Gerardo Machado

Gerardo Machado 1-03-05

Gerardo Machado, Time, 1933

Gerardo Machado (y Morales) (1871–1939).

Vital statistics

Born on September 28 1871, in Camajani [1] during the Ten Year's War he died March 29 1939, in Miami Beach, Florida. He was from the central provinces and poor background, said to have been a cattle rustler, before he joined the fight for independence. A butcher by trade he had only three fingers on his left hand. He married cousin Elvira Machado Nodal; they had three daughters; Laudelina (Nena), Angela Elvira and Berta [2].

War experience

He was one of the youngest Cuban generals of the 1895 to 1898 Cuban War of Independence [3]. Only two other War on Independence generals were younger: Calixto Enamorado (1874-1951) [4] and Enrique Loynaz del Castillo (1871-1963) [5], [6]. Gerardo Machado fought in the middle provinces along with José Miguel Gómez (1858-1921) who also was president on the Liberal Party ticket and José de Jesus Monteagudo who would later defeat the disorganized black separatist forces of Evaristo Estenoz and Pedro Ivonet win the 1912 Race War and cruelly crush this rebellion.

Machado also fought on the defeated Liberal side in the 1917 "Little War of February 1917” La Chambelona, José Miguel Gómez, Alfredo Zayas and with Enrique Loynaz del Castillo. Calixto Enamorado fought on the Conservative side. After the initial victories of the Liberals, things turned worse. Yet Machado continued to fight even after the Liberal lost at Caicaje on 8th of March until his cause was unsustainable and surrendered [7]. President Mario García Menocal had clearly won. In this war the Liberals were said to be pro-German. Menocal declared war on Germany April 7 of that same year.

Political Life

A political figure, he served in the Liberal Party Administration of José Miguel Gómez [8]. Allied with his predecessor outgoing president Alfredo Zayas and Running as a Liberal Party candidate, he defeated Mario Garcia Menocal of the Conservative Party by an overwhelming majority to become Cuba's 5th president. He took office as President of Cuba on May 20, 1925 and left office on August 12, 1933. Elected at the time of a fall in world sugar prices, he was a Cuban industrialist and member of the political elite of the Liberal Party. Machado was an economic reformer who tried to wean Cuba off of its heavy reliance on the sugar industry and resultant dependency on the United States. His presidency saw the passage of the Vejeda Act of 1926, a failed attempt to raise sugar prices by cutting production, and the Customs-Tariff Law of 1927, a successful attempt to encourage the diversification of Cuban industry.

Machado was determined to modernize Cuba [9], he constructed the Central Highway [10]. Politically he was less adroit, he determined to make Cuba the "Switzerland of the Americas" he became despotic and forced his way into a second term. By this time Machado had become an equal opportunity tyrant as documented by Walker Evans [11] and had made many enemies of the political left (except for a period of truce with the Cuban Communist Party), the center and the right. He also abused and censored the press [12], [13]. The struggles against Machado have influenced both film [14] and literature. However, to place the matter in international context, during Machado’s rule Mussolini controlled Italy [15], and Hitler was busy in Germany; there was Depression in the US. It was in these turbulent times when Machado ruled that Cuban links to the Stalinist Communist international were made for the first time by Fabio Grobart [16]. [[17]].

Although Machado is said to have ordered the murder of defecting communist Julio Antonio Mella in Mexico this murder is generally conceded to have been carried out by the Stalinist faction of the Communist International who were in death struggle with the followers of Leon Trotsky. The actual assassination was done by action group that included notorious communist assassin Vittorio Vidali. Trotsky was eventually also murdered in that country by communist assassin Ramon Mercader.

Machado loses power

In Cuba, Machado engaged in a long struggle with diverse insurgent groups which varied from the green shirts of the ABC to Blas Hernandez, to the conservative veterans of the Cuban War of Independence to the radical Antonio Guiteras group, and clung on for several years. He was finally toppled in the 1933 by US influence Sumner Welles [18], old Cuban War of Independence Veterans, Army Officers, and Civic Leaders [19]. His regimes' collapse was followed by a revolution led by dissident students, labor activists, and non-commissioned military officers, that left the power in the hands Fulgencio Batista. Machado along with Fidel Castro and Batista is considered to have been a dictator even by Anarchists [20] [[21]].

References

Machado y Morales, Gerardo (written in 1936 published in 1957 and later) Ocho años de lucha – memorias. Ediciones Universales, [22] and Ediciones Historicas Cubanas. Miami ISBN 0897293282 ISBN 0897293282

A collection Gerardo Machado’s papers have been digitized by the Cuban Heritage Collection Digitizing Project of the University of Miami [23].

• Duarte Oropesa, José (1989) Historiología Cubana. Ediciones Universal Miami ISBN 8439925808
• Masó, Calixto (1998) Historia de Cuba 3rd edition. Ediciones Universal, Miami. ISBN 0897298756
• Perez-Stable, Marifeli (1999); The Cuban Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Thomas,Hugh (1998) Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom. Da Capo Press; Updated edition (April, 1998) ISBN 0306808277