the following presidential elections. The orthodox leader, opposed to political pacts, not only censured the government, but also fought traditional parties and communists, in addition to extending his denunciations to the fraudulent maneuvers of public service companies and commercial entities.

With his ability as a communicator and using the motto "Shame Against Money," he gathered the masses around the Orthodox Party, which grew rapidly, although with notable heterogeneity in its leadership. Particularly significant was his influence over youth circles which, grouped in Orthodox Youth, showed a tendency toward more radical positions.

In one of his campaigns he accused the Minister of Education, Aureliano Sánchez Arango, of conducting illicit business with public funds, asserting that at the appropriate moment he would prove it. The minister challenged him to an open debate and, after various polemical skirmishes, it became evident that Chibás lacked proof to support his accusation. Historical investigation suggests that he was the victim of a trap conceived to discredit him.

Anguished by the inevitable loss of political credibility that this meant, the orthodox leader chose suicide, which he committed on August 5, 1951 during the broadcast of his radio program, which he described as his "final warning." After prolonged agony, he died in Havana on August 16 following.

His funeral, a grandiose manifestation of popular mourning, was evidence of the vast civic-political movement that Chibás had unleashed. Despite the loss of his charismatic leader, orthodoxy appeared to have broad prospects for triumph in the 1952 elections, prospects that were frustrated by the coup d'état carried out in March of that year by Fulgencio Batista. The party created by Chibás began to fragment; while some politicians chose to move closer to the de facto regime or attempted a legal opposition that proved ineffective, his more honest and radical members were not slow to join the revolutionary struggle.

Source: EnCaribe.org