Was Batista's Cuba as successful as it appeared to tourists come to play on its beaches & gamble in its casinos?

Cuba

ALTHOUGH FULGENCIO BATISTA may have courted the help of the communists for his 1952 coup, he quickly cast them aside when he declared undying hostility to the Soviet bloc. Batista was attempting to legitimize his usurpation of the constitutional government and encourage support from American businessmen and gangsters. Without their continued investment, he could not maintain his hold on the reins of government.

Under Batista, Havana became America's playground (click to enlarge)

Much like Castro, Batista began his reign with a disavowal of any ambition for power. He insisted that he only acted out of deep affection for his patria and that his only interest was in restoring public tranquility. Batista claimed that the president he had deposed, Carlos Prío Socarrás, was plotting to overturn the upcoming elections and inaugurate a new revolutionary era. His coup thus forestalled an inevitable period of strife on the island. 

President Prío had allowed Batista to stand for election in abstentia, and some claimed that Batista only acted because he feared that he would not be legitimately elected. A prominent political scholar of the time declared that the 1952 seizure was merely an example of the violence inherent in Cuban politics. The real tragedy, wrote Herbert Matthews, a correspondent for the New York Times who found a role in my novel, Rebels on the Mountain, was the loss of faith in Cuban political leadership.

Regardless of anyone's opinion about the legitimacy of his government, Batista seemed more interested in a speedy return to “business as usual” that had won him many friends and supporters, especially among the Americans. To outside observers, Batista's Cuba possessed all the earmarks of capitalism at its best: political stability, encouragement of tourism, protection of foreign investment, and an expanding market for industrial products. Advertisements for goods imported from the United States filled Havana's newspapers: autos, tractors, sewing machines – the list was endless.

Hollywood loved Havana. Movie marquees shone with its impact. In Guys and Dolls, a hit musical, the hero, Sky Masterson, won the heart of a Salvation Army worker after a night on the town in Havana.

Tourists loved Havana. They flocked to the island to gamble in its casinos and play on its beaches.

Batista attracted commercial interest by his support of government agencies such as an Agricultural and Industrial Development Bank, a Cuban Foreign Trade Bank, and a Technological Research Institute. Although the sugar industry still vastly overshadowed other economic areas, announced a U.S. Department of Commerce bulletin, Cuba was not underdeveloped. Its people, they boasted, had the highest standard of living in Latin America.

In truth, Batista's Cuba was a magnificent facade. Behind the facade of prosperity and happiness, was an economic colony. The reformist ideals expressed in the 1940 constitution, that Batista helped craft, especially those relating to land reform, remained largely unsatisfied.