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CubaAMERICAN DIPLOMATS CELEBRATED the Cuban elections of 1924 as heralding a new maturity in politics there. Opposition parties submitted to the inauguration of Gerado Machado as President. His election witnessed minimal disturbances. Everyone now expected an era of stability on the island. Unfortunately, these expectations weren't met. Within a few years, Machado consolidated his power and imposed one of the most brutal tyrannies in Cuban history. Machado began innocently enough. He promised to respect individual liberties and bring honesty to business and government through a program of moralización. During the early months of his administration, the educational system was renovated and public works projects were started. Machado even managed to retard a precipitous fall in sugar prices that was crippling the island's economy.
Cuban intellectuals praised the Machado administration and dreamed of an end to the Permanent Treaty that allowed America to meddle in their affairs. Cubans organized a League Against The Platt Amendment, the provision of the Cuban Constitution that gave the United States a legal right to meddle. Machado himself grumbled publicly against the amendment. Although Machado's foreign policy was anti-American and nationalistic in tone, it was pro-American in purpose. American diplomats and bankers trusted him more than any previous leader because Machado had financial interests in American-owned properties including Havana's public utilities. They realized that his nationalistic bombast was purely for public consumption. Machado was the first to successfully crush his opposition and transform his presidency into a brutal dictatorship. He began by absorbing fringe political groups into his party thus forming an early version of a “Rainbow Coalition”. His enemies, the Nationalist Coalition, found itself cut off from all support. Machado then forbade the formation of new political parties, public assemblies, and criticism in the press. Crowder's election code was emasculated when the Cuban Congress extended the president's term in office to six years, thus setting him on the path to dictatorship. Armed Machado thugs disrupted professional meetings of lawyers, doctors, engineers, and scientists until they elected pro-Machado leaders. Politicians, newspaper editors, and labor union leaders who attempted to defy the regime disappeared mysteriously. Cubans who escaped to America wrote of police visitations in the night, prison torturing, and official terrorizing. The United States Senate reacted with far more alacrity than the State Department. The Foreign Relations Committee called for an immediate investigation of the Cuban government. But Machado answered their charges by improving only his treatment of American businessmen and their interests, and America sent a new ambassador to Cuba. It is instructive to note that the rise of tyranny was preceded by an attack on the election process. It leads one to wonder if recent questionable activities in American elections and public loss of confidence in them could presage such trouble here. Why do so many American politicians recoil in horror at any suggestion of addressing these issues? Is it possible that we are not as "politically mature" as our forefathers?
5 Comments
12/5/2012 12:51:14 am
As a rule, voters become mature by spending too many years voting the wrong way. One day, they wake up, are responsible, understand reality, and began making sound, reasonable, and mature votes.
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Jack Durish
12/5/2012 02:27:20 am
You're exposing your political persuasions. Some would argue that by your measure, you have a lot of maturing to do. However, don't count me among that number.
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12/6/2012 01:23:39 am
The title of your article is a good question. I think that a free and unbiased press is necessary to anyone's political maturity. However, it does not stop there, for we, the citizens, need to seek out that free and unbiased press. Many in today's press located in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA rely on corporate funding and corporate management in order to exist. Once an entity with interests grounded purely in an increase in wealth leads the press, they are no longer free and no longer unbiased. Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman has long prided itself on its ability to remain independent of any profit motive. On her daily news show, many questions are asked that we NEVER hear in the for-profit media. For example, today she is covering the UN Climate Change Conference. In today's popular profit motivated media any substantive talk on climate change is stifled, hence there many people within the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA who don't even take climate change seriously or care about it. But, then when storms like Sandy and Katrina upset the lives of many in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, we are momentarily shocked, upset and reactive, when we could be instituting corrective measures beforehand to ensure that storms such as these are unable to devastate us so drastically. Instead of being proactive, we are reactive; we need to get serious and stop being lazy in order to really confront many of the challenges that today's world is facing. And, we can't just be motivated purely by an increase in wealth. The Bible states in 1 Timothy 6:10, For the LOVE of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.
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Jack Durish
12/6/2012 01:30:32 am
Your observations are all valid, but my question remains. Why do we allow this to happen? We The People are like abused wives who remain with their abusers thinking either they will change or we somehow deserve what we get. Why?
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12/9/2012 09:58:10 am
Many people allow this to happen because they are the blind being led by the blind. If people depend on someone who has the same deficiency to guide them, both the leader and the follower falls into the ditch. Then, they both have the ignorant idea to dig their way out of the ditch, which only propels them deeper and deeper into the ditch. Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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