One of the most spectacular achievements of Fulgencio Batista was the quick and efficient manner in which he eliminated hoodlumism, which had flourished in Cuba for seven years prior to 1952.

The pistoleros, the smugglers, the dope traffickers, the professional killers, and the extortionists all disappeared when Batista returned to power in March of that year. Some fled the country and began plotting a revolution against Batista, and others went into hiding in Cuba.

The quick eradication of lawlessness had a stabilizating effect on the nation. Even Batista's political enemies, who screamed against his assumption of authority, must have realized that his presence in the Presidential Palace had a frightening effect on the ruffians. And the elimination of gangsterism brought about the restoration of law and order throughout the Republic and assured the maintenance of the peace. A by-product of these achievements was the reestablishment of confidence in government.

It may be contended that these are such fundamental requirements that they should not be included in any resume' of the work of a modern government, since one presupposes that there is law and order in any civilized community. The fact is, however, that under the previous regime, crime and lawlessness bad taken such a firm grip of the entire island that gangsterism was prevalent both in city and village.

No person who has not lived in an atmosphere of fear, of complete helplessness before the ever-present threat of murder and chantage, can comprehend the extent to which organized crime had advanced in Cuba before Batista assumed office. The physical elimination of a personal or political enemy was no problem for anyone willing to do business with the gangsters.

Because of the fact that they served as executioners and bodyguards for some important figures, these killers seemed to enjoy immunity from the law. Under threats of death or torture, they extorted money from people who had no armed retinue of their own. The victims rarely dared risk lodging complaints with the Police, and when they did report what had occurred, the resulting investigation was invariably so superficial that it was farcical. Having been robbed of his property, the average citizen usually decided to retain his personal dignity by not appealing for help in circumstances which could result in nothing save proving again that the criminal syndicates were more powerful than the law.

As has been stated, the very day that Batista took over the government, many of the gangsters left the country or went into hiding. At the beginning of 1953, however, the goverments intelligence and investigative services learned that opposition forces were planning to employ several notorious gangsters and killers in a terrorist campaign. Lulled into a feeling of false security by the pacific attitude of the Batista government, these members of the underworld had emerged from hiding and were ready to resume their criminal acts.

Official information indicated that the gangsters were financed by the Batista government's opposition. A plan was drawn for a new reign of terror to be based on a series of' bombings throughout the city of Havana. The hoodlums meant business. They were prepared to extort money from some of the leading stores and other places of business as the price of their not being made the bombing "target for tonight." The state of uncertainty which would thus be created could be put to considerable advantage from a political point of view. It would damage the government s prestige, destroy the island's tourist trade, and create an atmosphere
favorable to a counterrevolution.

As the result of careful surveillance, the Police and military authorities found the hide-out of one of the principal gangsters known as "El Guajiro" (the backwoodsman) Salgado. On the night of January 5, 1953, law enforcement officers moved on the hide-out to arrest the dangerous criminal. The Guajiro and his men received the officers with a volley of submachine-gun fire and escaped to another refuge. But the officers finally caught up with them, and on that same evening, in the center of one of the residential sections of Havana, the police and the gangsters fought it out with pistols, submachine guns, and rifles. El Guajiro Salgado and four of his
aides were killed. Two policemen and one innocent pedestrian fell before the gangsters' fire before the criminals were shot down.

Then on the night of February 23, Police and members of the Military Intelligence Corps surrounded a house in the Vedado section of Havana to which an alert officer had followed Vicente Leirruz Kairuz another notorious young hoodlum, who was known as "El Italianito," or, "the little Italian." In a fight which lasted over an hour, "the little Italian" and two of his criminal companions were killed. A police officer was gravely wounded.

Machine guns, pistols, ammunition, bombs, and dynamite were seized by the police after these two encounters, and the gangsters were convinced that Batista was in earnest about imposing respect for the law. In fact, in an official statement, the President himself said that while the democratic institutions were being preserved and would continue to prevail throughout the entire island, there would be the sternest form of treatment for gangsters and terrorists.

One of El Italianito's little vanities was that of regarding himself as being the Western Hemisphere counterpart of the late, notorious Italian bandit, Giuliano. In fact, he made pencil sketches of himself, machine gun in band, and beside his name on these pitiful productions he always wrote, "The Giuliano of the Americas."

Batista's war against crime evoked the praise of the people of Cuba, even Cubans who were not particularly friendly to his government. For years the residents of the largo cities of Cuba had lived under the threat of terror. The Batista government, whatever faults it might have, certainly pat an end to gangsterism in Cuba.

On July 26, 1953, the Batista opposition made an attempt to overthrow the Batista regime by force. The effort failed because it had the support of neither the civilian population nor the military. Some two hundred men, a large percentage of them members of the Caribbean Legion, invaded Oriente Province, surprised and seized a group of sick soldiers in a military hospital in Santiago, and captured two buildings at the adjacent military post. The attack was quickly suppressed by the Cuban Armed Forces, which remained loyal to the Batista government. Ninety persons, seventy-one of them invaders, were killed in the Sunday morning battle. The Batista government accused Carlos Prio, a segment of the Ortodoxo Party, and the Communist Party of sponsoring the movement, but Prio denied that he had any connection with it. Nevertheless, it was common knowledge in Cuba that just prior to the invasion Prio associates had been involved in certain deals for the purchase of arms. Furthermore, it was known that Prio himself had maintained contact with the Caribbean Legion for several years prior to 1953.