A Sergeant Named Batista

Chapter 19

It was a disappointment to Cuba and to Batista, who had worked so hard to persuade Mendieta to take the Provisional Presidency, that the distinguished statesman was not able to stabilize the country's disturbed political situation and restore public confidence in government. During the two years be held the office little progress was made toward tranquilizing the country, and throughout the latter part of his administration public disorders became more violent and more frequent. The nation was moving toward serious trouble and Mendieta finally resigned in December of 1935. He was succeeded by José Barnet, Secretary of State, who was to serve until national elections could be held in 1936. Batista and the Army supported the new Provisional President, although Batista had not suggested Barnet for the post.

As these provisional presidents came and went, it became more and more apparent that the only real leader to emerge from the revolution was Batista himself. But he stayed in the background, supporting the selections of the civilian leaders. Batista's own refusal to assume the Presidency was consistent with the pattern of conduct be established for himself immediately after he overthrew the Céspedes government while still holding the rank of sergeant. At that time the Committee of Nineteen, to which Batista had delivered the power on September 4, had urged Batista to become a member of the five-man junta appointed to run the country. But Batista declined. In doing so he said: “I am happier than I have ever been, but I do not believe I can accept. I do not think I should allow myself to serve on a commission with four men of such wisdom and experience. I will cooperate to the fullest extent, and later I will return to my duties as sergeant, which I have performed until this moment."

Batista felt that the provisional government must be headed by civilians and that national elections should be held at the earliest possible date. So strong was his feeling about this point that he continued to support the several provisional presidents nominated by the civilian revolutionary leaders, even though some of the nominees were certainly not qualified for the Presidency.

A few months after Barnet took the Presidency, Cuba held her first free national elections in years. The government's candidate was Miguel Mariano Gómez, former mayor of Havana and a popular figure among the revolutionary groups. His opponent was General Mario Menocal, old-line politician and patriot. Gómez won easily and the people were happy. Their happiness was based not so much on the victory of Gómez but rather on the fact that a president had been elected in a free, honest election. Cuba, it seemed, had moved closer to political stability, and that was the need of the moment. But the optimism soon disappeared. Before Gomez had completed a year in the Presidency be ran into trouble with Congress.

Gómez violated one of the basic tenets of the Constitution, so Congress charged, by trying to influence legislation pending before that body. A bill levying a small, per-bag tax on sugar was up for consideration and Gómez opposed the bill. The tax was to be used for financing the hundreds of rural schools Batista had established throughout the island and Batista's friends were supporting the legislation. Impeachment proceedings were lodged against Gómez when he allegedly threatened to cut off the patronage privileges of certain members of Congress who sponsored and fought for the passage of the bill. On Christmas Eve, 1936, Congress voted Miguel Mariano Gómez out of office and Vice President Federico Laredo Brú took over.

Fortunately for Cuba, Batista did not confine his own activities to supporting this parade of presidents. There were urgent problems to be solved, matters which were of vital importance to the nation, and the solutions were not available at the Presidential Palace.

By the beginning of 1937, public disorders bad dropped off in Cuba and the country was making progress. The Armed Forces had been thoroughly reorganized, as had the National Police. Morale in the Armed Forces was excellent and Batista was able to spend more of his time developing new projects in the field of health and education.

One of the first projects undertaken by Batista in 1933, after he had been named Chief of the Armed Forces, was the one providing better educational facilities for the children of the rural areas of the island. When things began to run a little more smoothly, he could give more attention to the development of this undertaking. Batista knew from personal experience how difficult it was for youngsters living in the back country to acquire even the most elementary kind of education. Much of the area of Cuba was still isolated, and surface transportation facilities were inadequate. The country's highway system consisted of one central highway, running from one end of the island to the other-seven hundred miles from east to west. There were no lateral roads to serve the people who lived to the north or south of the main artery. Batista realized that the children in these distant sections could not be brought to educational centers near the cities along the highway and that a means of taking the education to the children would have to be found.

At that time, the rate of child illiteracy in Cuba was something over seventy per cent, and there were no adequate government funds available for new schools. Batista tried an experiment. He knew that the Army maintained a Rural Guard station in almost every village and town in Cuba. He knew, because he bad served in the Rural Guard, that a great deal of the social life in the small communities centered around the Rural Guard stations. Why not, then, arrange to have classes in the stations, even if the first lessons were limited to teaching children and adults to read and write?

This simple idea was the foundation upon which Batista built one of the most remarkable rural educational systems ever conceived. In a short while some seven hundred rural schools were in operation and the number was increasing every week. Noncommissioned officers with appropriate educational backgrounds were assigned to the Rural Guard areas to teach and a new military rank was created-the rank of sergeant-teacher. Meanwhile, new school buildings were erected in many areas, some of them of the simplest type, and the rural school system was acquiring its own identity.

Since there were practically no funds available from the regular civilian budget for education, Batista used army funds for his project. As the movement became more popular, the need for more teachers increased and Batista had to look for more enlisted men with at least high-school educations. To meet this demand Batista established a normal school in which men and women were trained especially for work among the country children. In a short time the number of schools had increased to about thirteen hundred. The rural school system was a model of good organization. The nation was divided into forty zones and in each zone an educational mission was set up. Each mission consisted of a seven-teacher team, specialists in such subjects as pedagogics, dental surgery, agronomy, veterinary medicine, hygiene, clerical work, and domestic science. In addition to the day schools, a number of vocational boarding schools, called Farm Children's Homes, were established. For several years the rural school system remained under the direction of the Army and it flourished. In 1940, the year Batista was elected to the Presidency, the entire rural school organization was turned over to the Ministry of Education. Nearly two thousand rural schools were in operation at the time and thousands of Cuban children in rural areas had been given a basic, practical education.

The rural schools project represented, at the conclusion of his administration, one of Batista's greatest contributions to Cuba. That is a conservative estimate in the opinion of Dr. Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Minister of Education under ex-President Prío, and now a publicly declared enemy of Batista. He is on record as stating that in the rural schools and their associated activities, the Batista regime made one of the greatest contributions to the advancement of Cuba of any administration.

Some idea of the public appreciation of the value of the rural schools can be seen in the demand which immediately was heard at the commencement of the Batista regime of 1952, for the rehabilitation of the entire program. Batista did not need much urging on this point, but it must have been very satisfactory to him, nevertheless, to note that this work in which he believed so sincerely, and to which he had devoted so much effort, was remembered by the people for the good it had produced.

In connection with the purely academic aspect of the program, Batista, in 1933 and 1934, organized a system of mobile health units for service in the areas where the rural schools were established. These motorized vehicles were actually mobile clinics where the children could receive medical and dental care. In addition, however, the young girls were taught first aid, how to be of help at the birth of a baby, which all too frequently takes place in the country in most unsanitary conditions and without any professional help, and the general rudiments of domestic science.

The two administrations which followed the Batista presidential regime-from 1945 to 1952-allowed these mobile clinics to stand idle, but when Batista returned to power in March, 1952, he gave the order to refurbish the units and restore them to service.

During Batista's first term in the Presidency-1940 to 1944 -and even before that, while he was serving as Chief of the Armed Forces, great progress was made in the field of social reforms.

In the thirty-one years preceding the Revolt of the Sergeants in 1933-from the birth of the Republic in 1902-the governments of Cuba paid little attention to social legislation. The condition of the workingman, particularly in the sugar industry, was deplorable. In the full thirty-one-year period only three social laws were promulgated. These were the Artega Law of 1909, evaded on occasion, which prohibited the payment of sugar industry workers in scrip or due bills, the 1916 law, which established compulsory industrial insurance for workers, and the 1931 law establishing retirement privileges for railroad workers.

In the six years following the Revolt of the Sergeants, Batista succeeded in achieving important social reforms. Batista supported governments, passed a minimum-wage bill establishing the eight-hour day, created a law protecting Cuban nationals in the matter of employment of labor, passed laws controlling the employment of women and children, provided for fixed vacations with pay, established norms governing the collective contracting of labor, legalized the right to strike, and passed laws regulating strikes. During the same period new laws provided maternity insurance for women workers and the wives of male workers, and retirement funds were set up for newspaper employees and bank employees. The original workmen's insurance law was adjusted so as to provide better and more benefits to the worker. All of this legislation was conceived and sponsored by Batista.

The law treating with the protection of Cuban nationals was a vital necessity. For years, foreign companies operating in Cuba had employed foreign help almost exclusively and it was almost impossible for Cubans to obtain desirable employment. The new law provided that fifty per cent of all employees must be Cubans. There were certain exceptions, in cases of specialists, but basically it stipulated that half the number of persons employed in an industry or commercial enterprise had to be Cubans. It was passed during the Grau-Batista administration, but Batista and Grau did not agree on the provisions and interpretations of the law. Grau. insisted on allowing only native-born Cubans to be counted among the fifty per cent. Batista suggested that the percentage be increased to seventy-five but that naturalized Cubans be included in the percentage. He felt that naturalized Cubans had certain rights which should be protected. But Grau stubbornly held his ground. Spanish Ambassador Luciano López Ferrer was disturbed by the Grau interpretation and visited the President to protest. López Ferrer pointed out that under the "native-born" provision, thousands of Spaniards living in Cuba would be penalized. The diplomat said that many Spanish-born parents, living in Cuba, had children who were Cuban-born. Under the Grau ruling, the parents would have to return to Spain to earn a living and the Cuban-born children could not afford to give up their positions in Cuba and return to Spain with their parents. This, very obviously, would break up a lot of families. But Grau was adamant, and when López Ferrer realized be could not change Grau's mind he brought the interview to an end. Bowing from the waist, and with a full measure of diplomatic sarcasm, the Ambassador said: "Señor Presidente, I want to thank you for the great injustice you have done my people." But the Grau viewpoint continued to prevail. At least it prevailed on the books. A way of circumventing the law was found, with the help of a hurricane, of all things.

Shortly before the law was passed a hurricane struck the village of Santa Cruz del Sur, on the south coast of Cuba, and destroyed a number of public buildings. All the courthouse records were lost in the hurricane. In order to re-establish the legal functioning of the town, the federal government passed a law under which public documents lost in the Santa Cruz del Sur hurricane could be substituted through the simple process of an affidavit. In other words, a person born in Santa Cruz del Sur could obtain a birth certificate, even though the records of his birth had been lost, by making an affidavit stating that he was born there.

For months after the labor law was modified the notary public offices around Cuba were doing a stand-in-line business, and before long, workers with all sorts of accents showed up with documents "proving" that they had been born in Santa Cruz del Sur. Santa Cruz never had more than a few thousand inhabitants, but the birth certificates in circulation around Cuba indicated that the village was one of the most thickly populated areas of the world.