Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar

Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, a native of Banes, was a Cuban military officer and politician, president of Cuba between 1940-1944 and de facto in 1952-1959, known as "El Hombre".

Son of Belisario Batista and Carmela Zaldívar, Cubans who fought for Cuba's independence, Batista was considered to be of mixed race.

His mother named him Rubén and gave him her surname, Zaldívar, after Belisario Batista refused to register him under his own surname. In the records of the Banes courthouse, he continued to be legally Rubén Zaldívar until 1939, when he was nominated as a presidential candidate, it was discovered that Fulgencio Batista's birth certificate did not exist. Obtaining it cost him postponing the submission of his candidacy and fifteen thousand pesos to pay the judge.

Fulgencio Batista was born in Veguita, Banes, Province of Holguín, in the year 1901 and was baptized in the Santa Florentina church in Fray Benito, the former province of Oriente. Of very poor origins and economic condition, he began to work at an early age, performing various occupations in his youth.

At the age of 20, he bought a ticket to La Habana and joined the army in 1921 and, from 1923 on, he entered the rural guard, within which he would achieve the rank of sergeant-stenographer of the Army General Staff.

After the overthrow of General Gerardo Machado's government in 1933, a new government was formed presided over by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, but discontent persisted in a part of society.

A group of military officers, among whom was Batista, and some democratic sectors signed a manifesto requesting the drafting of a New Constituent Assembly to replace the one from 1901 (in which, among other things, the Platt Amendment appeared).

Following Machado's fall in 1933, he participated in several conspiracies that culminated in the Civic-Military Movement of September 4 of that year. A Government Board was then established, the so-called Pentarchy (consisting of 5 members, one of them Dr. Ramón Grau). The revolutionary Dr. Antonio Guiteras Holmes was also part of the Cabinet.

At the proposal of Sergio Carbó, Batista was appointed Colonel-Chief of the Army that same year.

From 1934 to 1940, he directed with an iron hand the repression against communist and socialist movements in the sugar mills.

In 1940, the constituent assembly was finally created in which politicians from different sectors participated, such as Carlos Prío Socarrás, Ramón Grau San Martín, Eduardo Chibás, or the communists Blas Roca Calderío and Juan Marinello Vidaurreta.

Having resigned Federico Laredo Bru in 1940, Batista presents himself as a candidate of the Socialist-Democratic Coalition in the 1940 elections, and is elected president, inaugurating his term on October 10, 1940. In that government, some ministers from the Socialist Popular Party (Cuba) would come to participate.

On June 8 of the same year, a new Constitution was approved, which introduced semi-parliamentarism into Cuban political practice; the President was elected by universal suffrage for a period of four years; furthermore, it strengthened Government intervention in the economy and introduced a Social Security network.

The sugar industry was severely affected as a result of the deterioration of relations between Cuba and the United States during 1939, although the new treaty signed on December 27, 1939 improved the situation by restoring the quota system for this industry. During his first term, Batista cooperated in World War II with the Allies and declared war on the Japanese Empire, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy.

In 1944, new elections were called and Ramón Grau San Martín was re-elected president.

After eight years of government under the presidencies of Ramón Grau San Martín and Carlos Prío Socarrás, Batista was one of the candidates in the 1952 elections. However, since some polls placed him in third place, on March 10, 1952, just 4 months before the presidential elections, he gave another coup d'état, citing a series of barely justifiable reasons, making use of his leadership within the Armed Forces and being supported by certain political sectors of the country. In the process of the coup d'état, there was no bloodshed, but it attracted the attention and concern of a large part of the population.

Batista's government respected the rights of American industry and Cuban commerce; however, corruption was gigantic, which would lead years later, in 1959, to his overthrow driven by the guerrilla war led by Fidel Castro.

In 1954, Batista would call for elections, in which he achieved a wide victory after the opposition withdrew, especially Ramón Grau.

In November 1958, new elections were held, with Andrés Rivero Agüero as the winner, who, being the legitimate president of the republic, was not allowed to take office.

On January 1, 1959, Batista fled Cuba, by plane to Santo Domingo before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

His overthrow by the Cuban Revolution took place on January 1, 1959: Batista fled the country with a fortune of approximately US$100,000,000, first exiling himself in the Dominican Republic, then on the island of Madeira (Portugal) and finally in Spain, until his death in 1973 due to a heart attack in the town of Marbella. He is buried in the San Isidro cemetery in Madrid.

Taking into account the loss of lives, the material damage to property, and the evident harm being done to the economy of the Republic, and beseeching God to enlighten the Cubans so that we may live in peace, I resign my powers as President of the Republic, handing it over to his constitutional successor. I beg the people to maintain order and prevent themselves from being victims of passions that could be unfortunate for the Cuban family.
Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar.
President of the Republic.
La Habana, January 1, 1959.

Filmography
In the film The Lost City (2005) directed by and starring Andy García, actor Juan Fernández plays the dictator.
In the film The Godfather II (1974), directed by Francis Ford Coppola (screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo), emphasis is placed on the political situation in Cuba during Batista's dictatorship and his relationship with the mafia, seeking to establish its operations on the island. One of the scenes is Batista's farewell at the New Year's Eve party of 1959.
In the film Havana (1990), directed by Sydney Pollack, romance between an American (Robert Redford) and a Cuban woman (Lena Olin) set during the Batista era. Throughout, the social situation Cuba was experiencing at that time is present, and it describes very well the week prior to and New Year's Eve of 1959 in which he went into exile and how the Castroist revolution was taking control of the government.