State and Revolution in Cuba

Mass Mobilization and Political Change, 1920-1940

Robert Whitney

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781469621562
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Amérique latine et des Caraïbes

Between 1920 and 1940, Cuba underwent a remarkable transition, moving from oligarchic rule to a nominal constitutional democracy. The events of this period are crucial to a full understanding of the nation's political evolution, yet they are often glossed over in accounts that focus more heavily on the revolution of 1959. With this book, Robert Whitney accords much-needed attention to a critical stage in Cuban history. Closely examining the upheavals of the period, which included a social revolution in 1933 and a military coup led by Fulgencio Batista one year later, Whitney argues that the eventual rise of a more democratic form of government came about primarily because of the mass mobilization by the popular classes against oligarchic capitalism, which was based on historically elite status rather than on a modern sense of nation. Although from the 1920s to the 1940s politicians and political activists were bitterly divided over what "popular" and "modern" state power meant, this new generation of politicians shared the idea that a modern state should produce a new and democratic Cuba.

CHAPTER ONE. Oligarchic Rule and the Practice of Politics in Cuba, 1901-1924: An Overview

Cuban history is usually divided into three broad phases: the Spanish colonial period (1509-1898), the republic (1901-58), and the socialist revolutionary phase (1959 to the present). We know that each phase underwent many complex changes and transformations. In the literature dealing with the republican period, the word “republic” is typically preceded by adjectives such as “neocolonial,” “dependent,” “semisovereign,” “semi-independent,” and “Plattist.” Whichever adjective is used, however, the meaning is essentially the same: after the American occupation of Cuba in 1898 the sovereignty of the Cuban Republic was sharply restricted by the shifting policies and priorities of successive administrations in Washington.¹

The cornerstone of American neocolonial control over Cuba was the Platt Amendment, which the United States had imposed on the Cuban Constitutional Assembly of 1901.² The imposition of this amendment meant that if Cubans wanted independence, they would have to give the United States the constitutional right under the Cuban constitution to intervene in their internal affairs to preserve political order and protect private property. It was mediated sovereignty, or no sovereignty at all. With the rapid expansion of American investment in Cuba after World War I, Cuban political factions lost direct control over the economic direction of the country. The state became truncated from the economy and from much of society generally. As long as the Cuban political classes did not destabilize the economic life of the country, the United States permitted them to use state revenues to obtain and distribute wealth or to provide jobs and income for loyal followers. For large numbers of Cubans without stable employment in agriculture or industry, access to the state became a means to accumulate capital and obtain employment.

It will become apparent in the following pages that there are good reasons why the word “republic” should not stand alone. At the same time, by adding a qualifier we are no closer to understanding the complexity of political life during the republican years. However we label the republican political system, we must take care not to turn complex and multilayered experiences into one-dimensional, predictable, and lifeless events. In our rush to explain the structures of domination and subordination we can ignore the creativity of resistance, survival, and adaptation.³ We therefore need to sharpen our focus on how people responded to the immediate circumstances around them. Accordingly, this chapter will focus on the first major crisis of the republican system, which occurred between 1920 and 1924. Before highlighting this four-year period, it is necessary to outline what is meant by “oligarchic rule.”

What made political practice “oligarchic” was that ruling groups appealed to real or fictitious bloodlines and kin ties as the source of their status and authority. Political power was not centered on any particular group or institution; rather, power was in the hands of regional and local networks of caciques and caudillos. Within the Cuban context, caciques and caudillos were people whose authority stemmed from their past roles (real, imagined, or invented) in the independence war of 1895-98. Caciquismo was based on strong regional and ethnic loyalties and dependencies that crossed the boundaries of social class. Caciques commanded the loyalty of their followers by promising them land, work, and personal contacts which might provide some degree of security within the incessant ebb and flow of inter-elite rivalries and the volatile sugar economy. Businesses received concessions and contracts, and political leaders obtained kickbacks and favors. Mill owners used caciquismo to prevent or break union organizing. Conversely, caudillos and caciques could and did threaten mill owners with work stoppages or violence if workers loyal to the caudillo were not treated properly.

The most powerful figures had direct access to state revenues, the national lottery, local and regional government subsidies, and military and policing positions. Caciques and caudillos used their patronage networks to gain access to wealth and political positions. Many became sugar-mill owners or small-or large-scale colonos.⁴ A few became national politicians, and two became presidents of the republic. But oligarchic power was not nationally based. On the contrary, national leaders needed to command the loyalty of locally based caciques and caudillos if they were to have influence outside of the larger urban centers. One of the legacies of the war of 1895-98 was that caciques could and did tap into popular aspirations and address local grievances by strategically using carefully cultivated and long-standing ties of loyalty and friendship. Skillful local leaders could exploit these networks to either support or challenge Havana-based politicians, the sugar companies, colonos, or even the United States if necessary. In this way “nonpolitical” issues such as access to jobs, land, credit, debt, and loans could easily be converted into political capital when the moment was right.

The most meaningful politics were personal and local politics. Indeed, the highly personalistic networks so characteristic of caudillismo and caciquismo were based on the strong loyalties forged during the war of 189598 and before. Some 50,000 poor and destitute army veterans desperately needed land and employment, yet there were no institutional structures in existence that could satisfy these needs. At the same time, thousands of Cubans, many of them professionals and educated people, had spent years in exile in the United States and other countries; they returned to Cuba with high expectations that their skills, political connections, and often their command of English would open the door to appointments to neocolonial state structures. By 1905 the two groups within the independence movement had evolved into two political alignments, the Conservatives under Tomás Estrada Palma and the Liberals under José Miguel Gómez. The Conservative base was in the civilian wing of the Cuban independence movement, whereas Liberal support was especially strong among soldiers who had once been workers and peasants. This difference between the two “parties” was exacerbated by long-standing class and racial tensions which had always been present in the independence struggle.⁵ It was within this context of wartime loyalties, social and economic dislocation, and racial and class tensions that people chose their allies and benefactors. The old command structures of the Liberation Army evolved into the political affiliations of the early republic. Conservatives could and did use their connections with American officials, as well as their social and economic status, to occupy national, provincial, and municipal government positions. The miguelistas claimed that their military sacrifices proved that they—and not those who had left the field of battle for a safe exile—were the best representatives of an independent Cuba. As we will see, these loyalties were strong and would last for decades to come.⁶

Between 1905 and 1918 this divided Cuban political class grouped themselves into either the Liberal or the Conservative Parties. After 1918 the Popular Party was formed by dissident members of the other two parties. Despite their social and class differences, the Liberal network of caciques under President José Miguel Gómez functioned in much the same way as the Conservatives under Mario Menocal, who had replaced Estrada Palma as party leader. José Miguel Gómez (1858-1921) had fought in the second war for independence and served as governor of Santa Clara province, where he had a strong personal power base. Known as tiburón (the shark), Gómez became famous for his ability to protect loyal family and friends. It was under Gómez that the national lottery became a major source of state patronage.⁷ The social base of miguelismo was in the rural areas, especially among cattle ranchers, small-scale colonos, Spanish commercial and milling interests, veterans, the reorganized army, and the dependent workers in these sectors. José Miguel promised to protect his followers from losing their lands and positions, especially in the face of the expansion of sugar latifundios.⁸

José Miguel's arch rival, Mario Menocal (1866-1941), grew up in Mexico and was educated in New York and at Cornell University, where he graduated in 1888. In the early 1890s he worked on engineering research for a proposed trans-isthmus Nicaraguan canal. Menocal fought in the war of 1895, obtaining the rank of general. From 1906 to 1908, under the first U.S. intervention government of Charles Magoon, he was head of the National Police. He constructed and managed the sugar mill at Chaparra, in Oriente province, one of the largest mills in the world at the time. The menocalistas were closely tied to foreign capital and the sugar companies, especially from the United States. It was during Menocal's term that the large sugar companies obtained the best concessions: the Cuba American Sugar Company, Manatí Cuba Company, Punte Alegre Sugar Company, the United Fruit Company, and the Cuba Cane Company, to name some of the more prominent examples, received cheap land and tariff concessions. Menocal ran against General Machado in the presidential elections of 1924 and was defeated. He continued to play an important role in Cuban politics until his death in 1941.⁹

One example of how caudillista politics functioned was after 1907, when Afro-Cuban artisans, skilled workers, traders, and peasants organized the Partido Independiente de Color (PIC). The PIC was created to help promote Afro-Cuban social, economic, and political rights. Afro-Cubans had fought in two wars for independence and for an end to racial injustice, only to see racial tensions intensify with the American occupations of 1899-1902 and 1906-9. The black population had been hit particularly hard by the postwar crisis and the expansion of the sugar economy: with no or tenuous legal title over the lands they occupied, many black veterans were pushed aside by the sugar companies and their allies in the judicial system and the newly formed rural guard. By 1912, at the end of the Gómez government, Afro-Cubans supporting the PIC rebelled. They demanded land, increased access to public office, free education, better working conditions, and an end to racial discrimination.¹⁰ The rebellion was brutally suppressed by Gómez, with more than three thousand Afro-Cubans killed in Oriente province alone.¹¹ Menocal exploited the fact that Gómez oversaw the severe repression of the movement, and for years to come he patronized Afro-Cuban clubs and associations. Both parties used the personalistic loyalties and economic dependencies of their followers to take advantage of access to the state or resist the power of the state if one's adversaries held power. The lack of any institutional connections between the state and society was the leitmotif of oligarchic capitalism.

This kind of political behavior proved to be remarkably adaptable to the needs and priorities of U.S. policy after 1898. But, if Cuban independence was a fiction, Cuban obedience had its limits. Much of the political activity of the oligarchy was intended to provoke the United States into implementing the Platt Amendment. Virtually every inter-elite conflict between 1901 and 1933 was characterized by political factions trying to curry favor with the United States while blaming their adversaries for political chaos. In this way, victory was attained when the U.S. embassy finally backed one side over the other. Elite factions could gain access to the state and patronage networks without threatening American hegemony. The political activity of the Cuban elite was oriented more to negotiating the terms of American hegemony than to challenging it head-on. Victory was attained when the U.S. embassy finally backed one side over the other. Jorge Mañach, one of Cuba's prominent intellectuals, explained the problem in the following manner:

Whether the Platt Amendment limits Cuban sovereignty or not has been much discussed in Cuba. The discussion is merely technical. The important point is, not whether the Platt Amendment limits sovereignty itself, but the national sentiment of sovereignty. And on this point doubt is scarcely possible. The paternal and perspicacious prudence of the American Congress resulted in crushing the Cuban sentiment for self-determination, when it imposed express limits on the exercise of the collective will. The most serious consequence was the weakening of those organic defenses of the new state which would have safe guarded its democratic health and vitality. Feeling the threat of potential intervention, the Cubans’ sense of responsibility was undermined and with it his power of self-correction....Tutelage favored the growth of general civic indolence, a tepid indifference to national dangers. Should the nation be threatened, the intervention of Washington was always there as a last recourse, or last hope.¹²

American diplomats frequently complained about this state of affairs, but they had set the rules of the game and they had no choice but to play.¹³ Sooner or later the United States would have to remind the quarreling political factions who had the final say. A Havana-based British diplomat described the U.S.-Cuban relationship in blunt terms: “The Government has been made to understand that they retain power only by the consent of Washington, and the Government is accordingly duly obedient.”¹⁴

An additional factor in explaining the willingness of many Cuban politicians to accept American hegemony was that upper-class opinion was usually skeptical about the ability of Cubans to be a sovereign people. This attitude was not new: for most of the nineteenth century the idea of independence took third place to those supporting some form of autonomy within the Spanish orbit or outright annexation to the United States.¹⁵ Even during Cuba's two wars for independence there was significant disagreement among the independence forces about the exact meaning and implications of independence. In large measure these disagreements were fueled by the internal class and racial divisions among the anti-Spanish sectors, as well as by the positivist and social Darwinist thinking so common in late-nineteenth-century Latin American (an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Oligarchic Rule and the Practice of Politics in Cuba, 1901-1924: An Overview,
• Chapter 2. To Scratch Away the Scab of Colonialism: Radical Nationalist Politics, 1924-1928,
• Chapter 3. The Crisis of the Plattist State, 1927-1932,
• Chapter 4. Between Mediation and Revolution: The Collapse of the Plattist State, 1932-1933,
• Chapter 5. What Do the People Think and Feel?: Mass Mobilization and the Revolution of 1933,
• Chapter 6. Appointed by Destiny: Fulgencio Batista and the Disciplining of the Cuban Masses, 1934-1936,
• Chapter 7. The Architect of the Cuban State: Fulgencio Batista and Populism in Cuba, 1937-1940,
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index