Carlos Prio Socarrás

Carlos Prío Socarrás (left) with Harry S. Truman in 1948

Carlos Prío Socarrás (born July 14, 1903 in Bahía Honda , Cuba , † April 5, 1977 in Miami , USA ) was a Cuban politician. From 1948 until the military coup of Fulgencio Batista on 10. March 1952, he was President of the Republic of Cuba.

Life

Prío Socarrás was one of the founders of the Authentic Party ( Partido Revolucionario Cubano (Auténticos) ). His political rise began with the popular movement against the dictator Gerardo Machado . During his reign Prío had led the student directorate ( Directorio Estudiantil Universitario DEU) of the University of Havana and in 1933 during the uprising the Revolutionary Junta in Camp Columbia . He was Prime Minister in 1933 under President Ramón Grau San Martín . In 1947 he was Minister of Labor and cleaned in the early days of the Cold War , the unions of the Communists of the Socialist People's Party to take their place members of the Authentic Party use. Union leaders like Lazaro Peña received death threats and sugar workers union leader Jesús Menéndez was shot dead from behind by a police officer.

In 1948 Prío won the elections against the candidate of the Orthodox Party ( Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Ortodoxos) ) Eduardo Chibás . Like most of his predecessors in office, Prío Socarrás was considered corrupt. During his political activities he accumulated great fortunes. For the elections of 1952, Eduardo Chibás was considered the most promising candidate. Chibás committed suicide in front of the microphone of a radio station in order to trigger the popular uprising. Despite or because of the unsuccessful signal, a victory of the Orthodox Party against Prio could not be stopped. Fulgencio Batista did not wait for his candidate to be defeated and launched a coup three months before the election date. Prio later had to go into exile in the United States and from there provided financial support for both Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo's Directorio Revolucionario and Fidel Castro's July 26th Movement . After the victory of the 1959 revolution , it became clear that there was no future for him in Cuba. He lived as a businessman in Miami, Florida until his death . After he got into great financial difficulties and at the same time was disappointed by the new Cuba policy of the US government under President Jimmy Carter , he committed suicide on April 5, 1977 by shooting a revolver.

literature

• Carlos Prio Socarrás , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 07/1961 from February 6, 1961, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Carlos Prío Socarrás  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ David Kaiser : The Road to Dallas. The Assassination of John. F. Kennedy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2008, p. 28.
2. ↑ Ron LaBrecque and Gloria Marina: Despondent Prío Kills Self on Beach , in: Miami Herald of April 6, 1977, accessed via Latinamericanstudies.org on January 8, 2013 (English)