(3 of 9)
Bodies were left in sun-speckled streets as police warnings. One Santiago cop of the Batista regime, trying to break down a rebel woman, brought one of her brother's eyeballs on a platter to her cell. Other rebels were forced to watch their wives raped by cops. A U.S. resident of Santiago, who chanced upon Police Chief Rafael Salas Canizares shooting four young rebels dead in the street, reported: "He was in a state of maniacal ecstasy—face flushed, eyes bright, breathing hard."
But reporters trying to run down atrocity stories often found them to be rumors or plants. And Batista had streaks of mercy: most of today's rebel leaders, including the Castros, once jailed, were freed by Batista and lived to fight him again.
Habitual Corruption. Political morality under Batista, while conforming to a half-century of practice, hardly lived up to the idealistic constitution. During his seven years the gross national product soared from $2 billion to $2.6 billion, but the public debt rose from $200 million to $1.5 billion. Corruption ranged all the way from army sergeants who stole chickens to Batista himself, who shared with his cronies a 30% kickback on public-works contracts. Potbellied Chief of Staff Francisco Tabernilla and his family made off with the entire army retirement fund of $40 million. Havana storekeepers who wanted to attract crowds by having a bus-stop sign out front could get one any time—for a flat payment of $4,000 to traffic officials.
In Batista's last years Havana became the Western Hemisphere's capital of lust and license, with touches of depravity and opulence unmatched anywhere. Brothels, such as the Mambo Club, with chic girls, matronly overseers and a consulting physician, catered to U.S. tourists. Cheaper cribs along Virtues Street enticed Cubans. There were 10,000 harlots and as many panderers. Payoffs from prostitution and gambling ran into the millions and were efficiently organized, e.g., Batista's brother-in-law had charge of slot machines.
Graft and terror inflamed Cuba's people against Batista and helped add Cuba to Latin America's four-year chain of democratic upheavals. But in Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela, the army, while shucking its dictator-boss, remained nearly intact and moderated the transition to free elections. In Cuba, as in the Mexico of 1910, the people rose to smash the army. The only force left in Cuba is fidelismo, an adherence to whatever scheme pops into the hero's mind.
Living on Euphoria. Fidel Castro himself is egotistic, impulsive, immature, disorganized. A spellbinding romantic, he can talk spontaneously for as much as five hours without strain. He hates desks—behind which he may have to sit to run Cuba. He sleeps irregularly or forgets to sleep, living on euphoria. He has always been late for everything, whether leading a combat patrol or speaking last week to the Havana Rotary Club, where a blue-ribbon audience waited 4¾ hours for his arrival. Wildly, he blasted U.S. arms aid to Batista, but he paid a friendly call at 1 a.m. on the ambassador from Britain, which sold tanks and planes to Batista for nearly a year after the U.S. had stopped.