Military and Cuban politician. President of the Republic on two occasions, between 1940 – 1944 and between 1952 – 1959 in which he headed a court government after the coup d’état of March 10, 1952.
Batista, of humble origin, entered the army as a soldier. He excelled in the institution until reaching the rank of sergeant major, the highest among those enlisted.
During the government of Gerardo Machado, he joined ABC, an organization that he resigned from by moving away from the uprising line and joining the mediated government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.
On September 4, 1933, he led a military coup that overthrew Céspedes. Promoted to colonel and appointed by the Pentarca Sergio Carbó as head of the Army, he quickly integrated, from that new position, the most right wing of the provisional government of Ramón Grau San Martín, against whom he conspired until he was overthrown in January 1934. From that moment on, he was the strong man of Cuba, supported by the army.
In 1940 he was elected president of Cuba. After the electoral defeat of his party in the 1944 elections, he went into voluntary exile in Miami, United States, from where he continued to influence the politics of the Island.
He returned to run again for the presidency in the 1952 elections at the head of the Unitary Action Party, but before these elections he headed another coup d’état that overthrew Carlos Prío Socarrás. He then assumed the position of prime minister and then interim president, until he became president in the 1954 elections.
His government was fought from almost all political positions and had to face since December 1956 the revolutionary people’s war led by the 26th of July Movement in the mountains of the East and which spread rapidly throughout the country. Unable to face the popular revolution and with the army, his main support, defeated and demoralized, he fled in the early hours of January 1, 1959.