4. Batista Returns: the 1952 Coup¶
Core Argument¶
The 1952 coup marked Batista’s return to power through a military takeover that was openly welcomed by US and British diplomatic interests and by Cuban business elites. The chapter argues that this coup was not an aberration but a logical outcome of Cuba’s status as a US neo-colony, where real power lay with American capital and its local enforcers. Batista’s electoral prospects were poor—opinion polls placed him a distant third—so he relied on disaffected junior army officers and NCOs who had gained nothing from the rampant corruption of the preceding governments. The coup itself was swift: on the night of 9–10 March, Havana’s main army base arrested senior officers and tanks surrounded the presidential palace.
The most significant resistance came from Havana University students on 10 March, but this was isolated. Batista neutralised organised labour by striking a deal with Mujal, leader of the CTC trade union federation, promising to respect existing labour laws and retain all union officials. Mujal became a key collaborator, and his faction—the mujalistas—embodied the class-collaborationist logic of trade union bureaucrats everywhere: workers must accept what employers can afford, sacrifice conditions to create jobs, and take pay cuts when sugar prices fall. The chapter draws on the experience of the PSP (the Cuban Communist Party), which remained legal until November 1953 but failed to challenge Mujal’s grip on the unions; its support largely evaporated after a 1957 wave of assassinations.
The chapter provides extensive evidence of Cuba’s subordination to US capital. US Ambassador Earl Smith candidly stated that his position was second only to the President “because of our vast business, cultural and social ties.” US businesses owned ninety per cent of Cuba’s mines, eighty per cent of public utilities, fifty per cent of railways, and twenty-five per cent of bank deposits. The Mafia controlled every casino, most hotels, and the sex tourism industry; child prostitution and the drug trade went unrestricted. Over 20,000 people were murdered in the years leading to Batista’s overthrow. The chapter cites a US Department of Commerce study from July 1956 noting that unemployment normally reached one million in a country of 6.5 million, and that “declining economic activities have had an influence in moderating excessive demands”—a euphemism for starving workers into submission. Rural conditions were catastrophic: sixty per cent of peasants lived in huts with dirt floors, no running water, and a daily caloric deficiency of 1,000 units. Women bore the brunt of underdevelopment, confined to domestic labour without electricity or water, and facing the highest illiteracy rates.
The chapter’s polemical thrust is directed against the notion that reform was possible within the existing framework. Efforts to achieve social justice and national dignity “faltered in the face of the fundamental reality of any neo-colony”: serious reform would inevitably provoke US hostility. Reform was impossible without real independence, and that required revolution. The chapter thus positions the 1952 coup as the moment when the last possibility of peaceful change was foreclosed, setting the stage for the revolutionary struggle to come.