Selected original photographs of the Cuban Dictator Fulgencio Batista. The originals date back to the mid 1950 and measure (mostly) 20cm by 25cm.

There follows some background information for those interested:

(please note there is an additional international shipping charge of 14.50 EUR for these images which we will add to the sale upon receiving your order)

General Rubén Fulgencio Batista (January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician.

Batista was the de facto military leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1940, and thus the eminence grise of Cuban politics for that era, and the de jure President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 after having won election. After staging a successful coup in 1952, Batista ran unopposed in an election in 1954, and ruled the nation until being ousted from power in 1959 by Fidel Castro's guerrilla movement during the Cuban Revolution.

Political Unrest and the Revolution of 1959

Just over a year after Batista's second coup, a small group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada Army Barracks in Santiago on July 26, 1953. Having easily defeated the rebellion, and with Castro and most of the others in jail or dead, business was back to normal in Cuba.

Due to popular unrest, and to appease the United States government, Batista held an election in which he was the only legal candidate. He won, becoming president of Cuba in 1954.

The distinguished Colonel Cosme de la Torriente, a surviving veteran of the Cuban War of Independence, emerged in late 1955 to offer compromise. A series of meetings led by de la Torriente became known as "El Diálogo Cívico" (the civic dialogue). Writes Hugh Thomas: "This Diálogo Cívico represented what turned out to be the last hope for Cuban middle-class democracy, but Batista was far too strong and entrenched in his position to make any concessions."

Batista was so confident of his power that on May 15, 1955, he released Castro and the remaining survivors of the Moncada attack, hoping to dissuade some of his critics. Within weeks it was rumored that Batista's military police was looking to kill Castro, so the rebel went to Mexico to plan the revolution.

The Havana Post, expressing the attitude of the U.S. business community after a survey of the four years of Batista's second reign, alluded to the disappearance of gangsterism and said: 'All in all, the Batista regime has much to commend it." Hugh Thomas disagrees with that commentary. "In a way," Thomas writes, "Batista's golpe formalized gangsterism: the machine gun in the big car became the symbol not only of settling scores but of an approaching change of government."

By late 1955 student riots and anti-Batista demonstration had become frequent. These were dealt with in the violent manner his military police had come to represent. Students attempting to march from the University of Havana were stopped and beaten by the police, and student leader José A. Echeverría had to be hospitalized. Another popular student leader was killed on December 10, leading to a funeral that became a gigantic political protest with a 5-minute nationwide work stoppage.

Instead of loosening his grip, Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and established tighter censorship of the media. His military police would patrol the streets and pick up anyone suspected of insurrection. By the end of 1955 they had grown more prone to violent acts of brutality and torture, with no fear of legal repercussions.

In March of 1956 Batista refused to consider a proposal calling for elections by the end of the year. He was confident that he could defeat any revolutionary attempt from the many factions who opposed him.

In April 1956, Batista had given the orders for Barquin to become General and Chief of the Army. But it was too late. Even after Barquin was informed, he decided to move forward with the coup to rescue the morale of the Armed Forces and the Cuban people. On April 6, 1956, a coup by hundreds of career officers led by Col. Barquin (then Vice Chair of the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington DC and Cuban Military Attache of Sea, Air and Land to the US) was frustrated by snitch amongst the troops, Rios Morejon. The coup broke the backbone of the Cuban Armed Forces when Batista tried in vain to negotiate the denial of the so colled conspiracy. The officers were sentenced to the maximum terms allowed by Cuban Martial Law. Barquin was sentenced to solitary confinement for 8 years. La Conspiración de los Puros resulted in the imprisonment of the top commanding brass of the Armed Forces and the closing of the military academies. Barquin was the founder of La Escuela Superior de Guerra (Cuba's War College) and past director of La Escuela de Cadetes (Cuba's Military Academy - West Point). Without Barquin's officers the army could not sustain a fight. In the words of scholars like Justo Carillo, Felipe Pazos, Jose Miro Cardona, Hugh Thomas and Louis Horowitz: "Al frustrarse la Conspiración de los Puros a Cuba le toco perder. Sin Batista no hay Fidel (With the frustrated coup Cuba lost. Without Batista there is no Fidel)."

Batista continued to rule without concerns, even after the landing of the Granma in December of 1956 (which brought the Castro brothers back to Cuba along with Che Guevara and marked the beginning of the armed conflict).

Due to its continued opposition to the dictator, the University of Havana was temporarily closed on November 30, 1956. (It would not reopen until early 1959, after a revolutionary victory.) But that did not end the flow of student blood, including Echeverría's, who was killed by police after a radio broadcast on March 13, 1957. Batista's police also tracked down and killed Frank País, a coordinator with the 26th of July Movement, inciting a spontaneous strike in the three easternmost provinces of Cuba.

Another election in 1958 placed Andrés Rivero Agüero in the president's chair, but losing the support of the U.S. government meant his days in power were numbered.

On January 1, 1959, after formally resigning his position in Cuba's government and going through what historian Hugh Thomas describes as "a charade of handing over power" to his representatives, remaining family and closest associates boarded a plane at 3 a.m. at Camp Colombia and flew to Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

Throughout the night various flights out of Camp Colombia took Batista's friends and high officials to Miami, New York, New Orleans and Jacksonville. Batista's brother "Panchín," governor of Havana, left several hours later, and Meyer Lansky, suffering from ill health, also flew out that night. There was no provision made for the thousands of other Cubans who had worked with Batista's regime. (Source: Wikipedia)