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"All right, my boys!" the President suddenly exclaimed. "I'll resign." He dashed back to the Palace, drove next morning out of Havana to his estate. Through Havana spread the electrifying word: "Machado is through! Loot the Palace!"
Plunder & Death, Cautiously at first, then rapidly, joyously, riotously Havana's streets became full. With no soldiers to stop them this time, a swelling mob burst into the Palace, smashing, ransacking, pillaging "I've got Machado's sheets!" screamed a negress. Other mobsters tore the mosquito netting from the President's bed. Smarter thieves stole silverware and fine porcelain. The Presidential water filter attracted one patriot who wheeled it drunkenly away. Others threw avocados and oranges at tapestries and paintings. The sidewalks outside were littered ankle-deep with debris hurled from the windows.
Amid storms of laughter signs were hung on the Palace door reading "Vacant" and "For Rent." Thousands of mobsters, unable to crowd indoors, tore up palm fronds in the Palace gardens, marched off waving them in triumph. Some stopped at the U. S. Embassy to cheer Ambassador Welles who promised "continued mediation " declared that "Cubans are solving their own problems," begged for "control and calm."
By this time Cubans who had felt the clutches of the Porra, who had languished in slimy jails or knew that the Porra had murdered a friend or relative, started a wild manhunt through the streets of Havana to slay and trample every Porrista they could catch. Frenzy grew maddest when Colonel Antonio Jiminez, dread Chief of the Porra, was sighted on the Prado. "There's Jiminez! It's Jiminez, the Porrista! Kill him!"
Dodging behind a lamp post, Colonel Jiminez whipped out his pistol and fired into the crowd, wounding two civilians just as soldiers commanded by Lieut. Rogerio Perez Villalon dashed up in a motor car. Doubling back for refuge toward a drugstore, Colonel Jiminez found it closed (by the strike). He crawled in desperation under a stone bench on the Prado. Two Porristas who bravely sought to rescue their leader were killed by the soldiers' fusillade. Lieut. Villalon drew his pistol, warily approached the bench. Standing his ground, he shot it out with Jiminez until the latter fell on his side, mortally wounded. The watching mob closed in.
One man brought a rope. He wanted to hitch Jiminez' legs to a motor car and drag him through the streets. "No! No!" commanded Lieut. Villalon. "Let him lie in the streets like an animal!" The dying man stared up at them. They kicked and fouled his corpse after he went limp.
Bars served free drinks. Tipsy citizens cried "Whoopee!" in U. S. fashion as more Porristas (50 in all last week) were shot down, trampled and mangled by the crowds, dragged away by soldiers.