A Sergeant Named Batista

Chapter 16

Batista had hoped that the revolution of November, 1933, would, if nothing else, strengthen the Grau government. If it did that, he believed, it would have contributed something toward the solution of the grave problems which plagued the nation. If the people would go along with Grau until a constituent assembly could be held, the country would be well on the road toward the establishment of a normal, democratic form of government. But his hopes were futile. Public disorders continued and there were conspiracies in every province of the Republic. The morale of the Army had been strengthened by the victory in November but not the morale of the National Police Force, a major branch of the country's Armed Forces. Grau supporters bad brought in a number of inexperienced youths and a great many of them were given important positions in the National Police. Older, more experienced police officers were dismissed or assigned to remote areas and choice posts were given to the new men. Some of the Grau. appointees actually had criminal records and others were of doubtful character. Morale was bad. On one occasion a scandal was created in downtown Havana when a lieutenant of Police, who had stolen a small radio receiver from a private home, was chased through the streets by the owners.

As a result of the lack of discipline in the Police, lawlessness increased and there were cases of cooperation between Police and criminals. This threw the responsibility for law enforcement to the men of the Army at the very moment Batista was trying to rebuild that organization. Batista was concerned. He was conscious of the danger that this breakdown in public morals might infiltrate into the Army, which was then the only barrier between the people of Cuba and anarchy. Batista spent many hours with Grau, pointing out the dangers of the moment and urging upon him the necessity for the establishment of a government which would command the respect of all the people of the nation. Batista spoke plainly to Grau and he told the Chief Executive that the fruits of revolution should not be disorder and violence, brass bands and swagger. On the contrary, the benefits of the successful revolution should be the re-establishment of order, of respect for the government, and the creation of a plan for bringing about a normal situation in which a democratic government could carry out the will of the people. He urged the President to disregard political party lines and find the right men for government, no matter what their party affiliations were. Grau showed no interest in Batista's suggestions. Meanwhile, leaders of the several political groups were insisting that Grau be replaced. Batista pleaded for patience in the hope that, sooner or later, Grau would change his ways and agree to sit down and work out a solution with the men who opposed him. But Grau remained obstinate.

Conditions in Cuba became worse, and finally Batista asked Grau to sit down with him once more and try to find a solution. A meeting at the Palace was arranged. As Batista entered the building he saw Antonio Guiteras, Secretary of the Interior, pacing the Palace floor in a high state of excitement. He met Batista and the two men talked. "Go in to Grau's office and convince him that he must resign the Presidency," Guiteras urged. "This thing has to be settled and if it isn't settled soon we don't know what will happen." Batista answered Guiteras with an appeal for patience and stepped into the office of the President. The two men were alone and the meeting was not a meeting of two good friends. Batista told Grau that the situation required certain changes and that they could not be put off indefinitely. Grau argued and promised nothing. The argument continued and tempers flared. At the end of the meeting Batista warned Grau of the dangers of the moment. "If things continue as they are now, both you and I will be tossed right out of this open window because the people simply will not accept this condition much longer."

Certainly Grau had had little success in winning civilian support for his regime, and it was becoming more and more evident that he could never win the recognition of the United States. Everyone knew, of course, that unless Grau could get that recognition his government could not survive much longer. The feud between Grau and United States Ambassador Welles was very bitter just before Welles left the island in December. Grau, thoroughly angered by Welles' persistent opposition, called the Ambassador in and told him that an "international conspiracy" had been formed to prevent the United States recognition, and be indicated that he thought Welles knew something about the conspiracy. The fact that Grau complained to Welles about what be called a "boycott" against his government made it apparent that he believed the United States was responsible for his government's inability to get the recognition of neighbor countries. Grau knew that Welles and other United States officials bad consulted with other governments of American republics on the question of whether the Grau government should be recognized.

Never a friend of the Yanquis, Grau's reaction to the rebuffs of Welles was to become more and more anti-American. His unfriendliness began to show itself in his public acts and this worried Batista, a much more practical man than Grau. Batista and other leaders knew that the possibility of Grau's government getting the recognition it needed diminished with each anti-American act. Either because of his anger over the Welles' policy of nonrecognition or because lie wanted to cater to the radical, anti-American elements in Cuba, Grau began an active campaign against American business interests on the island. Not only did he allow the employees of the American-owned Cuban Electric Company to seize the company's property, but he actually encouraged the action. He gave the confiscatory actions of the employees official sanction when he named an "interventor" to operate the company's plants in the interest of the employees. This action, of course, had no legal justification at all.

Grau's conduct in the case of the Cuban Electric Company did not please Batista, and when he heard of it he acted. About midnight one night he heard that the employees of the electric company were meeting to plan a strike. Batista, accompanied by an aide, went to the headquarters of the employees in downtown Havana. When be arrived the meeting was still in session. He knocked on the door, and, after getting over the surprise of seeing the Chief of the Army, the employees invited him inside. Batista spoke and called upon the workers to be reasonable. He told them that their work was of great importance to the people of Cuba and asked them to cooperate in keeping order. The employees thanked him and their leaders told him that they had been warned by President Grau that if they called a strike Batista's Army would attack them. They had voted to strike, they said, as a protest against coercion.

Batista, after suggesting that there must have been some misunderstanding as to the intent of Gran's words, told the men that he, as Chief of the Army, would be responsible for the conduct of the troops and that he believed any threat against the company employees both unnecessary and unwise. The workers rescinded their strike order and Batista promised to intervene in the dispute between the company and its employees. A settlement was reached and the property returned to the company. Solution of the electric company problem was one of many tasks which bad fallen to Batista during those turbulent days, although he had to spend most of his time directing the affairs of the Armed Forces, for the reason that most of the high-ranking officers were young and immature.

Relations between Batista and the United States improved considerably with the arrival in Havana of Jefferson Caffrey, who came in as United States Ambassador after Welles left in December, 1933. Welles was the "unbending" type of diplomat and he paid little attention to personalities. Protocol and formality were important to him in his work as Ambassador.

Cubans, as a rule, put a great deal of importance on personal relations. They are a friendly people with an exceptionally large amount of charm and warmth in their character and they admire those same characteristics in other people. As a matter of fact, one of the popular sayings in Cuba aptly points up this national trait. "En Cuba se puede ser todo menos que pesado." In other words: "In Cuba one can be anything but heavy." When a Cuban describes a person as "heavy," he means the person is dull and lacks charm. Caffrey and Batista became friends almost before Caffrey bad unpacked his bags. Welles had met rebuffs and a certain amount of defiance from Batista, but Caffrey found no such barriers in his relations with the Army Chief. The two men didn't always agree but they bad a great respect for each other, and they were able to discuss their differences without becoming emotional. If Batista and his government are friendly to the United States today, a great deal of the credit for this fine relationship must go to the work Caffrey performed in Cuba in the mid-nineteen-thirties.

One of the most embarrassing things that happened to Caffrey during his years in Cuba was the seizure by the Cuban Army of a quantity of arms and ammunition in the old American Embassy building in the El Cerro suburb of Havana. The building bad not been used as an Embassy for several years, but it was still American property under the custodianship of an American caretaker.

We at the AP office learned about the arms seizure some hours after it had been made. We were informed of the "discovery" by Cuban government officials, but the story sounded like another baseless rumor. We couldn't understand how such quantities of arms could have been found in the old Embassy building and our doubts were increased by the report that they were the property of the ABC revolutionary society. The ABC had been planning a revolution against Batista for weeks. But at Camp Columbia, I saw a complete list of the materials seized and I telephoned to check the story with Ambassador Caffrey. It was late in the evening and I called him at his residence. Caffrey had always been completely straightforward in answering reporters' questions and he frequently reminded reporters that he was not the "dodging" type of government official. But when I asked him about the arms I got a lot of strange answers which added up to nothing at all. I called Larry Haas of UP and asked him if he had heard anything about the arms seizure. This got Larry out of bed and we met to plan our strategy. Finally, Larry called Caffrey and acted as if he knew all the details of the seizure. Caffrey then admitted that some such thing had happened. He tried to minimize the story, saying it was not very important. To us it seemed very important, because for months before the United States had reiterated its earlier declaration that it would never interfere in Cuban political affairs. We sent our stories and tried to follow up next day. We never did get the whole picture but we learned that an American caretaker, stationed at the old Embassy building, had told the Cuban Army that the ABC had stored the arms there, with the permission of an official of the United States. They had been stored there long before Caffrey came to Cuba, so Caffrey could not have been involved in the operation.

Representatives of the United States government had a distinct advantage in their negotiations with Batista in those unsettled times. The advantage of the side of the North Americans was the fact that Cuba was so dependent upon the United States as a market for her sugar. For years Cuba had enjoyed a special quota arrangement with the United States government which amounted to a guaranteed market for the bulk of the island's annual sugar crop. The arrangement also gave Cuban sugar certain preferential treatment in the matter of tariffs and customs duties.

Since sugar is Cuba's most important industry, any threat to the convenient arrangement Cuba bad with the United States was a serious matter. It would, in fact, have been difficult for any provisional government to stay in power in Cuba if it were to provoke a cancellation of the sugar agreement with the United States. And although Batista was quite aware of that fact, it was pretty well known that some of the United States representatives saw to it that the dangers of jeopardizing the sugar deal were kept fresh in Batista's mind.

But this advantage finally lost its force. Batista reads a lot. He always had read a lot and his reading is not confined to books. He reads newspapers. At the time Batista was trying to solve some of the problems of Cuba, the President of the United States found it necessary to defend the United States-Cuba sugar policy against attacks of sugar-growing interests in the United States, which didn't like the favors shown Cuban sugar. In order to quiet the American sugar interest, President Roosevelt made a public statement in which be committed himself unequivocally to the defense of the quota system on Cuban sugar, and since the statement got a lot of circulation, it became a bit difficult to believe that be would ever consider reversing himself by cutting off the sugar subsidies to Cuba just to gain a point with Batista. How could he destroy the things he was defending so ably in the United States? How could he cut a subsidy he had told the world he bad to maintain? From that time on the possibility of losing the sugar quota frightened no one in Cuba, least of all Batista.