Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was born in the small town of Banes in
Oriente Province, Cuba, on January 16, 1901. His parents were workers
on a sugar plantation and Batista, not wanting to spend the rest of his
life cutting sugar cane, joined the army when he turned 20. He rose
steadily, if unspectacularly, through the ranks and in 1932 was
promoted to sergeant. In 1933 he had become powerful enough to lead a
successful coup--known as the "Revolt of the Sergeants"--against the
progressive government of Gerardo Machado.
After the coup Batista appointed himself head of the armed forces and
quickly set out to consolidate his power. A year later he forced out
the nominal president and appointed himself de facto ruler, although he
used a succession of front men to hold the office of actual president.
Batista quickly gained the support of the US government, which saw him
as friendly to its political and economic interests. He also formed a
friendship with American gangster
Meyer Lansky--known as the "treasurer" of
the American Mafia--that would last for 30 years. Through his
friendship with Lansky Batista was introduced to major Mafia figures,
resulting in his forming a business partnership with some of the most
notorious figures in American organized crime. They built hotels and
gambling casinos and controlled prostitution and the drug trade between
Cuba and the US (with Batista, of course, getting a piece of the
action). A change in the Cuban constitution in 1940 forced Batista to
run for election as president, an election he won handily. However, the
corruption and political repression of his regime and a string of high
tax increases resulted in his losing re-election in 1944, after which
he moved to Florida.
He ran for and won a seat in the Cuban parliament in 1948 and ran again
for president, in 1952. However, when it became clear that he wouldn't
win the election, he led a revolt against the government and once more
took over, suspending the constitution and granting himself complete
power. He formed an even closer relationship with American
organized-crime figures, which allowed them to spread their influence
into Central and South America, and he opened up the country to
investment by large American corporations, which were attracted by
Batista's policy of keeping wages artificially low and silencing,
jailing or killing labor-union leaders. Eventually, however, his
regime's corruption and heavy-handed repression eventually resulted in
violent opposition, and a rebel movement led by
Fidel Castro rose up in revolt in
1953. They were defeated by Batista's forces, with many of their number
killed and others--including Castro--imprisoned. In 1956, after his
release from jail and flight to Mexico, Castro returned with a small
army to resume the fight. A series of strikes, riots and university
protests resulted in Batista's government growing even more repressive,
and many opposition figures were beaten and/or murdered. Armed
opposition to his regime grew, and the various resistance groups came
together under Castro's leadership. A combination of crushing defeats
inflicted by the rebels on Batista's army and the US government's
finally withdrawing support for his regime resulted in Batista fleeing
the country on January 1, 1959, and Castro took over. Batista first
went to the Dominican Republic, but eventually moved to Portugal, then
to Spain, where he died on August 6, 1973.
