(5 of 5)
Sugar Crash. Sugar soured the nature of El Gallo. While Cuba remained prosperous no one objected violently to President Machado's habit of lining his pockets with a little of every money-making concern on the island. His extravagant interest in ladies was excused as Latin temperament, as was his passion for bloody and immediate vengeance. But Cuba's prosperity depends on sugar and sugar crashed long before Wall Street. Following several recoveries and relapses after its first crash in 1921, sugar collapsed completely in 1930. The money that he so ardently desired could only be collected from the Government. President Machado became as effective a grafter as he had been a business man and administrator. The famed Central Highway was already under construction. President Machado acquired control of the stock of a construction company known as Warren Brothers, then awarded them the contract. They built the road at the magnificent rate of $120,000 a mile (similar road building costs about $40,000 a mile elsewhere in Cuba) which netted nearly $30,000,000 in graft for Machado & friends. Similar business with the new Cuban capitol building brought in another $12,000,000.
Porra v. A. B. C. To keep this up Gerardo Machado had to stay in office. To keep him in he established the Partida de la Porra, the Party of the Bludgeon, to beat and shoot opposition out of existence. For a brief period a female Porra was set up among husky prostitutes who attacked the wives and daughters of anti-Machadoans on the streets, ripping their clothes off with razor blades. Violence begets violence. In 1931 after the collapse of ex-President Menocal's abortive revolution (TIME. Aug. 17. 1931 et seq.) the A. B. C. was established to murder and bomb the Porra and other Machado henchmen. Strange as it seems careful observers believe that the A. B. C. may be the savior of Cuba. It, of all the opposition groups, has a program that consists of more than fighting Machado and hoping to fill its own pockets. Other opposition leaders beside ex-President Menocal are Colonel Carlos Mendieta. highly esteemed but generally considered too old for the job; and former Mayor Miguel Mariano Gomez of Havana, a genial politico. All these men are Hombres del '95 and the A. B. C. is heartily sick of its revolutionary ancestors. It is a youth movement, largely Fascist in ideas. It believes in breaking up the vast U. S. controlled plantations, establishing a real national currency, a national bank of issue, ending the Government lotteries and having compulsory military service to replace the swaggering professionals of the present Cuban army. But the A. B. C. has as yet no Mussolini, no Hitler.
*The Platt Amendment to the U. S. Army Appropriation Bill of 1901 provided in part: 1) that no foreign power should ever obtain lodgment in or establish control over Cuba. 2) that Cuba should contract no debt for which the revenues were inadequate. 3) that the United States might intervene to preserve independence, order, and Republican government, and to sec that Cuba discharged her obligations to other nations.