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The Architect of the Cuban State: Fulgencio Batista and Populism in Cuba, 1937–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2000

ROBERT WHITNEY
Affiliation:
Centre for Developing Area Studies, McGill University

Abstract

This article examines how Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar emerged as the ‘strong man’ of Cuba. Historians have pointed out that from 1934 to 1940 Batista's primary support came from the army and the police. We also know that, like many other Latin American leaders at the time, Batista went through a ‘populist phase’. Populists acknowledged the reality that ‘the masses’ were a new force in society and that ‘the people’ were at the centre of the nation and the state. Populist discourse functioned to construct a ‘people’ out of fragmented and scattered populations. Batista was very aware that in order to rule Cuba he had to appeal to ‘the people’ and to the revolutionary sentiments of 1933. But we need more information about exactly what Batista's political ideas were and how he put them into practice. This article shows how Batista became, in his own words, the ‘architect’ of the post-revolutionary state between 1937 and 1940. Batista supervised Cuba's transition from a military dictatorship in 1934 to a nominal constitutional democracy in 1940. The aim is to shed some light on how this remarkable transition took place.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Catherine Legrand of McGill University for her support and advice. I am very grateful to Dr José Tabares del Real of the University of Havana for his expert and detailed commentary. The constructive criticisms of a JLAS reviewer are greatly appreciated. Other people who read and discussed earlier drafts of this article are: Barry Carr, John Kirk, Ana Cairo Ballester, Pedro Pablo Rodríguez, Oscar Zanetti, Jorge Ibarra, Karen Robert, Sam Noumoff and Gaspar Quintana.