Manuel Urrutia Lleó

===BODY===
He participated in the struggles against the dictatorships of Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista.

He was born in Yaguajay. He studied at the Faculty of Law of the University of La Habana.

From a very young age he participated in the struggle against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado Morales and opposed Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar from 1934 onward and the governments under his influence. After the coup d'état of March 10, 1952, he also confronted the dictator from his position as magistrate in the Court of Santiago de Cuba, a position he held between 1949 and 1957.

On March 14, 1957, in his capacity as president of the Third Criminal Chamber of the Court of Oriente, he issued a dissenting opinion acquitting the accused in Case No. 67 of 1956, for having taken part in the uprising of November 30, 1956 and in the armed expedition of the Granma. Dr. Urrutia, disagreeing with his fellow judges, based his position essentially on Article 40 of the 1940 Constitution, to recognize the right of Cubans to adequate resistance against the oppression of their rights. In taking this opposition, he made a courageous denunciation of the violation of individual rights. In the trial he legitimized armed opposition to the Batista government, an unconstitutional regime, established by the coup d'état of March 10, 1952.

Urrutia ruled that:
...in view of the usurpation and illegal retention of power by Batista and his followers, the defendants acted in accordance with their constitutional rights...

Due to his principled stance, he was proposed by the leadership of the Revolutionary Movement 26 of July (MR-26-7), in December 1957, to be the future president of the Republic and confront the maneuvers of the newly created Liberation Board, also known as the Miami Pact, formed by representatives of the Authentic Party, Orthodox Party, the Revolutionary Directorate and other opposition forces, whose agreements were objected to by Fidel Castro Ruz and the National Directorate of the Movement 26 of July.

Urrutia accepted the proposal from this organization, retired and went into exile, where he carried out various tasks in support of the revolution. Later, at the meeting held in Miami on August 11, 1958, by the Revolutionary Civic Front, a unitary bloc of all opposition organizations that accepted insurrection as a means to combat tyranny, and at the proposal of MR 26-7, by majority vote—the Revolutionary Directorate was opposed—the candidacy of Dr. Manuel Urrutia was approved as provisional president.

On December 7, 1958, he arrived in liberated territory, along with his family, aboard an airplane that was transporting weapons from Venezuela. In the early morning of January 2, 1959, on the balcony of the Town Hall of Santiago de Cuba, Dr. Manuel Urrutia Lleó was sworn in as provisional president of the Republic of Cuba, at the age of 58.

The Revolutionary Government was installed in the Presidential Palace on the night of January 5, 1959, when the president of the republic declared Fulgencio Batista and his government collaborators removed from office, and appointed the cabinet members by decree.

One of the first measures approved by the president was the dissolution of the Repressive Bureau of Communist Activities, the Military Intelligence Service, the Bureau of Investigations, along with other repressive forces of the tyranny.

On February 16, 1959, he appointed Commander Fidel Castro prime minister of the Revolutionary Government, replacing Dr. José Miró Cardona. Fidel Castro began to preside over the Cabinet Council meetings. Urrutia, as the highest authority of the State, approved the provisions agreed upon by that body. Under these conditions, a series of laws were approved that benefited, in essence, the most humble sectors of the country, such as the Agrarian Reform Law; the National Lottery Revenue was eliminated, and the National Institute of Savings and Housing was created.

But in little time, Urrutia's performance became an obstacle to the fulfillment of the revolutionary program, as he delayed the signing of certain laws agreed upon in the Cabinet Council, some of which were of high political value, creating a situation of distrust. The president's lack of tact caused numerous negative situations, which were damaging his prestige and authority, since at times he developed an absurd radical policy and at other times showed opportunistic conservative positions.

Urrutia's situation became more conflictive from May 1959 onward, when his confused performance began to be used by the enemies of the deepening of the Revolution. On July 16, 1959, Fidel Castro resigned from his position as prime minister because of the situation created by President Urrutia of obstructing the approval of revolutionary laws and other government measures, and made this accusation public on July 17 of that month, in a television program known as Before the Press. In the evening hours, after a large popular protest in support of Fidel Castro, Urrutia resigned from office in a Cabinet Council meeting and was almost immediately replaced by Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado. In April 1961, he sought asylum in the Venezuelan embassy.

He assumed the office of head of state as provisional president of Cuba between January 3 and July 17, 1959, but was later displaced after a large popular protest against Fidel Castro's resignation as prime minister.

He was replaced by Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, who was in favor of the socialist reforms undertaken by the revolution.

Manuel Urrutia sought asylum in the Venezuelan embassy and subsequently went into exile in the United States, where he was a Spanish professor in the Queens neighborhood of New York. In exile he wrote the book: Fidel Castro and Company: Communist Tyranny in Cuba (1964).

He died in New York at Queens Hospital at the age of 79 on July 15, 1981.