At the beginning of 1952, the Prio government began to make plans for the approaching national elections. Prio and his party leaders hoped they could make a convenient change of presidents and continue in power for another four years. Although, as stated elsewhere, Cuban law forbids a president to succeed himself, there is nothing to keep the new president from reappointing all the favored figures of the previous regime. The elections were set for June 1, and the Prio followers knew that they faced a real battle. It was a three-cornered race, with Carlos Hevia running as the Prio candidate. In 1934 Hevia, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, had served as Provisional President for a few hours but more recently he had served as Minister of Agriculture in the Prio government. His opponents were Roberto Agramonte of the Ortodoxo Party and Fulgencio Batista of the PAU Party.

The Prio campaign strategists worked out a scheme of "voluntary" taxation on certain industries, and this money created a rather formidable slush fund for the campaign. Some bright mind among the Prio advisers thought of public works as a vote-getter, and the Prio government went on a hole-digging spree, the like of which had never been seen in Cuba. Throughout the island streets were torn up, holes were dug by the thousands, and the campaign to establish Prio as the great builder was launched. The city of Havana, a very heavy voting area, took on the appearance of a newly discovered gold field, and workmen dug as though their very lives depended upon the size of the holes they dug and the speed with which they dug them. At each newly dug hole the Prio forces erected a huge sign listing the virtues of President Prio. Obviously the campaign managers were trying to divert attention from the maladministration of the Prio regime, but the people were not easily deceived.

The hypocrisy of the men who conceived and inaugurated this splurge of public works projects was shown by the cold figures of the government's budget. Without prior plans or study, the Prio administration had committed itself to the expending of a hundred million pesos on these public works projects, but when Batista took over the government a few months later, he discovered that not one cent of the hundred million dollars was to be found in the treasury. Even worse, he learned that the Prio public works funds bad a deficit of ten million pesos. Prio knew this, and neither he nor his associates had any idea of ever finishing the public works projects. The propaganda benefit was in starting the work to impress the voters. If Prio's candidate won the elections, work on most of the projects could be suspended. If he lost, the new president would have to find the solution.

By the end of the 1951-1952 winter, the Prio forces were desperate. They realized their chance of winning at the polls was diminishing day by day, and they were worried. Pressure and more pressure was applied to exact funds for the campaign from commercial interests, and Prio himself became nervous and ill-tempered.

For some years Prio's strongest and most feared political rival had been Eduardo Chibás, impetuous leader of the Ortodoxo Party. In his youth Eddie Chibás was a wild, unmanageable revolutionary of the most militant type, and he became somewhat of a campus hero while a student at Havana University. Some of his fellow students admired him for his revolutionary activities the way students in American colleges admire the varsity football stars. He entered politics while still a student and established himself as one of Cuba's most violently nationalistic politicians. His oratory was of the demagogic type, but no one could deny his ability to arouse the people. Chibas was a firebrand-a fanatic who as conveyed his fanaticism to the thousands who followed him blindly in any direction he chose to move. His enemies said he was insane and his friends said he was a defender of the underprivileged. A great many people believed he was sincere in his beliefs and it may be that this sincerity was the mother of his fanaticism.

Chibás always carried the political attack to the other fellow. His weekly radio program, which was one of the most popular in Cuba, gave him access to the mass audience he needed for his campaign against his enemies. His Ortodoxo Party grew to become one of the strongest political groups in the country, and Chibás became one of the leading candidates for the Presidency in the elections scheduled for June, 1952.

But in 1951, the year before the national elections, Chibás appeared to be going through a period of extreme nervousness. Things weren't going the way he would have liked them to go, and he became very pessimistic. He seemed to feel that the people misunderstood his motives and he was visibly upset.

One Sunday evening, on August 5, 1951, Chibás took the air over Radio Station CMQ in Havana and went into his usual weekly harangue. He shouted at his enemies and deplored the state of affairs in Cuba. As he finished his address, Chibás, with great flourish, drew a pistol from his pocket and fired a bullet into his body. He died eleven days later.

It was too bad that Chibás in his last great public performance made one unfortunate error. He thought he was firing the shot before the nationwide radio audience which his program always attracted. But he had run over his time and the station's engineers had cut him off the air just a few seconds before he pulled the trigger.

Prio believed that the death of Chibás had eliminated the Ortodoxo Party as an important political factor. Since the party's strength had been built around a single individual, Prio reasoned that the party would collapse for lack of leadership after the death of Chibás. He believed that he could destroy Batista's strength by breaking the coalition of Liberals and Demócratas who were supporting the former Army Chief, and he made a strong but unsuccessful bid to win over several of Batista's key men.

But as time passed it became evident that the Prio forces were going to face real opposition from both the Batista and the Ortodoxo groups. The Ortodoxo Party named Agramonte to take the place of Chibás, and the collapse Prio had expected did not occur. This worried the President, and he regarded Agramonte a more powerful opponent than Batista. So disturbed was Prio by the developments that he told political leaders he was prepared to block the election of either of his opponents by staging a quick revolution before election. These indiscretions alarmed Cuban statesmen and the alarm increased when it became known that Prio had already set the date for revolt. He planned to strike on April 15, a month and a half before election day, in order to create sufficient disorder to warrant the suspension of elections.

Cuba wanted no more bloodshed. She had had her share of it in the early nineteen-thirties and the thought of another revolution caused great concern. Prio counted on the high-ranking officers of the Cuban Armed Forces and no doubt could have had the support of many of them in his plans for violence. But the junior officers in the Army and Navy were against the Prio plan, and they were determined to prevent bloodshed if they could possibly do so. To that end, a small group of junior commissioned officers and noncommissioned officers started to do a little plotting of their own. They believed that if they could act quickly and in secrecy, they
could thwart Prio's plans through a coup d'etat of their own. They were young and inexperienced, but they were valiant and determined. They knew that the people of Cuba had lost faith in the Prio regime and they knew that the people wanted no more blood-letting. But they lacked leadership, without which their cause would certainly fail.

Few of these young officers had known Fulgencio Batista personally prior to 1951. But all of them knew his record, and they admired his patriotism and his great ability as a leader. So in February, 1952, they took their plan to the former President and urged him, on the basis of patriotic, necessity, to head their movement for peace.

It was the second time these young officers had appealed to Batista to take the country out of the hands of the discredited Prio government. A year before, in 1951, this same group had come to him with a plan and a plea. They wanted Batista to lead a movement to oust the Prio regime. At that time the young officers were fearful that scandals within the administration and the increase in gangster-inspired crimes were destroying the people's faith in the government. They told Batista of the secret flight Prio had made to Central America to confer with professional international revolutionists who were planning insurrections against several of their own governments in the Caribbean area at the time. It was somewhat ironic that Prio would go to Central America to meet with men who were busy plotting the overthrow of governments with which Cuba maintained friendly relations.

At the time Prio made the trip to Central America, the whole Caribbean area was seething with international conspiracy and plans were well advanced for coordinated movements against the governments of Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. The four countries which sheltered these international plotters were Cuba, under Carlos Prio, Guatemala, under Juan Arévalo, Venezuela, under Rómulo Gallegos, and Costa Rica, under José Figueres.

The revolutionary band was a heterogeneous group made up of Latin American malcontents and a few professional troublemakers from the United States and Great Britain. They looked and acted like characters out of a Hollywood film and they regarded Batista as a mortal enemy.

By the time Batista returned to power in 1952, the group, which had appropriated the name "Caribbean Legion," was having difficulty finding friendly bases for its operations. Arévalo had completed his presidential term in Guatemala and his successor was not enthusiastic about the revolutionary scheming of the group. Gallegos of Venezuela was out of office, as was Figueres of Costa Rica. With the overthrow of Prio the revolutionists received another setback.

When the young officers of the Cuban Army went to Batista the first time, they expressed the fear that such clandestine visits as the one Prio made to Central America would jeopardize Cuba's international relations and eventually disturb the peace at home. Batista agreed with the officers but he advised them against attempting to overthrow the Prio regime. He told them he believed the situation could be corrected through constitutional methods.

But in February, 1952, the situation was different. By this time Batista had full information on the Prio plans for revolution, and he knew that Prio would go to any means to prevent the holding of the June national elections. He knew too, that a revolution by the Prio forces would lead to a great deal of bloodshed. Prio's strength with the Armed Forces was limited, and without their support his revolution could not succeed.

Months before, the Prio regime had started a campaign to destroy Batista's political forces. Pressure through intimidation was applied on some of Batista's ablest supporters and others were offered money to break away from the former President. It was at this point that a Havana newspaper reported that Prio henchmen had said that unless Batista joined the Prio group and subordinated his own party affiliations he would have to leave the country in order to avoid assassination. Batista's answer to the threat was: "I prefer physical death to moral death," and he went right on being one of Prio's most potent political enemies.

Batista, meanwhile, had learned that Prio had called in the then Chief of the Army and discussed his plans for revolt. At that meeting, Prio directed that arrangements be made to start the trouble about a month or two before the June 1 election date.

The junior officers knew that Prio could not get the support of more than a small number of men in the Armed Forces but they knew also that by forcing the soldiers and sailors to take sides, he would split the Armed Forces and destroy the only group capable of maintaining public order throughout the island.

After discussing the situation with the young officers for nearly an hour, Batista agreed to lead the movement. It was an important decision and one which Fulgencio Batista had hoped he would never have to make. For nearly twenty years he had worked to establish his country on a sound political basis, and the thought of employing any but constitutional methods to correct the deplorable situation of the moment, was not very pleasing to him. But he believed that a bloodless coup d'etat in March was the only way to prevent bloody revolution in April.

In closing the meeting with the young officers, Batista warned them of the dangers involved in the undertaking and cautioned them about discussing their actions with anyone else. "I stopped you a year ago, when you had a similar plan," he said, "but I believe that your way is the only way left to prevent bloodshed. From this minute on, you must follow my orders. You must talk to no one about what we are doing and that includes your wives, your mothers, and your sweethearts." He shook hands with each of them and told them to go to their homes and wait for his orders.

Thus, the man who nineteen years before, as a noncommissioned officer of the Army, had broken a governmental crisis with a successful coup d'etat came forward again to enact another dramatic episode in the colorful and exciting life of a fellow who not so long before was known only as "a Sergeant named Batista."