Fulgencio Batista and the Untold Story of the Communist Party in Revolutionary Cuba, 1952-1958

• In Event: Cold War or Cold Wars?: Probing the Latin American Cold War

Abstract

Highly recognized at the time by most Cubans but mostly ignored, denied, or simply unexplored by officials and historians of Cuba alike is the relationship between the Cuban Communist Party (known as the Partido Socialista Popular or PSP) and dictator Fulgencio Batista during the 1950s, a period defined by Batista’s coup of 10 March 1952 and a resulting civil war that ended with the triumph of Fidel Castro’s forces on 01 January 1959. Yet the PSP played a key role in stabilizing the Batista regime until its final days. This work probes the paradoxical reality that, besides the United States, Batista's greatest asset in the effort to repress a highly mobilized opposition was none other than Cuba's Communist Party.

Not simply the result of political convenience and shared populist authoritarian values among PSP and batistiano officials, this relationship largely resulted from the peculiarly anti-imperialist, nationalist political culture Cuba enjoyed in the 1940s and the deep commitment that Cuba’s citizens showed for democratic values, especially the right of all groups, including the Communists, to organize during the emerging years of the Latin American Cold War. Based on previously unavailable archival sources, oral history as well as unexamined published sources circulated among the Cuban Communists themselves, this presentation reveals how the PSP’s Moscow-directed decision to denounce all violent and non-electorally based “solutions” to Batista’s coup affected Batista’s policy choices in terms of repression, freedoms of expression, freedom of assembly, and other constitutionally inscribed citizenship rights.

Author

• Lillian Guerra, University of Florida