Batista (y Zaldívar), Fulgencio (1901–1973)

Former dictator-president of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista. This photograph was taken in 1959, after the Castro-led rebellion had ousted Batista on 1 January that year.

Cuban right-wing dictator, dictator-president 1934–44 and 1952–59. Having led the September 1933 coup to install Ramón Grau San Martín in power, he forced Grau's resignation in 1934 to become Cuba's effective ruler, as formal president from 1940. Exiled in the USA 1944–49, he ousted President Carlos Prío Socarrás in a military coup in 1952. His authoritarian methods enabled him to jail his opponents and amass a large personal fortune. He was overthrown by rebel forces led by Fidel Castro in 1959. Batista fled to the Dominican Republic and later to Portugal. He died in Spain.

During his first presidency Batista sponsored economic and social reforms, influenced by European fascist-corporatism, but at the 1944 presidential elections his preferred candidate was defeated by Grau and he went into exile. After deposing Socarrás, whose regime was tainted with corruption, Batista suspended the constitution and held a rigged election in 1954. His increasing authoritarianism provoked uprisings and, after a derided sham election in 1958, he was overthrown on 1 January 1959 by Castro, whose rebel forces had waged a three-year-long insurgency.

Batista was born in Banes, in eastern Cuba. He was a career soldier from 1921 and, as an army sergeant, participated in the August 1933 overthrow of the dictator Gerardo Machado y Morales. A month later, he led the military coup that ousted Manuel de Céspedes and installed Grau in power. Batista, by now a colonel, was made army chief of staff and took power the following year.