Cuba: The Historic Microcosm of Most New World Republics? Part 3

In part 2, we've began to take a general background look at Cuban history up to the moment of its independence.

Founding fathers, heroes of the independence struggle, rule Cuba for the first 30 years. One of these founding fathers, Gerardo Machado, starts out as a liberal and wants to turn Cuba into "Switzerland of the Americas". To achieve this long term vision, he decides to go against the constitution (partly written by Americans), stay in office longer, and become a developmental authoritarian. Communist party supports him since he engages in mass infrastructure construction and social projects that require higher taxes on the rich. He might have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for that dastardly Great Depression. Some modernizing authoritarians just come along at the wrong time to be tolerated. Central Asian presidents for life and Putin wouldn't be where they are today if the world depression we're experiencing hit us 8 years ago. Price of Cuba's equivalent of oil, sugar, dropped even before the international depression.

Regardless of the economic downturn, Machado tries to whip country into shape even if it means machine gunning protesters here and there. People's psychological expectations of continuing growth are thwarted by economic reversal and they take the anger out on the government. A coalition of elites across the entire political spectrum is formed and pressure the senior military to remove the forcefully developmental president since Peter the Great type tendencies don't fly in the 20th century.

Lets look at the people who forced Machado from power and see if they got a better plan compared to his island long highway to improve trade/national integration, new schools/educational reforms, and efforts to diversify the economy from sugar.

The usual suspects emerge.

1) Educated/well off urban liberals who value hands off government and freedom of speech more than rise in average standard of living. They want to preserve integrity of the 20 year old constitution that is often violated anyway. Democracy and term limits for them are more important than social stability.

2) The oligarchs who think he is taxing them too much for a useless thing like "modernizing" and strengthening national power, building things for the poor, and regulating the economy to point it in direction where it's less dependent on American demand.

3) Leftist elites and labor unions who think the government is in cahoots with the oligarchs by not taxing them too much or going further with its reforms. These people think that unless a leader is ideologically leftist, the person is not good enough.

4) Rural conservative elites who think a government supported by communists is unacceptable. The people who feel religious, poor, and Catholic Cuba is better than a strange modern wealthy industrial Cuba that lost its roots.

Well these impatient know it alls got their wish, destabilized the country, and got American support which made senior military ask Machado to leave. Good job guys. The pragmatic tyrant who knows how to compromise and does what works is removed. Orange revolution accomplished. Chaos ensues.

An enormously powerful individual and co-equal to Fidel Castro emerges at this point who orchestrates a coup. His name is Fulgencia Batista, a mulatto from the poorer ranks of the military. He doesn't take power right away, controls the country behind the scenes, and puts up no less than 6 presidential puppets into office from different political backgrounds in just 7 years. Although some puppets are competent, he removes them whenever and shows that each side of the political spectrum fails in its own way. Acting like an archetypical INTJ, he stages free and fair elections for himself at the right time and is popularly elected. He is also supported by the Communist Party who sees in him a multi-racial modernizer truer to form than bourgeois Machado was.

Batista creates one of the most progressive (as in MoveOn.org/Sweden progressive) constitutions in the world. He provides a wider social safety net than in United States. He understands that staying unconstitutionally will be socially destabilizing and picks a Medvedev type successor who losses (Batista, unlike Putin, didn't have the political capital to make sure his successor is elected which as we will see is Cuba's undoing).

Corruption overflows the government. Batista's work is about to be undone and he stages another coup in 1952. At this point however, Batista is 51 years old and has grown hedonistic and thus weak while out of power. Fidel Castro is 28 years old and at the top of his physical and mental strength. Batista's decadent physiology is incapable of forcefully transforming society and he tries to just ride along till death like Nursultan Nazarbayev. Fidel senses weakness and lack of spirit in his modernizing equal. He learns from Batista's mistakes. He strikes,utilizing support from some usual suspect elites as well as organized criminals. He wins.

The rest is history.

What caused one of the greatest lootings in Western Hemispheric history? What allowed the countryside to violently loot the urban areas and make over a million urban middle class/educated/progressive

people to flee to Florida? How bad did it get that a communist revolution happened? Were they eating each other? Zimbabwe-esque famine? Surely the country was going down the drain that a communist was needed to modernize it? Cuba must have been dirt poor compared to United States? Industrial workers probably had zero safety nets? Unions were forbidden? Probably had Laizze Faire fascist hyenas running the show?

None of the above.

To be continued,