General Rubén Fulgencio Batista (IPA: , ) y Zaldívar (January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician.

Batista was the de facto military leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1940, and thus the eminence grise of Cuban politics for that era, and the de jure President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 after having won election. After staging a successful coup in 1952, Batista ran unopposed in an election in 1954, and ruled the nation until being ousted from power in 1959 by Fidel Castro's guerrilla movement during the Cuban Revolution.

Fulgencio was born in Banes, Holguín Province, in 1901 to Belisario Batista Palermo and Carmela Zaldívar González, Cubans who fought for independence from Spain. Of very humble origins, Batista began working from an early age. A self-educated man, he attended school at night and is said to have been a voracious reader. Batista was considered socially a mulatto (mixed African and European blood), although other sources state that he was in fact a mestizo, having white European (Sicilian) and native American Taino blood, most of which lived in remote areas of Oriente province. He bought a ticket to Havana and joined the army in 1921. Sergeant Batista was the union leader of Cuba's soldiers, and the leader of the 1933 "Sergeants' Revolt" that replaced the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, at the request of the coalition that had recently ousted President Machado. It is generally conceded that U.S. Special Envoy Sumner Welles approved of this since it was a fait accompli. Céspedes was a well-respected civil engineer and the most successful minister in the Machado government but lacked a political coalition that could sustain him. Initially a presidency composed of five members, one each from the anti-Machado coalition, was created, but within days the representative for the students and professors of the Universtity of Havana, Ramón Grau, was made president and Batista became the Army Chief of Staff, with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the presidency . The majority of the commissioned officer corps was "forcefully retired" (meaning executed).

During this period, Batista violently suppressed a number of attempts to defeat his control. This included the quashing of an uprising in the ancient Atarés fort (Havana) by Blas Hernández, a rural guerrilla who had fought Machado. Many of those who surrendered were executed. Another attempt was the attack on the Hotel Nacional in which former army officers of the Cuban Olympic rifle team (including one Enrique Ros, an ancestor of US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen) put up stiff resistance until being defeated. There were many other often minor and almost unrecorded attempted revolts against Batista that were bloodily suppressed. These minor revolts included one in Guamá, a place in the Sierra Maestra south of Guisa, where the followers of an anti-Batista guerrilla leader known as Gamboa (apparently a member, or former member, of the Antonio Guiteras anti-Machado guerrillas) were defeated and dispersed.

Grau was president for just over 100 days before Batista forced him to resign in January 1934. He was replaced by Carlos Mendieta y Montefur and within five days the U.S. recognized Cuba's new government, which lasted 11 months. Succeeding governments were led by José Barnet y Vinajeras (5 months) and Miguel Mariano Gómez (7 months) before Federico Laredo Brú managed to rule from December 1936 to October 1940.

Batista was well liked by American interests, who had feared Grau's socialistic reforms and saw him as a stabilizing force with respect for American interests. It was in this time period that Batista formed a renowned friendship and business relationship with gangster Meyer Lansky that lasted over three decades.

Through Lansky, the mafia knew they had a friend in Cuba. Gangster Lucky Luciano, after being deported to Italy in 1946, went to Havana with a false passport. A summit at Havana's Hotel Nacional, with mobsters such as Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Santo Trafficante Jr., Moe Dalitz, and others, confirmed Luciano's authority over the U.S. mob and coincided with Frank Sinatra's singing debut in Havana. It was here that Lansky gave permission to kill Bugsy Siegel for skimming construction money from the Flamingo in Las Vegas.

Many of Batista's enemies faced the same fate as the ambitious Siegel. One of his most bitter opponents, Antonio Guiteras (founder of the student group Joven Cuba) was gunned down by government forces in 1935 while waiting for a boat in Matanzas province. Others just seemed to disappear into thin air.

Batista's chance to sit in the president's chair came in 1940. Supported by a coalition of political parties, which included the old Cuban Communist Party, he defeated his rival Grau in the first presidential election under the new Cuban constitution.

During his presidency, trade relations with the U.S. increased, and a series of war taxes was imposed on the Cuban population. Following Grau's election in 1944, Cuba experienced its first peaceful transfer of power in two decades.

While living luxuriously in Daytona Beach, Florida, Batista ran for and won a seat in the Cuban Senate in 1948. Four years later, he ran for president, but a poll published in the December 1951 issue of the popular magazine "Bohemia" showed him in last place. Not expected to win, Batista staged a coup.

The 1952 election was a three-way race. Roberto Agramonte of the Ortodoxos party led in all the polls, followed by Dr. Aurelio Hevia of the Auténtico party, and running a distant third was Batista, who was seeking a return to office. Both front runners, Agramonte and Hevia in their own camps, had decided to name Col. Ramón Barquín who was a diplomat in Washington DC to head the Cuban Armed Forces after the elections. Barquín was a top officer who commanded the respect of the professional army and had promised to eliminate corruption in the ranks. Batista feared that Barquín would oust him and his followers, and when it became apparent that Batista had little chance of winning, he staged a coup on 10 March 1952 and held power with the backing of a nationalist section of the army as a “provisional president” for the next two years. Justo Carrillo told Barquín in Washington DC on March 1952 that the inner circles knew that Batista had aimed the coup at him; they immediately began to conspire to oust Batista and reestablish the democracy and civilian government in what was later dubbed La Conspiración de los Puros de 1956 (Agrupación Montecristi).

On March 10, 1952, almost twenty years after the Revolt of the Sergeants, Batista took over the government once more, this time against elected Cuban president Carlos Prío Socarrás. The coup took place three months before the upcoming elections that he was sure to lose. Also running in that election (for a different office) was a young attorney named Fidel Castro. On March 27 Batista's government was formally recognized by U.S. President Harry Truman.

Shortly after this recognition, Batista declared that, although he was completely loyal to Cuba's constitution of 1940, constitutional guarantees would have to be temporarily suspended, as well as the right to strike. In April, writes Hugh Thomas in The Cuban Revolution, "Batista proclaimed a new constitutional code of 275 articles, claiming that the 'democratic and progressive essence' of the 1940 Constitution was preserved in the new law."

Batista opened the way for large-scale gambling in Havana. He announced that his government would match, dollar for dollar, any hotel investment over $1 million, which would include a casino license. Havana became the "Latin Las Vegas," a playground of choice for many gamblers. All opposition was swiftly and violently crushed, and many began to fear the new government.

In 1956, in midst of the revolutionary upheaval, the 21-story, 383-room Hotel Riviera was built in Havana at a cost of $14 million. It was known as mobster Meyer Lansky's dream and crowning achievement. The hotel opened on December 10, with a floor show headlined by Ginger Rogers. Lansky's official title was "kitchen director," but he controlled every aspect of the hotel.

Just over a year after Batista's second coup, a small group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada Army Barracks in Santiago on July 26, 1953. The rebellion was easily crushed. Many who led the revolt died, and Fidel Castro along with other participants were jailed.

Due to growing popular opposition and unrest, manifested by the Cuban people with increasing acts of civil disobedience, and in order to appease the growing concerns in Washington, Batista held an election in 1954 in which he was the only legal candidate. Without opposition, he obviosly won, becoming president of Cuba in 1954, prompting yet even more waves of civil unrest.

The distinguished Colonel Cosme de la Torriente, a surviving veteran of the Cuban War of Independence, emerged in late 1955 to offer compromise. A series of meetings led by de la Torriente became known as "El Diálogo Cívico" (the civic dialogue). Writes Hugh Thomas: "This Diálogo Cívico represented what turned out to be the last hope for Cuban middle-class democracy, but Batista was far too strong and entrenched in his position to make any concessions."

On May 15, 1955, Batista unexpectedly released Fidel Castro and the remaining survivors of the Moncada attack, hoping to dissuade some of his critics. Within weeks it was rumored that Batista's military police was looking to kill Castro, prompting Fidel to flee to Mexico and plan his forthcoming revolution.

The Havana Post, expressing the attitude of the U.S. business community after a survey of the four years of Batista's second reign, alluded to the disappearance of gangsterism and said: 'All in all, the Batista regime has much to commend it." Hugh Thomas disagrees with that commentary. "In a way," Thomas writes, "Batista's golpe formalized gangsterism: the machine gun in the big car became the symbol not only of settling scores but of an approaching change of government."

By late 1955 student riots and anti-Batista demonstration had become frequent. These were dealt with in the violent manner his military police had come to represent. Students attempting to march from the University of Havana were stopped and beaten by the police, and student leader José A. Echeverría had to be hospitalized. Another popular student leader was killed on December 10, leading to a funeral that became a gigantic political protest with a 5-minute nationwide work stoppage.

Instead of loosening his grip, Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and established tighter censorship of the media. His military police would patrol the streets and pick up anyone suspected of insurrection. By the end of 1955 they had grown more prone to violent acts of brutality and torture, with no fear of legal repercussions.

In March of 1956 Batista refused to consider a proposal calling for elections by the end of the year. He was confident that he could defeat any revolutionary attempt from the many factions who opposed him.

In April 1956, Batista had given the orders for Barquín to become General and Chief of the Army. But it was too late. Even after Barquín was informed, he decided to move forward with the coup to rescue the morale of the Armed Forces and the Cuban people. On April 6, 1956, a coup by hundreds of career officers led by Col. Barquín (then Vice Chair of the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington DC and Cuban Military Attache of Sea, Air and Land to the US) was frustrated Ríos Morejón, who betrayed the plan. The coup broke the backbone of the Cuban Armed Forces when Batista tried in vain to negotiate the denial of the so colled conspiracy. The officers were sentenced to the maximum terms allowed by Cuban Martial Law. Barquín was sentenced to solitary confinement for 8 years. La Conspiración de los Puros resulted in the imprisonment of the top commanding brass of the Armed Forces and the closing of the military academies. Barquín was the founder of La Escuela Superior de Guerra (Cuba's War College) and past director of La Escuela de Cadetes (Cuba's Military Academy - West Point). Without Barquín's officers the army could not sustain a fight. In the words of scholars like Justo Carillo, Felipe Pazos, José Miró Cardona, Hugh Thomas and Louis Horowitz: "Al frustrarse la Conspiración de los Puros, a Cuba le tocó perder. Sin Batista no hay Fidel." (The Conspiracy of los Puros having been defeated, it was Cuba that lost. Without Batista, there would have been no Castro.)

Batista continued to rule without concerns, even after the landing of the Granma in December of 1956 (which brought the Castro brothers back to Cuba along with Che Guevara marking the start of the armed conflict).

Due to its continued opposition to Batista, the University of Havana was temporarily closed on November 30, 1956. (It would not reopen until early 1959, after a revolutionary victory.) Echeverría was killed by police after a radio broadcast on March 13, 1957.

It was rumored that the pattern of crushing the opposition established by Batista began to be used by Castro's agents in Havana. Thenceforth, many crimes were committed by Castro's henchmen and blamed was placed on Batista. One such incident took place when Batista's police tracked down and killed Frank País, a coordinator of Castro's 26th of July Movement (the date of the failed attack on the Moncada military barrack), inciting a spontaneous strike in the three easternmost provinces of Cuba. Most historians and witnesses claim that Pais' death was caused by Batista's soldiers, yet others insist that it was Castro himself who sacrificed a leader of the movement in order to exacerbate the situation.

Another election in 1958 placed Andrés Rivero Agüero in the president's chair, but losing the support of the U.S. government meant his days in power were numbered.

On January 1, 1959, after formally resigning his position in Cuba's government and going through what historian Hugh Thomas describes as "a charade of handing over power" to his representatives, remaining family and closest associates boarded a plane at 3 a.m. at Camp Colombia and flew to Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

Throughout the night various flights out of Camp Colombia took Batista's friends and high officials to Miami, New York, New Orleans and Jacksonville. Batista's brother Francisco "Panchín" Batista, governor of Havana, left several hours later, and Meyer Lansky was also flown out that night. There was no provision made for the thousands of other Cubans who had worked with Batista's regime.

Batista later moved to the Madeira Islands, then Estoril, outside Lisbon, Portugal, where he lived and wrote books the rest of his life. He was also the Chairman of a Spanish Life Insurance company which invested in property and mortgages on the Spanish Riviera. He died of heart attack on August 6, 1973 at Guadalmina, near Marbella, Spain.

He was married to Elisa Godinez-Gomez (1905-?) on July 10, 1926 and they had three children, Mirta Caridad (April 1927), Elisa Aleida (B. 1933), and Fulgencio Ruben Batista Godinez (b 1933). He later married Marta Fernández-Miranda (1920-2006) and they had Jorge and Roberto Francisco Batista Fernández.

Marta Fernández de Batista, Batista's widow, died on October 2, 2006. Roberto Batista, her son, says that she died at her West Palm Beach home. She had a heart attack on September 8. Batista was buried with her husband in San Isidro Cemetery in Madrid after a mass in West Palm Beach.

Raoul G. Cantero, III, born in Spain, naturalized in the US, a graduate of Harvard Law School, a Justice on the Florida Supreme Court, is the grandson of Fulgencio Batista.

*Cuban Revolution

*1939: Estoy con el Pueblo [I am With the People]. Havana. *1960: Repuesta. Manuel León Sánchez S.C.L., Mexico City. *1961: Piedras y leyes [Stones and Laws]. Mexico City. *1962: Cuba Betrayed. Vantage Press, New York *1962: To Rule is to Foresee *1964: The Growth and Decline of the Cuban Republic. (Blas M. Rocafort trans.) Devin-Adair Company, New York. ISBN 0-8159-5614-2 *unfinished autobiography and archive in the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection http://www.miami.edu/UMH/CDA/UMH_Main/1,1770,2593-1;37251-3,00.html

*Argote-Freyre, Frank. Fulgencio Batista: Volume 1, From Revolutionary to Strongman. Rutgers University Press, Rutgers, New Jersey. ISBN 0-8135-3701-0. 2006. *Chester, Edmund A. A Sergeant Named Batista. Holt. . 1954. *Gellman, Irwin F. Roosevelt and Batista: Good neighbor diplomacy in Cuba, 1933-1945. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM. ISBN 0-8263-0284-X. 1973. *Valdés Sánchez, Servando Fulgencio Batista: El poder de las armas (1933-1940) Editora Historia, SBN 597048051. 1998

*Carrillo, Justo 1985 Cuba 1933: Estudiantes, Yanquis y Soldados. University of Miami Iberian Studies Institute ISBN 0-935501-00-2 Transaction Publishers (January 1994) ISBN 1-56000-690-0 *Fernández, Julio César 1940 Yo acuso a Batista. Construyendo a Cuba. Havana *Kapcia A. 2002. The Siege of the Hotel Nacional, Cuba, 1933: A Reassessment. Journal of Latin American Studies, 34, 283-309. *Phillips, R Hart 1935 Cuban side show. Cuban Press, Havana 2nd edition. *Phillips, R Hart. 1959 Cuba, Island of Paradox. McDowell Obolensky, New York, NY *Phillips, R Hart. 1960 Cuba Island of Paradise 1960 Astor-Honor Inc, ISBN 0-8392-5012-6 *Phillips, Ruby Hart 1961 The Tragic Island: How Communism Came to Cuba. Englewood Cliffs, NJ *Phillips, R Hart. 1962 The Cuban dilemma McDowell Obolensky, New York, NY Library of Congress number 6218787 *Smith, Earl T. 1962 (1991 edition) The Fourth Floor. Selous Foundation Press, Washington DC. ISBN 0-944273-06-8 *Hugh Thomas Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (Paperback) Da Capo Press; Updated edition (April, 1998) ISBN 0-306-80827-7 *Welles, Sumner 1944 The time for decision Harper & brothers *Argote-Freyre, Frank Fulgencio Bastista: From Revolutionary to Strongman, Rutgers University Press (April 2006) ISBN 0-8135-3701-0