Word: grau
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Battle of the National Hotel. Waving away the presidency, Batista put the students' idol, Professor Ramón Grau San Martin, at the head of the government. But the sergeant upped himself to colonel and chief of staff, and fired almost the entire army officers' corps. The ousted officers holed up in the National Hotel. Batista sent soldiers to disarm them. Welles, who lived at the hotel, stopped that showdown by seating himself midway between the rival forces in the long lobby and imperturbably discussing Emily Dickinson's poetry with Adviser Adolf Berle until the soldiers withdrew...
...season. In that winy atmosphere, Batista tried something brand-new in Latin American dictator politics: he ran off a free and fair election. His man was soundly beaten. This was annoying, but there was nothing to do but graciously turn the presidency over to the winner, his old colleague Grau San Martin, and get out. Besides, staying in Havana at the time would have been asking for a Tommy-gun clip in the back...
...Senator in absentia in 1948, and was elected. In 1949, Grau having given way to Carlos Prío as President, Batista finally went home. Guarded by 20 soldiers, he lived at Kuquine, talking with politicos, playing canasta, and keeping in trim by working out daily on an exercise machine. There he bided his time until last month's revolt...
Pork & Passports. Why was there practically no opposition when Batista pulled his coup? The basic answer is that seven years of riotously rotten government had left the average Cuban too cynical about democracy to fight in its behalf. When Grau San Martin was swept into office in 1944 on a wave of popular demand for housecleaning, he said: "There is nothing wrong with Cuba that an honest administration can't cure." Then the scholarly professor and his successor proceeded to give the island, which has seen plenty of corruption in its time, the most graft-and gangster-ridden government...
Cuba's freewheeling democrats operated according to the rule, stated by a former Grau minister: "It's a credit to you if you're honest, but it's no great discredit if you're dishonest." Everybody helped himself. Senators who had spent half a million buying enough votes to win got their investment back in millions. For the President's congressional pals, there was a $4,000,000-a-month ration from the state lottery pork barrel. Sticky-fingered politicos picked up fortunes on contracts, customs deals, sugar quota allocations...