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military aid. Unable to stem the insurgency, Batista fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic on January 1, 1959, while Castro entered Havana in triumph. Batista eventually made his way to Spain and luxurious exile. Thereafter he adopted a low profile and died in Guadalmina, Spain, on August 6, 1973. Despite the ignominious end of his government, Batista had been the most influential Cuban political figure for over two decades. Further Reading Gellman, Irwin F. Roosevelt and Batista: Good Neighbor Diplomacy in Cuba, 1933–1945. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973. Halperin, Ernest. Fidel Castro’s Road to Power. Cambridge, Mass.: Center for International Studies, 1970. Hargrove, Claude. “Fulgencio Batista: Politics of the Electoral Process in Cuba, 1933–1944.” Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Howard University, 1979. Mallin, Jay. Fulgencio Batista: Ousted Cuban Dictator. Charlotteville, N.Y.: SamHar Press, 1974. Perez, G. E. G. Insurrection and Revolution: Armed Struggle in Cuba, 1952–1959. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Pubs., 1996. Whitney, Robert. State and Revolution in Cuba: Mass Mobilization and Political Change, 1920–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Batlle y Ordóñez, José (1856–1929) president of Uruguay José Batlle y Ordóñez was born in Montevideo on May 21, 1856, the son of a former general and president of Uruguay. His family embraced a long tradition of political activism within the Colorado Party, a liberal organization based in the nation’s urban centers. Their opponents, the Blancos, were rural conservatives who drew their strength from the agrarian countryside. Batlle attended the National University in 1873, but did not graduate and spent several months roaming about Paris. He returned home intending to work as a journalist on behalf of social causes and in 1886 briefly fought in an uprising against dictator Maximo Santos. He was captured but spared, owing to the reputation of his father, who served Uruguay well and retired without looting the treasury. Thereafter, Batlle intensified his efforts to reform the
nation through political means. He began by joining the Colorado Party, which was dispirited and in need of reorganization. In July 1886 he also founded the newspaper El Día, which became the party’s partisan mouthpiece and the first mass-circulation paper in Uruguayan history. By 1890 he won his first election to the House of Deputies, and in 1897 advanced his fortunes by becoming a senator. However, not everybody in the Colorado Party appreciated Batlle’s crusading spirit for fiscal reform, and his election as president of the Senate split that body deeply. Ultimately, hostile factions acting in concert with Blanco members forced him to concede his position. But Batlle gained many allies in his quest for social justice, and in March 1903 he was elected president of Uruguay for a four-year term. Batlle assumed office with a reform agenda at hand, but his first years were preoccupied by waging civil war. Apparently, a conservative Blanco faction took up arms in the countryside and fought the government stubbornly for two years. The military finally prevailed after killing rebel leader Aparicio Saravia, and Batlle could finally address the nation’s pressing social problems. He pursued this challenge hesitatingly at first, realizing the magnitude of political opposition against him. Nevertheless, he presided over such moderate, if landmark, reforms as reducing income taxes on public workers, building secondary schools in all cities, and granting women the right of divorce. Batlle was clearly disappointed by his inability to enact sweeping changes but he had established the groundwork for later, greater reform. When Batlle’s term in office expired he stepped down and spent several years in Europe studying contemporary social and political institutions. He was especially impressed by governance in Switzerland, which was headed by a plural presidency of several members. The former executive saw in this an opportunity to curb Uruguay’s penchant for one-man dictatorships, and he returned home in 1911 determined to effect greater change. His columns in El Día began touting the outlines of a bold social and economic program intent on forever altering the nation’s political landscape. The public readily absorbed Batlle’s intentions, and in March 1911 he was reelected president by overwhelming margins. His second term was much more progressive and productive than the first. In 1912 Batlle managed to pass comprehensive life