The Cuban Democratic Experience: The Autentico Years, 1944-1952 (review)

In Latin America, real political parties (those with platforms and agendas which last more than a couple of election cycles, not pseudo-parties erected around a particular personality) are relatively rare. In Cuban history there have only been two political parties of any consequence since independence, one being the so-called Partido Socialista Popular (PSP) or the Cuban Communist Party. Yet, during most of its existence the PSP was wholly controlled from Moscow; thus, one can suggest it was in reality not a Cuban political party. The one real political party in Cuban history has been the Partido Revolucionario Cubano (Auténtico) or PRC(A). Although it existed for only a quarter century, its influence in 20 ^th century Cuban history was enormous even though most of its leaders were tragically flawed.

PRC(A) now has its historian; Charles Ameringer has written an important monograph not only of the Auténticos, but of Cuban politics during the crucial 1920s-1950s period. This era is basically a black hole in Cuban history, but Ameringer's monograph illuminates this extraordinarily important but neglected period.

The origins of the PRC(A) spring from the struggle to overthrow President Gerardo Machado. A small group of University of Havana students in 1930 launched an organization to remove the president and joined hands with the fabled ABC Revolutionary Society. As a result of the ABC urban guerrilla campaign, President Franklin Roosevelt sent Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles to Cuba and Machado fled the island. Welles, in essence, selected the honest but colorless Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, son of the "father of the country," as provisional president. But chance, the intangible variable as Ameringer perceptively notes, intervened and a group of Cuban Army noncommissioned officers led by a sergeant named Fulgencio Batista joined hands with the students and overthrew the Céspedes government in September 1933.

After a brief and confusing interregnum in which a five-man junta (the Pentarquia) ruled, one of its members Dr. Ramon Grau San Martin, a University of Havana medical school professor was selected as interim president. Welles, unhappy that his choice as president had been ejected, was successful in having the U.S. government withhold recognition. This resulted in Grau's overthrow in January, 1934. Grau, however, had laid the groundwork both for a political party and his future return to power. He had obliquely called for the abrogation of the Platt Amendment in the Cuban Constitution. The amendment, which allowed the United States to intervene, had been insisted upon by the United States government. This pronouncement by Grau was politically courageous and enormously increased his popularity.

Grau in exile and his supporters in Cuba formally launched the PRC(A) in February, 1934, which soon adopted the popular slogan, "Cubanidad" or "Cuba for the Cubans." Elements of the Auténticos fought the Batista government but, by the late 1930s, Batista wished to be elected President. He had been ruling the island through a series of puppet presidents. He called for a constitutional convention to write a new Cuban constitution. The Auténticos won a majority of seats at the convention and Grau was elected convention president, but Batista won the 1940 presidential election; Grau had to wait for the 1944 election which he won by a landslide.

In power, the Grau government was tragically corrupt and murderous on a scale that Cuba had never seen. Furthermore, the President placed the so-called "grupos de acción" or trigger-happy kids, who had fought the Batista police during the 1930s, in positions of power (equivalent to turning over the FBI to the Mafia) from which they carried out dozens of assassinations. In some cases they were simply getting even with Batista thugs responsible for the murder of some of their comrades during the 1930s. But in a number of instances the...