Fulgencio Batista: from revolutionary to strongman

Figure 7. This political cartoon, “Isle of the Lost Ships,” ran in the popular weekly newspaper La Semana in September 1933. It pokes fun at the U.S. decision to surround Cuba with warships after the overthrow of the Céspedes government on September 4, 1933.

Figure 15. President Federico Laredo Brú chats with Batista in a photo from the late 1930s. Brú was considered one of Batista's most compliant presidents.

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Figure 4. The recently promoted Colonel Batista. The photo dates from shortly after September 4, 1933. Batista has only the colonel's stars and one medal on his uniform.

Figure 12. Batista with daughter Mirta and son Rubén Fulgencio at Camp Columbia in the mid-1930s.

Figure 13. The magazine Bohemia published this political cartoon on December 13, 1936. Here, a comical-looking President Gómez is conversing with another man who asks him “the significance of the knot in the handkerchief” that lies on the desk before him. Gómez replies, “It is to remember that I am the President.” Taunting Gómez became great sport during his brief administration.

Figure 14. First wife, Elisa Godínez, and Batista during the November 1938 visit to Washington, D.C.

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Figure 3. Batista, Elisa, and baby Mirta in the late 1920s, before his rise to fame. The sergeant's stripes on Batista's right shoulder indicate his rank.

Map 2. Central America and the Caribbean

Figure 8. Batista (in the center) and some of his closest military advisers in a casual photo at Camp Columbia in the mid 1930s. Colonel Francisco Tabernilla is the second from left. Colonel Pedraza is fourth from the right. Major Manual Benítez is second from the right. Chief political aide Jaime Mariné is on the far right.

Figure 9. In this cartoon, published by Bohemia on November 10, 1935, the presidential candidates appear at the theater, and a member of the public asks them about the current show. The candidates respond in unison that they “do not know, because they have no program.”

Figure 5. This photo of U.S. Ambassador Sumner Welles and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes was taken on the day Céspedes was sworn in as president, August 13, 1933.

Figure 10. Batista and his soldiers on horseback in central Cuba in search of a site for a tuberculosis sanatorium. The photo probably dates to 1936.

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Figure 2. Batista at about age eighteen at a formal sitting in Camagüey. He later told his family members that “everything he owned at the time” was in the photo.

Figure 1. Batista as a railroad brakeman, probably around 1919, which would make him about eighteen years old in this photo. He later was seriously injured and nearly killed working on the railroad.

Figure 16. Another family shot from the late 1930s.

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Figure 10. Criticizing Batista could be dangerous business. Bohemia published this political cartoon by an anonymous artist on August 11, 1935. Its caption simply says, “Tabú” (Taboo)