To most people who had followed developments in Cuba during the Prio administration, the fall of the government without a suggestion of resistance came as a great surprise. The passive surrender, the scurrying off to embassies, the quick departures for foreign countries by whatever means, were in distinct contrast to the violence and strong-arm tactics which had prevailed in high and low political circles since Batista had left the Presidency in 1944.

Throughout the entire administration of Prio, the government had tolerated, if not actually supported, certain wellknown gangland figures. Some were on the public payrolls, and they seemed to be able to rely on high-level protection when, through carelessness or for other reasons, their names were publicly identified with some crime and the indignation of the citizenry was aroused.

Perhaps one of the most notorious characters was a big hunk of man from Matanzas named Policarpo Soler, a member of Prio's Auténtico Party whose name appeared on its ticket as a canidate from Matanzas Province for a seat in the House of Representatives.. Policarpo, as he was popularly known, was wanted by the police on charges ranging from murder to petty crimes. He was arrested on two occasions in 1951, and both times his followers liberated him by force. While he was in custody in Matanzas, a gang of machine gunners broke into jail, "intimidated" the guards, and took Policarpo away with them. Later he was rearrested in Havana and was placed in the supposedly escape-proof Príncipe Prison. But his henchmen provided him with a rope ladder and he climbed down the steep, cliff-like wall of the prison to a waiting automobile and liberty.

Policarpo justified this second escape by his civic conscience. He was a candidate for Congress and his party expected him to be in Matanzas for the primaries. "I had to keep faith with my people," said this shady aspirant to the national legislature.

Terrible stories have been told of Policarpo's cold-blooded cruelty and yet, when his master's hour of reckoning was at hand, Policarpo was not capable of firing one shot in Prio's defense. The terrorist of the days when laws were lax became the cowering fugitive as soon as Batista came into power and re-established law and order. Policarpo finally escaped on a small coastal vessel and was later reported to be living like a prince in exile in Spain.

Until Batista returned to power in March, 1952, one of the most feared terrorist organizations in Cuba was "Acción Revolucionaria Guiteras." This group, which took its name from a leading terrorist of another day, the late Antonio Guiteras, had a membership of between two and three thousand, and since its adherents bad their own arms, Acción Guiteras was virtually a private army. After a certain amount of killing and slugging and threatening the ARG took over the bus drivers' union, which provided one of the best sources of income in Cuban organized labor. Some of the members of ARG actually took jobs as bus drivers so that they would
appear to have some lawful means of earning a livelihood. Out of this developed the absurd case of the bus driver who always had two armed bodyguards sitting in the rear of the vehicle.

Leaders of Acción Revolucionaria Guiteras were Dr Eufemio Fernández a graduate lawyer, who was a strange mixture of culture and violence, and Jesús González Cartas, known as "El Extraño," who was all violence. During Prio's electoral campaign, Fernández was in charge of his large escort of bodyguards and did a very good job of it. As a reward he served for a while as Chief of the Secret Police.

With all their background of toughness, however, neither  Fernández nor El Extraño (literally, "the strange one".) did a thing to save the lucrative empire which the Batista forces destroyed on the morning of March 10. Both of them were given asylum in the Guatemalan Embassy and several days later left for Guatemala under safe-conduct passes issued at the request of Guatemalan Ambassador Raúl Osegueda.

Prio's forlorn and abandoned condition, his loneliness in his hour of greatest distress, were reflected in all the news photographs taken of him on that, his fateful morning. In the early hours of the day, before he left the Presidential Palace on his futile search for support in Matanzas, Prio bad expressed the conviction that the labor unions would fight for him and a call actually was issued for a general strike.

But when Batista issued a decree which outlawed strikes for a period of forty-five days, everyone knew he meant it. All overt opposition in the labor movement disappeared. After March 10, Eusebio Mujal, who as Secretary-General of the Cuban Federation of Labor was top labor boss in Cuba, was appointed to Batista's Advisory Council and became a collaborator, in good faith, of the new regime.