Eduardo Chibás

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Monument in Santiago de Cuba

Eduardo "Eddy" René Chibás Ribas (born August 26, 1907 in Santiago de Cuba , † August 16, 1951 in Havana , Cuba) was a publicist and Cuban politician. In 1947 he founded the Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Ortodoxos) , from which the Cuban revolutionary movement M-26-7 emerged under the later President Fidel Castro (also a member of the Orthodox Party).

Life

Chibás came as the son of Eduardo Chibás Guerra and Gloria Ribas Agramonte from the upper class of the city of Santiago de Cuba. There he attended the Jesuit Colegio Dolores before completing his final year of high school at the Colegio Belén in Havana, the country's most renowned elite school, which is also run by Jesuits. At the age of 17, he began his law studies at the University of Havana and subsequently became involved in the political student movement. He was considered one of the few non-corrupt politicians and represented a program of economic and social change in favor of a national economic policy directed against the supremacy of US corporations and the fight against corruption.

1926 Chibás arrested several times because of his protest against the prosecution of the student leader and founder of the Cuban Communist Party Julio Antonio Mella for terrorism . In 1927, Chibás co-founded the Directorio Estudiantil Universitario (DEU), the leading force in the fight against the dictator Gerardo Machado . At the end of 1932 he went into temporary exile. In 1933 he belonged to the revolutionary government of Ramón Grau San Martín , which was formed after the popular overthrow of Machado, but was deposed after just a hundred days by the military under Fulgencio Batista. Between 1935 and 1937 he was involved in the organization Izquierda Revolucionaria ("Revolutionary Left").

Memorial plaque on the house where he was born in Santiago de Cuba

Since 1938 he belonged to the Partido Revolucionario Cubano (Auténticos) (PRC-A), for which he participated as a member of the Constituent Assembly in drafting the 1940 constitution . In the mid-1940s he was one of the leading politicians of the PRC-A and in 1947 was considered a possible candidate for the party to succeed President Grau, who had reigned since 1944, but who chose Carlos Prío as his candidate. Chibás led the party's wing, which advocated greater emphasis on social reform. Chibás broke with the Auténticos in 1947 and founded the Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Ortodoxos), which appeared in particular as an anti-corruption party with high moral standards. With her he entered as a presidential candidate as early as 1948 with the motto Vergüenza contra Dinero (honor instead of money) , and ended up in third place behind the finally elected Carlos Prío by a clear margin. In the 1950 elections, he won a Senate seat.

Chibás was considered a promising candidate for the elections scheduled for June 1952, in which he sought to succeed Príos in the presidency, whose corruption and connection to the Mafia he denounced. But Chibás also represented a strictly anti-communist course against the Partido Socialista Popular .

After Chibás had accused numerous politicians of wrongdoing and bribery and had always substantiated his accusations, he announced in the summer of 1951 that he would present convincing evidence of his specific corruption allegations against the incumbent Minister of Education. This had called the allegations unfounded and asked Chibás to withdraw his allegations. Thus, on August 5, 1951, Chibás received enormous attention for his already popular radio show La Hora Dominical (Eng. "The Sunday Hour"), which he has hosted on the national broadcaster CMQ on Sundays since 1944 at prime time from 8pm. Instead of providing this evidence, however, he spoke about government corruption in general, warned of Batista's possible coup and called on the Cuban public to act that this would be his last wake-up call. However, he had already reached the end of his airtime and the microphones were already switched off when he inflicted serious injuries with a gun he had brought with him. He succumbed to these injuries eleven days later, on August 16, 1951. He was buried in the grave of hundreds of thousands of Cubans.

The Orthodox Party he founded lost its charismatic leader with him and gradually broke up into different wings after the military coup of Fulgencio Batistas in March 1952. Part of the supporters and members of the party, including Eddy Chibás' younger brother Raúl, later joined the July 26th Movement, which helped Fidel Castro take power in Cuba in the wake of the Cuban Revolution.

literature

  • Luis Conte Agüero: Eduardo Chibás: El Adalid de Cuba , Editorial Jus: Mexico 1955 (Spanish).
  • Samuel Farber: Revolution and Reaction in Cuba 1933-1960. A Political Sociology from Machado to Castro , Wesleyan University Press: Middletown 1976, ISBN 0819540994 (English).
  • Lela Sánchez Echeverría: La Polémica Infinita: Aureliano vs. Chibás y viceversa, Quevecor 2004 (Spanish), ISBN 978-1-931-92883-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Luis Conte Agüero: Eduardo René Chibás: el aldabonazo que cambió la historia ( Memento of the original from March 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / luisconteaguero.com archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , eyewitness account of the incident published on his personal website, August 21, 2013 (Spanish)
personal data
SURNAME Chibás, Eduardo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chibás Ribas, Eduardo René; Chibás Eddy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban politician, founder of the Orthodox Party
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Santiago de Cuba
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 1951
Place of death Havana