In , taking advantage of the P. Batista left Cuba to live in Daytona Beach, Florida. Corruption had been widespread since , but the public was shocked that the "pure" revolutionaries of -- Grau, then Carlos Prio -- participated in it. But democracy survived. As election day approached, Batista was a distant third. Then, on March 10, , he seized the government in a coup d'etat -- taking by force what Cuban voters were about to deny him.
Status Seeker Batista's return to power did not herald a return to progressivism. He became obsessed with gaining the acceptance of Cuba's upper classes, who had denied him membership into their exclusive social clubs. Increasingly, his energies were devoted to amassing an even greater fortune.
American mobster Meyer Lansky placed himself at the center of Cuba's gambling operation. At the same time, Batista sponsored massive construction projects -- the Havana-Varadero highway, the Rancho Boyeros airport, train lines, an underwater tunnel. Brutal and Unpopular As he delayed plans to step down from office, Batista faced growing opposition, and eventually, a popular challenge. In the wake of Fidel Castro's Moncada assault, in , Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and increasingly relied on police tactics in an attempt to frighten the population through open displays of brutality.
Though he made some political concessions between and -- lifting press censorship, releasing political prisoners including Fidel Castro and his brother Raul , allowing exiles to return -- his unpopularity continued to grow.
Instability As popular unrest in Cuba intensified, Batista's police proved adept at torturing and killing young men in the cities. But his army proved singularly inept against Fidel Castro's rebels, who were based in the mountains.
Armoured cars led truckloads of troops to attack the presidential palace in the centre of the city. There was little resistance and after two guards had been killed and a few people wounded, the palace hung white sheets out of the windows as a surrender signal.
The defeated president and other members of the administration had taken refuge in the Mexican embassy. They were allowed to fly out to Mexico City and Batista cancelled the election and installed himself as dictator.
The regime he replaced had been both weak and corrupt, and was not widely regretted. The casinos had acquired a bad reputation for fleecing tourists and Batista called in the American gangster, gambling tsar and financial wizard Meyer Lansky to mend matters. The diminutive Lansky, a figure of impeccably reserved and conservative demeanour, insisted that all gambling under his control be straight — no marked cards, shaved dice or crooked roulette wheels — that winnings be paid on the nail and that a reassuringly decorous and respectable atmosphere be maintained at all times.
Around midnight on the last day of General Batista commandeered three airforce planes, filled them with his wife and family, closest aides and baggage, and fled to the Dominican Republic.
Intervention for Castro One week later, after gaining assurances that he would not be killed or tortured, that he would get a fair trial, Castro arranged to surrender at the home of a peasant near Santiago. There are several versions of subsequent events.
Castro's own account recalls a sergeant approaching him with a gun, but sparing his life with the words "ideas are not to be murdered. Dynamic Figure In Havana other student leaders accused Castro of irresponsibility and cowardice, but he didn't much care. At his trial the following September, the young lawyer, speaking in his own defense, called for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista and for reforms to make Cuba a more just society.
Fidel readily admitted to leading the Moncada attack, and dramatically pronounced: "You may condemn me. History will absolve me. Castro was sent to the Island of Pines, off Cuba's southwest coast, to serve his sentence.
Dialogue had failed; violence seemed the only alternative. Every year since the triumph of Castro's revolution, the storming of the Moncada would be remembered as the "first shot" fired in the struggle against Fulgencio Batista. Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America. Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today.
I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead.
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