Terror in Cuba by Arthur Pincus with  preface by John Dos Passos Published by Workers Defense League 1936 PREFACE WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? HERE is no worse blot on the first administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt than his State Department's handling of the situation in Cuba since the fall of Machado. Cuba is in the unfortunate position of - being under the control of American finance capital without having the advantages of American colonial administration. The result of this virtual ownership of the island without responsibility in the eyes of the world has been that the financial interests and the State Department have allowed themselves to drift into backing one of the most atrocious reigns of terror in all history. Of course these gentlemen in the State Department, in banks and utilities and sugar companies, who felt so strongly that the Gran San Martin government was "impractical and visionary," are not in themselves necessarily crueler or more bloodthirsty than any of the rest of us. They have even gotten themselves into the state of mind where they honestly believe that gunman rule in Cuba is the only way out, the best thing for the Cuban people and for the American financial overlordship. It will be very hard for them to get it into their heads that they are the guilty accomplices of a force that is crushing out everything decent, everything civilized, everything progressive in the tragic island. Of course we all know that in the opinion of these gentlemen Latin Americans do not deserve the blessings of civil liberty, free press and education. So long as order is kept and American nationals protected we don't want to pay too much attention to the occasional death of a malcontent by torture. It is about time that the American people began to look into the doings of the agents in Cuba of these eminent gentlemen in the State Department and in the big corporations. If these gentlemen find that gunman rule in Cuba and South America produces order and dividends, isn't there a chance that they will begin to convince themselves that the American people at home would also be better off without the blessings of civil liberty, free press and education? Indeed, a great many of these gentlemen in high financial circles have already convinced themselves on this point. The administration owes it to its good name, and to the faith in free institutions of the American citizens who reelected Mr. Roosevelt by such an enormous majority to office, to see that civilized rule be restored to Cuba and that some sort of sincere effort towards the economic and social reorganization of the island be at least tolerated. Until that is done all the fine words that come so smoothly from the lips of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Hull will continue to have a very hollow sound in the ears of millions of the English and Spanish speaking peoples in both Americas. December 10, 1936 JoHN Dos PASSOS "The sameforces of imperialism which put Cuba under the heel . . . are distorting and destroying the economic liberties of eight million people in the United States. The full liberty of Cuba is part of our own salvation, part of our own liberation. Those of us here in the north who see our own danger clearly know that in helping to free Cuba from exploitation we are striking at the weak spot in the armor of those who seek to exploit us at home." CARLETON BEALS FOREWORD THE recent elimination of President Miguel. Mariano Gomez brought to dramatic focus the fact that Cuba is ruled by machine gun and bayonet. For months on end the truth about Cuban conditions was little known in this country. But even with the unmasking of the character of Colonel Fulgencio Batista's army dictatorship in many American newspapers, there has been no accompanying relevations concerning the use of terror, the destruction of the trade union movement, the drive against university students. The fake amnesty decree of September was passed over in almost complete silence. The army-inspired impeachment of President Gomez tells the world in no uncertain terms how Cuba is ruled and by whom. But a great deal more needs to be told. Acts of terrorism, official murders, tortures, imprisonments-the facts concerning these need as wide circulation as possible. Cuba today is in the grasp of a tyranny which maintains power only by terror. Batista has the tacit and often the open support of Roosevelt and his State Department. Urgency Courts still sentence politicals without ordinary rules of evidence to terms ranging from three years to life. Since March 1935, the date of the last General Strike, no lawyer has dared defend a political prisoner for fear of army reprisal. Labor unions, primary guarantors of working-class rights, are still suppressed. Any attempt to revive them is met with fresh violence. Cuba is not a nation free to work out her own destiny; she is a colony granted apparent autonomy because men like Batista are cheaper to hire than colonial administrators. She is not a colony of the United States, but the property of a handful of men in Washington and New York-men who own 80 per cent of her wealth in sugar, banking and public utility interests, who guide Roosevelt's policies toward Cuba and who in great measure dictate the internal policies of Cuba herself. In the following pages is told the deeply tragic story of the wrongs, sufferings and thwarted hopes of the Cuban people since Machado was eliminated-a legacy of our more overt imperialist era which should challenge every American to action. Aid us in our fight to free the imprisoned victims of terror I Help Cuban Labor to organize without restriction ! Por Cuba Libre! COMMITTEE ON CUBA WORKERS DEFENSE LEAGUE 112 East 19th Street, New York TERROR IN CUBA WE ACQUIRE AN ISLAND HE decade 1890-1900 saw America rather self-consciously growing up to the status of a world power. The frontier had all but disappeared; the last of the Indian wars had been fought. Saber-rattling was the order of the day, given impetus by the rising curve of eastern industrialization which demanded new outlets and new foreign markets. Theodore Roosevelt on a threat of conflict over Venezuela had shouted: "The country needs war". Professional jingoists like Pulitzer and Hearst spent millions to bring it on. Sympathy for the cause of Cuban independence was whipped into a war frenzy by the yellow journals. More serious-minded politicians like Walter Hines Page, Whitelaw Reid and Leonard Wood saw in a war with Spain an opportunity to dominate both American continents and seize the dubious prize of the Far East, the Philippines. CUBA, THE FORGOTTEN ISLE War was declared in April, 1898. Feudal-ridden Spain was defeated by brash, up-and-at-'em, rough-riding America. In the hurry and scramble of the peace, Cuba was well-nigh forgotten. When the treaty was signed, Cuban patriots, whom we had come to save, were not even invited to help solve the island's future status. Instead they were carelessly booted around, rather odd after all our humane indignation over their hard fate. But that cavalier treatment only foreshadowed the spirit with which we were to treat every Cuban problem for years to come. After a short military trusteeship, we granted independence to Cuba in 1901, but with a joker attached-the Platt Amendment with its intervention clauses "for the preservation of Cuban government", and for the "maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty". ECONOMIC DOMINATION For 33 years Cuba lived under the policeman's club of the Amendment. Politically helpless; the island was considered fair game for American Big Business. Native enterprise on a scale commensurate with the normal growth of the people was destroyed by American capital which poured in to reap huge profits in banking, finance, sugar plantation and public utilities. But virtually complete American control did not occur until the panic of 1920 had driven away the last of Spanish financial influence and their institutions were taken over by Chase National, National City and the Royal Bank of Canada, .a triumvirate which constitutes the dominant ruling and employing class in Cuba today. In 1934 the Platt Amendment was abrogated. It was no longer needed. By that time American money interests controlled 80 per cent of Cuba's total wealth. PROFITS COME FIRST The chief object of Yankee capital has been to gather in the largest profits possible without any slightest regard for the attendant welfare of the Cuban masses. The chief object of our State Department has been to maintain order and stability-i.e., the status quo-regardless of the needs and wishes of the Cuban people. These hand-in-glove objectives permit Cuba today to be run by rifles like a company-owned coal town. That profits and order might be maintained, moral sanction is extended to one of the most horrible terrors history has ever recorded. As Carleton Beals has said, we have intervened scores of time with marines and with diplomatic and economic pressure in behalf of "loans, American property, not for liberty, justice or Cuban independence". The Cuban masses are perfectly well aware that "the State Department sets stability above considerations of humanity or justice", and that a "free Cuba is a text-hook myth". WHO OWNS CUBA? UBANS have a saying: "The sole possessions of the Cuban are his flag and national anthem." More than one-third of Cuba's territory is owned or controlled by American corporations. Yankee land reserves, held for possible future expansion of the sugar industry, alone amount to 6,500,000 acres. When the remainder, largely mortgaged to or controlled by tenant agreements with American banks, is added, the figure reaches 40 per cent of the total square mile area of the island, or practically all of its cultivable areal' (All footnotes on page 28.) THE AMERICAN OCTOPUS Tobacco, Cuba's second industry, is mostly in American hands. Practically all the banks, railroads, telephone systems, street-car lines and electric plants are owned by absentee capital from the United States. Certainly, no other spot on earth has afforded finance capital a freer hand than Cuba. The per capita spread of foreign investments is about $400. The staggering burden which this figure imposes on the Cuban people is illustrated by the Commission on Cuban Affairs of the Foreign Policy Association : "To equal the per capita Cuban figure, the United States would have to borrow abroad a total of over fifty billion dollars." Yet despite all this American enterprise, the Cuban people can only be kept down by a brutal militarism, which crushes all their aspirations for economic and civic justice. Our direct responsibility for this situation is clear. THE ZENITH OF PRIVILEGE Our stake in Cuba up until the end, of the nineteenth century was mostly trade. At the close of Spanish rule, appeared the first American investments. But after independence-had been granted, began the epoch of American concessionaires carrying off rich contracts and other favored privileges from corrupt local politicians. American control of sugar reached a zenith under Machado and during his second term began a shift from private entrepreneur to bank and public utility ownership. Today 80 per cent of Cuba's sugar is in the hands of Morgan, and the aforementioned Chase National, National City and the Royal Bank of Canada. The rest of the industry these banks control by mortgages. Coincident with the shift to consolidation of financial interests came the shift to military dictatorship. The military dictatorship at every point has jailed, terrorized and murdered precisely those elements of the population which are outspoken in their criticism of foreign imperialist holdings. In a word, iron-heeled militarism was engendered and nurtured by foreign finance capital-its chief beneficiary. SHARE AND SHARE American investments in Cuba sugar total $700,000,000. Some of the other American holdings in addition to sugar are as follows:' Public utilities $115,000,000 Railways 120,000,000 City real. estate 50,000,000 Government loans 100,000,000 Tobacco 30,000,000 Mines 50,000,000 Agricultural 40,000,000 Factories 20,000,000 In contrast let us consider the wages of the average member of the Cuban working class. Batista's military machine has destroyed the trade union movement, much as Hitler and Mussolini have done, and the wage scale, in consequence, is lower than any in Cuba's economic history. Unskilled urban labor earns about fifty cents a day. Skilled labor commands a top price of $1 a day and rarely has more than four days work a week. Cigar workers, once the aristocrats of Cuban labor, are lucky to eke out $1 a day; the industry is at a practical standstill. Waiters, porters, servants work for food and lodging. Rural workers, the bulk of the population, receive coolie wages ranging from twenty to thirty-five cents a day for only one month of the year, the length of the cane-cutting and sugar grinding season. Yet huge profits are shipped abroad to be spent abroad ! In fighting for political freedom, Cuba lost economic freedom. In throwing off the yoke of Spanish rule, Cuba assumed a new and more terrible burden, the yoke of the dollar. SUGAR AND THE RUIN OF CUBA ri-BA's primary economic problem is sugar. The vast majority of her population are half-starved serfs dependent on the cane cutting season for their miserable living. There are less than 35,000 independent farms on the island today, one-third of which are less than 60 acres in size. This compares with more than double that number held by natives in a census taken in the first year of the American occupation at the beginning of the century when the population was less than half what it is today. THE DISINHERITED CUBAN What has happened is simple. American capital bought out the island. Vast land-holdings and large-scale agricultural-industrial activities are consolidated in the hands of a few bankers. The net result is that the Cuban is disinherited in his own land. Wherever he sets foot he is treading on soil owned by foreigners. Deprived of land, he is forced to work for the gigantic sugar combines, to accept any wages given him. If he rebels, his overseers scream "Revolution!" and summon Batista's soldiery to shoot him down. The whole sugar season today lasts but six weeks at best, oftener only one month. For the rest of the year he has no work, no possibility of work and no land to turn to. His home-when he has one-is a hovel with a dirt floor-the bohio. For ten months he stalks through the island like a ghost, begging a crust. Homeless, he sleeps in the fields or in city streets- his family stretched out on the sidewalk beside him. For ten months neither he nor his family eat bread, meat or vegetables. A diet consisting of cane juice and a few roots keeps body and soul together until the next cutting season rolls around. And even when he works, he receives twenty to forty cents a day for sun-up to sun-down labor. SINGLE CROP -I- IMPERIALISM = ECONOMIC SUICIDE Again and again Cuba has been criticized for her one-crop system. As if discovering the fact, learned professors rush into print to warn that the one-crop system is suicidal to the populace. All that must be perfectly evident to a school child. The crux of the matter is that Cuba must restore the land to her people. That means facing the whole question of American absentee capital. How grow other, more diversified crops, how even approach the agrarian problem when the best land, practically all of the arable land is leased, owned outright or otherwise controlled by American banks? Carleton Beals writes:' "Most of Latin America due to backwardness and peripheral situation to the world's major industrial development has been the victim of single crops in given areas-Mexico, oil; Yucatan, benequen; Chile, nitrates; Brazil, coffee. The single crop has buttressed Op its political parallel, dictatorship-the single crop idea in government. Overdependence upon one product has resulted in alternations of extravagant prosperity and overwhelming depression, automatically precipitating corresponding political disasters. Cuba was to travel this 'road with sugar." Foreign monopoly to maintain one-crop countries requires the native population to be down-trodden and therefore gives aid, direct and indirect, to tyranny. Batista murders and jails men and women for no worse crime than speaking or writing against absentee landlordism. The whole force of his military machine has been used to whittle away every semblance of civil rights in order to head off the one great forward step the Cuban masses might make to rid themselves of foreign control-occupation of the land. "DANCE OF THE MILLIONS" The story of sugar in Cuba has never been a stable story. Price collapses occurred every few years, but its spectacular profits in some seasons inevitably attracted Americans. In 1905 there were 29 American-owned mills, producing 21 per cent of the island's sugar. By 1916 there were 72. The World War had put an enormous price on raw sugar. Feverish activity began in Cuba. Sugar combines capitalized at an initial $50,000,000 came into being. Valuable forests in the eastern end of the island were burned down to create new sugar land. In 1918 the United States created a sugar control board with Herbert Hoover as chairman. The board bought the entire Cuban crop outright in order to control the world market. In 1919, the board slid out from under, having made a profit of $42,000,000 at the expense of Cuba. Prices went hog wild. Cuban sugar jumped dizzily from 9 cents a pound in the New York market in February, 1920 to 22.5 cents on May 19; then collapsed to 3.5 cents on December 13 of the same year. They called it "the dance of the millions". S 9 Scores upon scores of private American citizens stepped into direct ownership of mills or expanded their holdings. Enormous shifts of capital control took place; the expansion never for a moment gave a thought to the effect on the future welfare of the country. In the years 1908-09 Cuba had supplied something under 10 per cent of the total world sugar supply; in 1918-19, the figure had risen to 25 per cent. Even more significant, as Beals has pointed out, is the percentage of cane products exported from the island in relation to all the rest of its exports: in 1908, 54 per cent; in 1919, 88 per cent. ENTER THE BANKER-OWNER The 1920 collapse inundated the island, destroyed banks and hundreds of commercial houses. American banking institutions which had advanced huge sums to tenant farmers and mills were sucked into the industry. The story of sugar thereafter became a story of management by American finance capital. That management has brought Cuba step by step to the position where for two decades she has been unable to provide a decent subsistence for millions of her people. In 1933, largely on the advice of American bankers, President Roosevelt began negotiations which resulted in the reciprocal trade agreement and the Jones-Costigan Act of 1934. The New York Times of July 7, 1936 astated that "economic conditions in Cuba show a remarkable improvement from the dark days of 1932 and 1933", chiefly because of the trade pact. It is true that statistics tell a more cheerful story. In twenty months after the reciprocity agreement Cuba exported to the United States nearly three times as much and imported nearly twice as much as in the twenty- month period prior to the agreement. The figures: Jan. 1933 to Sept. 1934- to Sept. 1934 May. 1936 Exports to United States $78,000,000 $221,000,000 Imports 52,000,000 99,000,000 The principal item of Cuban export was, of course, sugar. In 1935, a quota of 1,850,000 short tons of raw sugar at 2.33 cents a pound was worth $80,000,000. THE OUTWARD FLOW OF CUBA'S WEALTH But statistics do not tell the whole story. Granted that sugar prices are better, what was true in every year of American domination is more strikingly true today: the major profits do not remain in Cuba! They go out of the country to be spent out of the country. The only return from the industry to Cuba is in the share paid the colonos or tenant farmers, 10 the wages paid to the workers and the revenues received by the government. No wonder Cubans call the reciprocity agreement the "one-way trade agreement", for it was arranged only nominally with Cuba; actually it operates between the United States government and that handful of her citizens who own Cuba's billion dollar sugar industry. WHAT THE WORKER GETS Under.present arrangements, the cutting and grinding season is only one month long; the dead season find colono and worker without cash reserves. The only gainer here is the owner-banker. No so very long ago the sugar worker received $1.50 to $2.50 for a day's work; today wages for the whole period of cutting do not touch $15. This means that even when he is working the rural worker and his family are semi-starved. The shrinkage in the per capita holding of money as shown in bank deposits gives another angle of the story. In 1928 it was $49.97; in 1930, $28; 1931, $19; 1932, $10; 1933, $5.30. For 1936 it is estimated at below $6. The military dictatorship of Batista is little concerned with the welfare of the sugar workers. It is concerned only with the taxes that can be gleaned from the industry in one way or another to be passed on ultimately to the consumer, both Cuban and American. The ousting of President Gomez because of his opposition to the tax of 9 cents a bag for the army's rural school program reveals the completely fascist character of Colonel Batista's regime. Yet every sugar mill owner supports him and his program. The banker-owners know that army-administered schools will implant "safe" ideas in Cuban children; will teach them to grow up in praise, and not resentment, for the benefits of American absentee landlordism; the schools will lay the ground for the children of oppressed peasants today to assume docilely tomorrow their lifelong servitude to sugar. HOW GOOD NEIGHBORISM WORKS IN CUBA HREE and a half years have now passed since Roosevelt enunciated his good neighbor policy. Recently the Inter-American Peace Conference at Buenos Aires was hailed as a multilateral, inter-continental doctrination toward peace and conciliation, the very nadir of good neighborism. Some people preferred to overlook the motivations behind our leadership in the conference, and on the economic side they are wide open to the most cynical, hard-boiled interpretation; instead they stressed the aims of peace and good-will. The rude awakening came with Cuba. All the high-flown sentiments, all the rhetorical eloquence for which the conference set a new high are now swept aside. 11 The crisis in tragic Cuba unmasks the tight-lipped hypocrisy that has surrounded our Latin-American policy for four years. Roosevelt makes the large Wilsonian gesture with his right hand, but with his left? With his left, he has swung the balance of power constantly on the side of reaction, What has been the result? "A SPOT OF FASCISM" In Cuba today there flourishes a military dictatorship-a "spot of fascism on the western hemisphere" as one shrewd observer has called it; a terror that can be compared only with the worst stages of the Nazi "housecleaning"; a systematic tearing down of every vestige of civil and economic liberty of four million oppressed people. We begin with the downfall of Machado-"president of a thousand murders". Control of the storm that was whipping up against Machado was taken over by Sumner Welles, career diplomat, who replaced Harry F. Guggenheim as the Ambassador of the Roosevelt administration. Welles' active intervention, as in the case of Guggenheim, was conveniently labeled "unofficial", a hairsplitting method of dividing his diplomatic activities so that at one moment he acted with the full "authority of his position", whereas at the next he was but an humble "simple citizen". As if it were possible for an Ambassador to make any such division of his activities! But Welles, the quick-change artist, contrived it with the assistance of a subservient press. From May to August, 1933, he sweated to eliminate Dictator Machado. This outside meddling could not have been more iniquitous. It was designed to take the initiative out of the hands of the Cuban people, to bring about the overthrow of Machado before they were organized sufficiently on their own to take full advantage of their power. For how else explain the unseemly haste to push Machado more rapidly into oblivion when for the previous four years our government had turned a deaf ear to every petition of Cuban patriots to remain neutral and cease active support of Machado's tyranny? "UNOFFICIAL" INTERVENTION-- Welles' own actions permit us to arrive at an objective conclusion. His job was not only to eliminate Machado, who had lost face with American bankers because he could no longer meet payments on his debts to them, but also to hold the whip-hand over whatever government replaced him, thus sidestepping the real wishes of the Cuban people. How utterly Welles was the errand boy of American financial interests in Cuba can be seen from the fact that at the beginning he groomed General Herrera, head of the army and Machado's right hand man in the assassination of the people, for the presidency. Herrera, with large sugar holdings of his own, was the choice of the sugar people. Only the realities of a revolutionary situation prevented Welles from pushing his impossible choice. But he did manage to salvage the rest of his plan-observance of all the constitutional forms. Machado was not deposed by a revolution ; he took "leave of absence". AND PAPER-DOLL GOVERNMENTS Welles' second choice, the paper-doll De Cespedes government, succedeed Machado. In practically every matter Welles' office in the American Embassy was the administrative center of the island. Every political faction, with the exception of the students and the labor groups, resorted there for instructions. Representatives of American banking, public utility and sugar interests met at the same table with Cuban politicians, Welles, not mediator now but supreme arbiter, presiding. Every political appointment to the De Cespedes cabinet was personally okeyed by Welles. He guaranteed law and order. He inveighed against the workers who everywhere were striking for better wages, hours and conditions. He flayed those honest Cubans who opposed him; called them ungrateful. All this had more than a slightly reminiscent ring for Cuban ears, for it echoed a sentiment quaintly expressed in '98 when Americans, disgusted with Cuban patriots who actually placed Cuban freedom above the blessing of American occupation, were told by General Young that the Cuban patriots were "a lot of degenerates, absolutely devoid of humor or gratitude . . no more capable of self-government than the savage of Africa".' But Welles' cardboard cabinet was doomed. All factions made war on it. The Cuban response to Welles' stupid meddling was the spontaneous enactment of island-wide anti-American demonstrations. A boycott movement against American-owned public utilities came into being. The Woolworth store in Havana was wrecked. Foaming at the mouth, financiers bore down on Washington: was American property sacred or was it not? SERGEANT BATISTA AND LIBERAL GRAU Temporarily, the revolutionary Cuban elements took the show out of Welles' hands. The Students' Directorate, which had consistently opposed him, possessed the backing of the rank and file of the army. Earlier Sergeant Fulgencio Batista as the head of a small corps of non-commissioned officers had driven the machadista higher officers out of command. The student faction and the army pooled strength and created the Grau San Martin government. Immediately, it was distinguished from all others in the island's history. First, it was based upon genuine mass support and 12 13 second, it had reached authority without having been previously handpicked by Washington. It was to pay dearly for the second distinction. Not that Grau was always consistent; his government was amorphous in character; but in the main he was the most liberal president Cuba had ever known. He guaranteed a minimum of democratic rights, Specifically he passed progressive labor legislation, cut electric and power rates, encouraged unionism, fixed a minimum wage for plantation slaves. A starving population, conscious of new-found freedom and influence, realized that now at last the revolution against Machado was bearing fruit. DOLLARS FIRST -w THAT was Roosevelt's response to the inauguration of liberalism in Cuba? Warships and non-recognition! For four months he withheld American recognition and exerted the full force of economic pressure by refusing to negotiate a reciprocal trade agreement with the new government. Grau took office September 10, 1933. By the end of that month thirty American war vessels steamed into the Caribbean and surrounded Cuba. Roosevelt was "opposed to armed intervention"! Only a storm of Latin-American protest, Ied by Argentine, prevented the embarcation of marines.' OUR STATE DEPARTMENT CONSPIRES Welles, "the diplomatic wizard of the century" on his own admission, was not exactly inactive, either. He made himself the center for all the enemies of the new government, and himself became the chief conspirator. Day and night conferences were held at his home. He consorted daily with the terroristic ABC group. Blandly he encouraged their planting of bombs and roof-top sniping, then struck out against the Grau government for not maintaining law and order. At his direction, Martifiez Saenz, a National City Bank lawyer and head of the ABC, tried to convert that organization into an open political party. But brought out of secrecy, its pro-imperialist base was immediately apparent. Those who stepped forward to assume control proved to be bankers, lawyers, and stockholders with intimate connections with every type of powerful American business interest. It was this group that stood closest to Welles and which he was so desirous of seeing pushed into power. The most outrageous of his acts of meddling occurred in connection with the Hotel Nacional revolt. Machado military officers had seized the hotel and made it the center of their opposition to Grau. They planted machine guns in the windows and small cannon on the roof. But Welles did not protest the seizure of American property and its conversion into a fortress for the overthrow of the government. What he protested was the action of the government forces in seeking to oust the machadistas. He met the government corps in the lobby and forced them to about face. He was by his own interpretation extending to the Hotel Nacional (financed by National City and where he maintained rooms) the extra-territoriality commonly accorded embassy buildings. Responsibility for the subsequent blood-shedding was laid on him. The initial failure of Grau's men to oust the rebels, thus effectively protected by the American Ambassador, strengthened the morale of opponents and was an "incident to violence". BLOOD BARGAIN In the bloody Atares revolt of reactionary politicians, army officers and the ABC, Welles was even more directly involved. Carleton Beals reports :" "The government points out that Bias Hernandez (one of the leaders) was a puppet of Antonio Gonzalez de Mendoza of the American Sugar Refining Company, at whose home Welles had previously lived; that Ituralde visited the embassy two days prior to the revolt and emerged rubbing his hands and declaring to the press that the Cuban situation was now settled; that after the defeat of the rebels, Collazo was saved from arrest . . by being placed aboard a P. and 0. packet boat by the American battleship launch. Ituralde was one of the worst of all Machado cabinet officials . . . Collazo rose from the ranks to become . . . a millionaire and a power in the land; he was also a notorious Machado politician. These were the elements with which the ABC and Welles cooperated." PORTRAIT OF A CAREER DIPLOMAT Opposition of the Cuban populace to Welles reached such a pitch that Roosevelt was forced to recall him. Jefferson Caffery, already smeared with his handling of the Mellon interests in the infamous Barco oil deal of Colombia, was named by Roosevelt to succeed him. Once again Roosevelt refused to send a friend of Cuba to the important diplomatic post but again named a career diplomat not known to possess any scruples concerning the God-given obligation of. the American government to cooperate with the schemes of concessionaires and banking interests. The American banking houses in Cuba, concerned over Grau's rate cut of electric power from 17 cents, the highest in the world, to 9.5 cents a kilowatt hour, frightened by his tax reductions and labor legislation, welcomed Caffery with hosannahs. A new Cuba, hostile to imperialism, was threatening to rise out of chaos. But Caffery went rapidly to work. Behind him ranged the whole power of the United States government. With him daily in Havana were representatives of American banks to "orient" him to the Cuban scene. Our State Department was issuing pronunciamentos on "we are opposed to intervention"; but in Havana Caffery, working slyly, induced Batista to come and meet "the boys" at secret conferences. Batista met diplomats who flattered him, sugar mill superintendents who spoke of the "progressive army", and bankers' representatives who didn't talk very much but showed him the color of their money. The shining examples of Musso- 14 15 lini and Hitler were dazzled before his eyes. The New York Post of December 23, 1936 editorialized: "Batista is dictator because Sumner Welles and Jefferson Caffery turned his head, prevailed on him to betray the Cuban revolution and built him up into the Boss." BATISTA-"PROGRESSIVE SOCIALIST" Without the army's support, Grau was doomed. A month or so later, Caffery with quiet triumph could cable Washington that he had succeeded. Grau had resigned; Cuba was once more safe for finance capital. Carlos Mendieta, a de-bunked politician with none too savory a record, was installed as president. But as in the days of the De Cespedes government, the administrative center of the island was the American Embassy. Caffery held a moral ascendancy over Batista; he was mentor, friend and master in one. Batista and Caffery were soon seen riding daily together in Vedado, Havana surburb. Batista in the New York Times of July 5, 1936, described himself as a "progressive Socialist", obviously after proper coaching by Caffery. It was this "progressive Socialist", with Caffery's fine Italian hand directing, who had Mendieta sign a bewildering number of decree-laws in 1934 and 1935 which suppressed every civil right and culminated in the complete suspension of all constitutional law-a series of repressive edicts which still rule Cuba at this moment. THE SIAMESE TWINS Cubans call Caffery and Batista "the Siamese twins", but for Caffery is reserved their special hatred, for it is commonly known that Batista would "crumple like a rotten egg-shell" without Caffery. Caffery has used all the power of his office to twist and interpret favorably all news relating to his protege. Thus in 1935, on the full unleashing of the army terror, he brought frequent pressure on American correspondents to this end, threatening a more active censorship if the newspapermen failed to fall in line. It is no secret in Havana that no move of Batista's is made without preliminary conference with Caffery. The American Ambassador has openly said that he has settled personally more than one internal cabinet crisis. Caffery is accused by responsible Cubans of being the person in whose brain was hatched the notion of destroying the labor unions and outlawing all the liberal and radical parties. Caffery forced out Juan Antiga, the only liberal member of Mendieta's cabinet, for having made a settlement favorable to the workers in the big telephone strike. Caffery assured the Cuban opeople at a time when every responsible party had been driven underground, that they would have a fair chance to give expression to their opinion at the ballot box, though the Cubans themselves knew that with their leaders jailed, tortured, murdered or exiled, the elections which brought Miguel Gomez to office were machine-gun elections. At that time, in fact, members of parties representing 80 per cent of the Cuban populace-Young Cuba, Autenticos, Agrarian, Aprista, Communist and Bolshevik-Leninist-were not even allowed to vote. The situation preceding the actual balloting was thus outlined by Ramon Grau San Martin, writing from exile in Miami? "The government meets o . legitimate demands of public opinion with rifle and machine-gun fire, misusing the weapons of war, which should . . protect national principles and interests, never assassinate with impunity citizens who claim their rights. . . . We must recall that the deciding factor which led to my final resignation from the office of president .. aside from the perturbing influence of illegitimate inter- ests and the handiwork of Mr. Caffery-was my refusal to grant an extension of military jurisdiction to cover misdeeds committed by the armed forces. . . The government desires to hold elections. It would be impossible for any citizen not in accord with the ideas of the ruling power to go to the pone. . ." OUR STATE DEPARTMENT AIDS TERROR In ways not given a great deal of attention in our own country but meaningful to all Cubans, it has been intimated to the Cuban people that Batista is the white-haired boy of our State Department, which, by logical inference also sanctions his use of terror. When on the heels of the destruction of the trade union movement, Caffery declared in the New York Times, Dec. 7, 1936, that "the position of (Cuban) labor in 1936 was stronger than at any previous time in the history of the republic" ; when he stated that paper legislation "assures vacations, regulates dismissal, protects women and children", Cubans knew full well after their experiences with Machado and Guggenheim on the same score, that Caffery's dishonesty was designed to cloak. Batista's bloody tactics. When President Roosevelt received the then newly-elected Miguel Mariano Gomez and had nothing but praise for the "democratic election" which had put him into office, Cubans knew that Roosevelt was definitely linking himself with a regime which murders and jails their outstanding patriots. What else but moral sustenance to terror and misrule is the suspicious eagerness with which Roosevelt accorded recognition to the puppet regimes of De Cespedes, Mendieta and Gomez while refusing recognition to the liberal Grau San Martin? CRIME: ATTACK ON CAFFERY The most dramatic focus of resentment to Caffery's power-behind-thethrone tactics is contained in the terms of one portion of the recent fake amnesty decree, signed by Gomez, but backed actually by Caffery and Batista. We will have more to say about the amnesty later. This one section of it states that excluded from its benefits are "all prisoners convicted of speaking or writing disrespectfully of a foreign diplomat". This refers to Caffery; it can mean no one else. Only Caffery, as Welles 16 17 arrested at Guanabocoa, taken out on the highway and machine-gunned to death. The police told a lame story of a mysterious gangster car which murdered all four on the run-yet not a single policeman was so much as scratched I Gilberto Torres, in another instance, was fed forcibly when he helped conduct a hunger strike in the prison at Santiago de Cuba in protest against the beating of political prisoners. A few days later he died in horrible agony. Ground glass had been mixed in his food, but his death was officially recorded as a "suicide".' Francisco Rodriguez, one-time mayor of Batabano, was found murdered in the streets of the suburb, Miraflores. His family had been startled to learn of his arrest and had been assured he would be set free. The body of Jose Quintero was found beside him. Both had been inhumanly tortured. SCORES OF NAMES Scores upon scores of names could be thus listed, but space does not permit; these few examples must suffice. These murders are by no means a thing of the past; they occur today. Any daybreak may disclose corpses of opponents to Batista's throttling rule, lying in the different suburbs of Havana. In September the plant of the reactionary newspaper, El Pais, was bombed in Havana. Before any step was taken to find the real culprits on a basis of evidence, suspects were arrested wholesale, none of whom had any connection with acts of violence. One, a member of the underground "Joven Cuba" party, was burned to death in an official "torch murder", which police solemnly gave out to newspapermen as a suicide. Eight other members of the same party, including two women, were sentenced by the Urgency Court without any shred of proof and shot within 24 hours, Several other members of underground opposition parties were slain by "mysterious assailants," or in "deplorable automobile accidents". Fifty. Spanish-born Cubans were seized en masse in the meeting hall of the "Socialist Circle". Cooped up in the Castillo del Principe for more than a month, they were made to sleep on a concrete floor without bedding or cover and were not permitted to communicate with the Spanish consul. Prison officials amused themselves by making them run around and around a narrow room, shouting "Vive Mussolini" and "Vive Hitler", until they would drop from exhaustion. Several of the more stubborn were forced to kiss pictures of Mussolini and beaten until they fell bleeding. One man, refusing to kiss a picture of Col. Pedraza, threw it to the ground; he was fallen upon and beaten almost to the point of death. 20 "BORED CANE" The army has slaughtered hundreds of sugar plantation slaves besides, whose only crime consisted in organizing to receive wages higher than the 20 cents a day offered by American mill operators. The army, mobilized from the lower strata of the urban population, coddled with high wages and "bonuses for bravery", has dedicated a song to the plantation workers: "Bored cane will sing, Graveyards will smile And your mothers will cry." It is Batista's favorite jingle. Bored cane is slang for the rifle. A common torture method brought over from Europe is the squeezing of testicles by means of instruments. One of Batista's refinements is the wire-looped tourniquet drawn about the head of the prisoner and tightened with a pistol muzzle until inch-deep incisions are made. Seldom is a murdered body found without the tell-tale mark of this subtle persuader on the head. Beatings with thin rubber canes are much in vogue, and the tearing out of fingernails is favored by many a police official. But the crowning glory of all torture methods is the earthenware enclosure, which stands in the prison yard in Camaguey. It is the size of a small room and is filled with brackish water into which go two turtles. The luckless political is told to dive in and fetch up the female. If he cannot swim, so much the worse for him. But when he succeeds at last in bringing up one of the elusive turtles, he is immediately beaten upon the pretext that he disobeyed orders by bringing up the male. The turtle is thrown in again and again he must dive. Again he has brought up the wrong one and again he is beaten. He is kept at the fantastic game until he collapses.' "CASTOR OIL ORGY" In October, 1934, the German vessel, "Phoencia", unloaded in Havana a cargo of 50,000 liters of castor oil of the type used for airplane lubrication. All army posts and police headquarters were furnished with supplies of the oil. From that time forward, the Republic began hearing shocking tales of men and women forced at the point of guns to down whole liters of the stuff. Elias Suarez, of Guantanamo, spent three months in a hospital upon being forced to drink the castor oil. Miguel A. Quevedo, editor of the liberal magazine, Bohemia, was another subjected to this torture and his health was wrecked as a result. Hundreds of Cubans are unwilling participants in what has come to be known as the "castor oil orgy". 21 THROUGH THE THICKEST DUNGEON WALLS HE 4,000 political prisoners held in medieval dungeons in many cases outnumber common criminals. Their ranks have been swelled by the 500 or more imprisoned in the past four months. The hideous espionage system of the Havana police maintains a constant flow of new prisoners through the funnel of the Urgency Courts. The terrible plight of these courageous men and women is particularly poignant in the light of President Gomez' fake amnesty, which: after a lot of glowing promises, affected only about 90, and these the, least important. Certainly, the 500 new prisoners more than overshadow the benefits of the decree to 90 and underscore the depths of Gomez' treachery to his people. CONDITIONS IN THE PRISONS The capacity of the Castillo del Principe, Havana, built in the early days of the Spanish possession and today rated the worst prison on the island, is about 450; more than 2,000 are confined there at present. As many as 400 persons are confined in a single group cell which contains only twelve beds. Sanitary conditions are miserably bad. Politicals are treated far worse than common criminals. Medical attention is criminally inadequate. Life-term murderers are employed to whip politicals when punishment is meted out and are encouraged by good-behavior privileges such as extra rations to make the whippings vicious enough. There are three classes of cells: cells with beds in which prisoners may wear clothing; cells with beds but no clothing permitted ; and, finally, cells with no beds and no clothing. Buckets of water are sloshed over the stone floor so that prisoners in the last category may not even lie down. Confinement in solitary-holes cut out of living rock below sea-levelare a common form of punishment for the slightest infraction of a multitudinous set of rules. Men have been driven insane by too-long confinement in these pest-holes. Without air, light or sunshine, many come out with hair turned snow-white, with serious heart afflictions and rheumatism. In all cells attacks by droves of rats are nightmarish realities. LETTERS ARE SMUGGLED OUT For the most part, politicals may receive no books, visitors or letters. But letters are smuggled out from the Castillo del Principe, from the Isle of Pines penitentiary and other prisons :u "Our lives are in danger. We are mercilessly beaten on the slightest pretext. If :they cannot get us to break any of their silly rules, we are framed by guards at the four o'clock lowering of the flag; they testify that we showed disrespect to the colors. . . . We are in constant danger of our lives. . . ." Thousands of men and women, many of them Cuba's outstanding leaders in literature, science and thought, are tyrannized in sub-human prisons to keep down the lid. But a far greater number are still on the outside. The combination of Batista and Caffery will have to imprison half the island's population to continue to keep Cuba safe for American capital. In the meantime, the accusing voices of those inside will pierce the thickest dungeon wall and be heard around the world. UNIONS-ENEMIES OF REACTION EITHER tortures, imprisonment nor murder, by themselves, would have succeeded in completely crushing Cuba had it not been for the concomitant smashing of the trade unions. In every crisis of the post- Machado period, the organizing toiling classes kept alive the rallying cry: "Cuba Libre!" None of the provisional presidents, with the exception of Grau, received their support, and consequently all of them ignonimously collapsed. At every stage of Cuba's tragic history, the unions were first, heroic stumbling blocks to fascist-like reaction ; and second, leaders in the struggle for the economic emancipation of the island. UNMASKING CAFFERYS TRUE ROLE The unions swept aside the smoke-screen of impotent rationalism which Ambassador Caffery had raised to justify his support of Batista's terror, mercilessly exposing his role as agent not of the American people but of a handful of American bankers, capitalists and utility owners. The unions singled out his illegitimate and subversive activities for frontal attack, and in a series of brilliant strikes proved that Batista, his hand-maiden, working under his direct orders, was throttling the hopes of Cuba, the hopes of two continents, new-born with the downfall of Machado. Caffery quite early made plain that the unions would have to be silenced or the whole imperialist rape of Cuba would be made too public for comfort. Caffery easily recognized and identified his chief enemy. In a series of articles in the New York Times, it is reported:3 "Although labor unions which, he (Batista) said were under Communist and revolutionary leadership, were dissolved after the revolutionary strikes of 1934 and 7935, he asserted that they have since been permitted to reorganize and are now functioning throughout the island." Startling news, indeed, to Cuba's starving masses! Why are Batista and the New York Times silent about the hundreds of active trade-unionists clapped into dungeons by drum-head court martials; whose release Gomez' fake amnesty did not grant? Why do they not mention the scores of union leaders tortured and killed? 22 23 THE MURDERED AND IMPRISONED LABOR LEADERS Crescencio Freire, Gilberto Torres, Nieves Otero, the brothers Cuervo Galan, Eduardo Galvez, Aquilino Alvarez, Cesar Vilar, Eugenio Guzman, Andres Flores, Orestes Martinez Mancebo, Evaristo Perez, Francisco Alvarez, Rafael Ramos, Alberto-Romero, Eulalio Kessel, Enrique Chala, Lazaro Pena, Antonio Reytor, Jose Bustamente, Jose Borges, Guillermo Cremata, Rafael Giraud, Manuel Leiva, Moises Kuperman, Cesar Gonzalez Martinez, Antonio Paradela, Juan Rego, Ramon Bustelo, Francisco Trelles, Adalberto Martinez-these and hundreds of others-imprisoned or killed or tortured; the complete list of names would occupy dozens of pages! "They have since been permitted to reorganize, etc. . . ." A little investigation on the part of the Times correspondent from the bias of independence and clarity would have revealed how misleading and false is Batista's bland statement-or isn't the truth about Cuba's unions "news fit to print"? BATISTA'S FASCIST "UNIONS" The truth and the sole truth is that the few labor organizations (they cannot be dignified by the title, unions) which exist in Cuba today are run by Batista's henchmen as they were run by Machado to mislead Americans into the supposition that the army dictatorship is a thing of the past. Hitler is father to "unions" of the same stripe. In plain words, these organizations have a bureaucratic superstructure, answerable only to Batista and not to the workers involved. The main organizations are the Cuban Railroad Brotherhood, the Street Car Workers of Havana, the Federation of Power Plant Workers and the Cigar Makers Union. A few minor set-ups of the same kind exist in the interior but they are less important. Basically the workers have absolutely no confidence in any of these "unions" and have steadfastly withheld support. Existing as they do on paper, these caricatures of genuine unions have signed away to Batista the right to strike and the right to conduct even the simplest struggle. Their staffs are loaded with non-workers, ultra- reactionaries, who are trying to build a new National Federation of Labor (like Machado's notorious Cuban Federation) to replace the now underground Havana Federation of Labor and National Cuban Confederation of Labor. Cubans know that with all trade union leaders hunted through the streets like pariah dogs, dead, in jail or in exile, such a fake labor organization can be pushed through only under cover of Batista's bayonets. The whole maneuver would be comparable with a situation in this country if the leadership of the United Automobile 'Workers Union were to be handed over to Coughlin and Hearst 1 24 DECREE LAWS END DEMOCRACY-- Batista is as truthful in saying that unions are functioning as formerly as when he asserts that "the press prints freely what it wants, opposition papers are published, there is nothing to stop people gathering in public if they are orderly".' The fascist decree-laws which suspended all constitutional guarantees under Mendieta still strangle Cuba today. So do Urgency Courts, which sentence without ordinary rules of evidence. If the Times correspondent had been less content with official "hand-outs", he could have seen with his own eyes that such elementary rights as free press, free speech and free assembly are denied the enslaved Cuban. Previous to the union-smashing of 1935, the labor movement involved upwards of half a million people, but today these workers are shorn of practically every civil right. Following the downfall of Machado, the Cuban trade union movement occupied an honorable and highly important place in the scheme of internal Cuban affairs. The types of unions ranged from the most conservative to militant radical. The National Cuban Confederation of Labor (C. N. 0. C.) controlled the largest number of organized workers. The Havana Federation of Labor had under its wing 30,000 workers in Havana and vicinity and at one stage 20,000 to 30,000 more over the rest of the island, with principal collective strength concentrated in the provinces of Oriente and Camaguey, and, of course, Havana. AND SMASH TRADE UNIONS Scarcely a vestige of these organizations exists today, save a secret underground group of harassed but heroic workers. Batista's murder- gangs physically destroyed all union headquarters, all workers' centers on the heels of the 1935 General Strike. Files and correspondence were heaped in the street and set afire. Windows were smashed, walls leveled and typewriters and mimeograph machines crumpled by axes. Following Hitler's and Mussolini's example, decree-laws declared all union funds to be State property. It has already been related how leaders have been killed, tortured and jailed. An especially vicious campaign has been conducted against the foreign-born. Any worker intent on his rights, any active trade-unionist endeavoring to act for his fellow-men has disappeared either by the ley de fuega route-the "shot in flight" phase of the terror-or by some other summary fashion. This is not a state of affairs which ended with the "constitutional" election of Gomez, as the Times and other "impartial" investigations, echoing the official utterances of Caffery and Batista, would have us believe. It is going on today-now! 25 The slightest attempt to build up the unions anew is met with fresh outbursts of wholesale jailings, tortures, murders. BULLETS OR BOOKS? NE of the most burning condemnations of the system of gang rule in Cuba is contained in the state of education on the island. Machado began the destruction of Cuba's educational system; Batista carries on where he left off. Students, both in highschools and the University, have been bound by tradition to all of Cuba's political and economic struggles ever since their first strike against Machado found root and sustenance in lateral action by the toiling masses. UNIVERSITY CLOSED EIGHT YEARS Gomez was elected on a platform of re-opening the University and secondary schools (among other reforms), but in the controversy developed over rural elementary schools, it was almost forgotten that the University is not open to this day. The actual fact is that Batista, champion of fascist schools for children, fears the students. With Caffery and the whole force of imperialists behind him, he is as firmly against opening the doors of the University as he was against a genuine, sweeping amnesty. The students with their impressive record of fighting for just causes-a record probably unequalled by any other national student body in the world -are as potent a force against fascist-like rule as the unions. Machado first closed the University in 1927 for a year; again in 1930 for three years. Save for a short period under Grau and Mendieta, a total of but a few months, the University has not conducted classes for about eight years. Also with the exception of but a few months, high schools have been closed for about the same period ; the same is true of normal schools. THE SCHOOL OF DEATH Two generations in Cuba have grown up in darkness. Instead of university education, Cuban youth has been enrolled in the School of Death where bullets take the place of books and special intensive courses are given in "How to be Imprisoned", for elementary students, "How to be Tortured", for more advanced pupils, and "How to be Maimed and Murdered", a special post-graduate course, conferring a gravestone for a diploma. The chief professors are Fulgencio Batista and Jose Pedraza. Gerardo Machado is president-emeritus. A special lecture course in "Sugar Profits and Blood", is given by Jefferson Caffery. The board of trustees includes J. P. Morgan, Owen D. Young, Sumner Welles, Daniel 26 C. Roper, Norman H. Davis and Cordell Hull. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is faculty adviser and the author of the school song, "Good Neighborism". A generation of youth in Cuba has been hardened and embittered by a collective experience of horror and violence that would cow much older men. Young men and women, from the ages of 15 to 25, have seen comrades ambushed by official gunmen, then listed as suicides; professors, writers, men of learning dragged screaming from their homes in broad daylight, sadistically tortured, then openly killed ; other comrades thrown into dungeons from which they emerged, if at all, white-haired wrecks, half-insane from beatings undergone or witnessed. BULLETS COME FIRST Cuba, a country without borders, with no fear of invasion, maintains an army of more than 50,000, equipped with the latest in death-dealing devices, but keeps closed with drawn bayonet the portals of her schools. One-quarter of the new budget, a total of about $20,000,000, will be spent on the army in the coming year-three times more than on education, twelve times more than on agriculture, five times more than on public health. In 1935-6, the army spent $16,000,000, plus a Department of Interior budget of a little over $5,000,000 and a Department of Education allocation of $11,000,000. The schools were closed anyway and Batista was interested in sumptuous new barracks, the modernization of colonial fortresses, the purchase of new airplanes, armored cars and antiaircraft guns. A like budgetary slight-of-hand will be repeated this year. Books or bullets? The system of rule intrenched on the island is plainly on the side of bullets! THE ISSUE FACING AMERICANS m State Department in the interests of a microcosmic portion of the American population has helped tumble Cuba to starvation and ruin. It has helped, directly and indirectly, by both open and tacit support, a scourging terror that has driven a whole nation to despair. Thousands of honorable Cubans are in the overcrowded prisons of the island today. Hundreds face hourly death or atrocious torture. The toiling classes possess not the least vestige of democratic rights. The whole population groans under the iron heel of a rampant militarism. WE OWE A DEBT TO CUBA You have read the account of how Cuba is enslaved in order to squeeze out profits for power, utility and mill owners. You know that Cuba in all 27 but the formal sense is maintained as a colony, and that Caffery is more often cast in the role of a colonial administrator-without the responsibilities-than of an ambassador from one friendly people to another. The Cuban people have not yet said the final word. Though their wishes have not been consulted for centuries, they are struggling for expression. A fresh generation has risen in Cuba, destined to self-sacrifice, imbued with love for the people, dedicated to wage relentless war against the forces of crime and profit-devouring, tentacular imperialism. These young Cubans are nourishing a dream of an ampler way of life for the island. They call across ninety miles of ocean to millions of Americans to rally to their support, to speak out against the program of reaction and blood, which has brutalized the "Pearl of the Antilles". There is yet time to save lives and free prisoners. Only one thing will stay Batista's terror: the surging voice of hundreds of thousands of Americans raised in protest. If enough people throughout the land understood and sympathized with the plight of Cuba, resented army terror and publicly made known their resentment Batista in the pitiless searchlight of an aroused public opinion would have to change his tactics . . and the American imperialists backing him, the real rulers of Cuba, would be forced to sanction such a change, Footnotes ,Report of National Statistical Commission, 1927-28. (For brief accounts of Cuban sugar industry see Our Cuban Colony by Jenks, Chap. 3; also Problems of the New Cuba, Chaps. 1043.) 2 Carleton Beals, The Crime of Cuba. (Mr. Beals is the leading American authority on Cuba today. His studies in Latin-American affairs are among the most expert in the field.) New York Times, (July 4-9, 1936), a series of articles on Cuba, by Russell B. Porter, minimizing the terror and apologizing for Gomez-Batista by quoting lavishly from their own utterances. The articles manage to give a completely distorted picture of present-day Cuban conditions. Contrast with 4 New York Post (June 4-8, 1996), a series of articles by Arthur Pincus (also the detailed criticism of the Porter articles by Felix Morrow, in the Post, Aug. 18, 1936) and ° Socialist Call, (June 27, July 4, 11, 1930) articles by Arthur Pincus. Problems of the New Cuba, Report of the Commission on Cuban Affairs of the Foreign Policy Association. The commission went to Cuba for about seven weeks on the invitation of President Mcndieta, but claims "complete scientific independence". Carleton Beals, "Whither Cuba," in the Modern Monthly, Nov., 1033. a Carleton Beals, "American Dilpornacy in Cuba," in the Nation, Jan. 17, 1934. ° Ramon Gran San Martin, "The Cuban Terror," in the Nation, April 3, 1935. " See vanottardirt, Numero 2, Mayo de 1936, published by exiled Cuban patriots. There is also the incontrovertible evidence of Dr. Seigle's wife and daughter as to how he was trapped. Dr. Seigle was not engaged in any recent political activity, but years ago he had been a member of the Revolutionary Junta in New York, which operated against Machado. He was well known and beloved by thousands of Americans. Gathered at random from the files of the Socorro Obrera (Workers Aid) of Cuba. 28 Chronology 1933 AUGUST Sumner Welles replaces Ambassador Guggenheim. Gen- eral Strike. Machado eliminated. Provisional De Cespedes government set up. SEPTEMBER Sgt. Batista takes over command of military. With Student Directorate creates Grau San Martin government. Washington refuses recognition. OCTOBER Roosevelt orders 30 American war vessels to Cuban waters. Jefferson Caffery replaces Welles. Grau passes minimum wage laws, other reforms. 1934 JANUARY Batista withdraws support from Grau. Grau forced to resign. Carlos Mendieta becomes provisional president. Immediately recognized by Washington. Mendieta, puppet to Batista, stands by as army takes over most of civil department of government. FenatIARv University, normal schools, highschools closed. Working class leaders arrested. Decree-law No. 3 issued, forbidding strikes without first applying for compulsory arbitration. MARCH Decree-law No. 22 designates as common criminals all who advocate or lead strikes. Army terror in sugar mills. Hundreds of workers shot down by military. Then day hunger strike in Castillo del Principe prison. MAY 1 Workers' May Day parade protests fascist decree-laws. Hundreds wounded in police attack. Highschool students shot down. Two killed. JuNE Decree-law No. 292, suspends all civil rights; establishes Urgency Courts to judge political prisoners. These courts may bring in "convictions derived from presumptions, the personal condition of the accused, his antecedents in relation to the type of crime", (quoted from preamble) without recourse to usual court procedure or normal rules of evidence. (This decree-law still in effect today as are most others of the same period.) Just Censorship established over press. Terror mounts. Whole- sale arrests. Scores tortured and killed. 29 1935 JANUARY Three workers, Dominguez, Garcia and Rosell, murdered by police with blackjacks. Student leaders arrested. FEBRUARY Police fire on Havana Highschool. Orlando Lazcano, student, killed. Juan Marinello, professor at Havana University, Dr. Jose Chelala, Regina Pedroso, poet, Jose Rodrigues, writer, and Leonardo Fernandez sentenced to long prison terms, as editors of monthly review, "Masas", in which appeared .an article against "Yankee imperialism". MARCH General Strike. 100 murdered by army and police, including Crescendo Freire, Havana Federation of Labor leader; Armando Feito, student leaders ; and Enrique Fernandez, under-secretary in Grau's cabinet. Union headquarters padlocked, union funds usurped by army, labor movement crushed, driven underground. Beginning of worst phase of the terror. MAY Jose Fuentes, leader of opposition against Machado; Jaime Greenstein, young worker ; and Antonio Guiterras, popular secretary in Grau's cabinet, murdered. With Guiterras was also killed Carlos Aponte, chief of staff of Sandino's revolutionary Nicaraguan army. JUNE , Police ranks purged to eliminate left sympathizers. JULY Number of murders mount. Continue through the year. Machine gun elections in December. Miguel Mariano Gomez elected president. 1936 From January to the end of April, more than 50 oppositionists tortured and killed. MAY Gomez inaugurated as sixth "constitutional" president. Imprisonments of workers and students continue. JULY Twenty-four hour execution law passed to be used against political prisoners. Gomez endorses Urgency Courts and promises to continue them for another year. AUGUST Fake amnesty, proclaimed by Gomez-Batista, releases only 90 out of 4,000 imprisoned. Fresh imprisonments and daily murders. DECEMBER Gomez impeached and removed from office because of his opposition to Batista's 9 cent tax on sugar for army-controlled schools. Bru becomes president. Army terrorizes Cuban congress. 30