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Chapter 1: End and Beginning
- Rutgers University Press
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By the middle of December , Fulgencio Batista knew his days as dictator of Cuba were about to come to an abrupt end. In recent years, he had survived an attack on the Presidential Palace that left several of his personal guards dead and nearly cost him and his wife their lives. He had survived several efforts by trusted military officials to topple him from power, including a naval revolt by forces at the port of Cienfuegos. But most recently, Batista, who had dominated Cuban politics for twenty-five years, had received word from his intelligence operatives that one of his most loyal generals had met on Christmas Eve with rebel leader Fidel Castro.1 At that meeting a plan to turn over Batista to the rebels was consummated. The result would have been a trial and execution as a war criminal.2 The master of Cuban Army politics knew the fight was over. On the afternoon of December , Batista told his eldest son, Rubén, to keep the family united throughout the day and to stay where he could be reached at a moment’s notice.3 The plan was to keep up appearances, to make it look as if he was continuing the fight. On the evening of December , he invited a group of cabinet ministers to his home at Camp Columbia, the army’s principal base in Havana, for “a cup of coffee.”4 The event was intended to be low-key because no one was in a celebratory mood given the recent setbacks on the battlefield. General José Pedraza monitored the battle in the east in Las Villas Province by shortwave radio. To Interior Minister Santiago Rey Perna there was nothing particularly unusual about the gathering, which started shortly after p.m. At the end of the coffee social, Pedraza announced that the “struggle would continue tomorrow.” 8 end and beginning 01Chap1.qxd 2/26/2006 7:19 AM Page 1 But in less than five hours, Batista and three airplanes with his family and closest friends and advisers would take off from that same army base.5 At the age of fifty-eight, Batista would flee into ignominious exile, first to the Dominican Republic, then Portugal, and finally Spain, where he died in . He would never set foot in Cuba or the United States again. Batista left disgraced —his name linked to corruption, brutality, and the U.S. Mafia—and doomed to forever play the villain to Fidel Castro’s hero in the revolution’s interpretation of history. He spent the last years of his life writing book after book, none of which would garner much attention, in a vain effort to rebuild his image as the “revolutionary leader” of the s who toppled a U.S.-supported government and succeeded in bringing democracy to Cuba. He would always be remembered as the failed dictator who fled in the middle of the night. H B There could hardly be a more unlikely candidate to take part in Cuba’s national drama than Rubén Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar, who was born to a life of abject poverty on January , .6 He was named for the famous Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, then at the height of his popularity, and Saint Fulgentius, a seventh-century Spanish bishop.7 Batista was the first of four sons born to Belisario Batista Palermo and Carmela Zaldívar González in the Veguitas section of Banes, a small rural community in northeastern Oriente Province.8 His maternal grandmother, Juana González, was a midwife and helped deliver the baby boy. The Zaldívar family had moved a few years earlier from Aura, a small hamlet about forty miles west of Banes. Batista was baptized a Roman Catholic some months after his birth at a small church in Fray Benito. Most of what is known about Batista’s parents comes from second- or thirdhand information passed down by family members, friends, and acquaintances.9 Carmela Zaldívar was a tender and sweet woman who was very affectionate with her children. She was fifteen when she gave birth to her first child. Carmela was one of three children, but she had lost a brother, Juan, in the Cuban Independence War of –. Her younger sister, Cándida, would outlive her and settle in a nearby village. As a boy, Batista formed a very strong attachment to his mother, and years later his eyes would well...
