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Chapter 10: The Elections of 1936
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President Mendieta’s political career died during the general strike; all that was left was to wait for the interment. That came nine months later, in December , when he resigned in a squabble over upcoming elections. During his last nine months in office, Mendieta was forced to preside over an electoral process largely dictated to him by Ambassador Caffery and Colonel Batista. He continued to serve as the lightning rod for most public criticism. The civilian politicians taking part in what remained of the political process were, for the most part, unwilling or unable to attack Batista or Caffery. They settled, instead, for using President Mendieta as a punching bag. Gone were the private suggestions from Washington or Camp Columbia that Mendieta should seek an elected term of office and serve for another four years. As far as Caffery and Batista were concerned, the only remaining role for Mendieta was to sit in the presidential hot seat until it could be handed over to an elected president. One political opponent, in exile in Mexico, described Mendieta in the waning months of his presidency as “Mister Nobody” (Don Nadie).1 T E In , the central goal of U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba was to push forward with a plan for presidential and congressional elections. Welles and Caffery, the architects of the post-Machado policy, were in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the removal of one dictator (Machado) 8 the elections of 1936 10Chap10.qxd 2/26/2006 7:35 AM Page 186 and his replacement by another (Batista). Elections were intended to dispel that unsightly image at home in the United States and abroad in Cuba and Latin America. One of the most eloquent critics of U.S. Cuba policy was Leslie Buell, president of the Foreign Policy Association, who maintained a heated private correspondence with Welles throughout the year. “Sooner or later critics inevitably will point out that the Roosevelt administration intervened to rid Cuba of one dictatorship only to create a more terrible one,” Buell wrote Welles in a letter dated May , . In the same letter, Buell discounted the State Department’s assertion of nonintervention in Cuban affairs. “It seems to me impossible to deny that during the last two years the State Department has consistently attempted to choke off the possibility of real revolution in Cuba, both political and social, hoping to divert developments into ‘Constitutional’ channels.”2 Of course, Welles publicly denied any U.S. interference in Cuban affairs, and he did so privately, to Buell, as well. “I wish again to affirm, however, that at no time has this Government, either directly or indirectly, attempted to ‘choke off the possibility of real revolution’ or otherwise interfered. I have no doubt that our policy has been misinterpreted in some quarters, but this does not alter the true facts of the matter.”3 Few believed Welles at the time, and scholars and journalists have written volumes about U.S. interference in Cuban internal affairs. One might be able to excuse Welles’s assertions about noninterference as the typical rationalizations of a powerful man trying to justify difficult decisions. Perhaps, one could argue, that at least Welles believed these assertions—that is, were it not for the overwhelming evidence in his own private papers. Even the most skeptical observers of U.S. Cuba policy could not have imagined the level of interference documented in minute detail by Welles and Caffery in their private correspondence. On a daily basis, Ambassador Caffery dispensed wisdom on political alliances, electoral formulas, and campaign strategies, whether he was asked for his opinion or not. Caffery put it to Welles this way in one of his letters: “The hardest nut to crack is, of course, this matter of the elections because it has required and still requires my constant daily hammering.”4 Caffery and Welles wanted an election, but they wanted a certain type of election—one that guaranteed that Batista would continue to operate in the background as a stabilizing force. They willingly accepted Batista and the army’s dominant role in Cuban politics, which is what motivated the army chief to allow elections in the first place. Any presidential candidate must come to a “perfectly sincere, frank, understanding with Batista,” Welles pointed out in a July , , letter to Caffery. Welles, the chief Latin America 10Chap10.qxd 2/26/2006 7:35 AM Page 187...
