Batista has often been given the role of the boogie man.
In defense of Fulgencio Batista:
1) His first constitutional and legal presidency was good (1940-1944), he wrote the most advanced constitutional laws in every Latin American country at the time (He even had that Mexican-German spy shot who was giving the itineraries of the ships from Havana to the German U-boats).
2) He built the huge monument to Jose Marti that later Fidel took as his and perverted as La Plaza de la Revolucion.
3) Fulgencio was corrupt, he sold out to the Mafia (Santos Trafficante and others), but under Batista, and all the way to 1959, Cuba was ahead in Latin America in the majority of indicators of developments and wealth, such as TV, phones and doctors per person, income per capita, cars, and others. One thing lacking to Costa Rica and Argentina, for example, was alphabetization.
Fulgencio squeezed but did not suffocate. You could get your passport and travel anywhere during his “dictatorship”.
Fidel, and Che too, on the contrary, shot more people in the first 6 months of the revolution that those shot or executed officially by Cuban governments from 1902 to 1959 (Carlos Alberto Montaner, Diario Secreto de la Revolucion Cubana, 1964).
Fulgencio, like Cubans say, was like a suckling newborn compared to that Satan named Fidel Castro Ruz.
