Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Ortodoxos)

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The Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Ortodoxos) (German Party of the Cuban People - The Orthodox ) was a Cuban political party that existed from 1947 to 1959 . Colloquially it was often called Partido Ortodoxo (German Orthodox Party ), the most common abbreviation is PPC (O).

The party's goals were to fight corruption in the Cuban government, social reforms, economic independence and the development of a national identity.

history

The party was founded in May 1947 at the instigation of Eduardo Chibás , Emilio "Millo" Ochoa and Manuel Bisbé, who had previously been politically active within the ruling party Partido Revolucionario Cubano (Auténticos) and who, because of their dissatisfaction with the course of the party and the government, were under President Ramón Grau had left San Martín . The founding assembly in Havana, led by Chibás, consisted of six senators, nine members of the House of Representatives, the provincial governor of Matanzas, the mayors of Holguín, Bayamo and Las Tunas and other personalities. One of the party's main goals was the fight against corruption. The party had its own youth organization called Juventud Ortodoxa (Orthodox Youth). The party's central motto was “¡Vergüenza contra Dinero!” (German: honor instead of money! ) And was an allusion to the government's accused of corruption. A common symbol used by the party was a broom, which represented the orthodoxos' intention to purge the government of corrupt elements.

Although the Partido Revolucionario Cubano (Auténticos) had lost more and more popularity, the Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Ortodoxos) under top candidate Chibás did not succeed in defeating it in the presidential elections in 1948, which is why Carlos Prío was again the candidate of the Auténticos president has been.

With the help of a radio program in which he criticized the government, but also the former president Fulgencio Batista , who had returned to Cuba, Chibás succeeded in enormously increasing the popularity of his party. After his public suicide, which he wanted to commit during such a radio broadcast, but which he did not succeed because the microphones were already switched off, José Pardo Llada took over the program and Emilio Ochoa took over the party chairmanship.

Due to this suicide and the great success of the radio show, which acts as a party advertisement, a victory for Roberto Agramonte , the candidate of the Ortodoxos, in the elections in 1952 was almost certain. This was prevented, however, by the fact that Batista, who himself ran for the office of president, put on a coup in March 1952 and thus before the election and thus again established a presidential dictatorship.

As a result of the coup, a leadership dispute broke out within the PPC-O over the appropriate strategy for resistance to Batista's rule, with the focus on the question of whether the party should fight individually or jointly with the other opposition parties, in particular the Auténticos, the main political opponent so far. The leadership duo Ochoa and Agramonte fell apart and around them two rival wing of the party emerged, whose disagreement paralyzed the party and drastically reduced its political weight.

In order to overthrow Batista, Fidel Castro , who wanted to move into the House of Representatives for the first time as the candidate of the Ortodoxos in the elections that were finally canceled , organized an attack with 165 like-minded people, most of whom were students and supporters of the Ortodoxos, on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba and the Carlos-Manuel-de-Céspedes barracks in Bayamo. The aim of the attacks was to distribute the stocks of weapons in the barracks to the population and thus to trigger an armed uprising against Batista. After this plan had failed, Castro's supporters organized themselves from 1955 onwards in the July 26th Movement , which eventually replaced the Ortodoxos as the most important opposition group.

In 1954 Raúl Chibás, the younger brother of the party founder, took over the party chairmanship. In the spring, after unsuccessful negotiations with the government camp, the party leadership announced that it would boycott the elections scheduled for the beginning of November due to a lack of democratic guarantees - the elections were finally held with a very low turnout without the participation of the main opposition parties and Batista was confirmed unopposed in the presidential office. In June 1955 the PPC signed with the Auténticos and three smaller parties the “Manifesto of the SAR” ( Sociedad de Amigos de la República , Eng. “Society of Friends of the Republic”), which established a constitutional resistance to the Batista regime through political negotiations demanded. In the fall and winter of 1955, the Ortodoxos organized mass demonstrations across the country. During one such demonstration in December 1955 in Ciego de Ávila, the young Ortodoxo Raúl Cervantes was killed. The arrival of mourners from all over the country turned his funeral into a massive protest against Batista.

In 1956, Chibás resigned from the party leadership, which was then held by Felipe Pazos. Chibás and Pazos supported the guerrilla war led by Castro from December 1956. With him they negotiated and signed the "Manifesto of the Sierra Maestra" in July 1957, which emphasized the common goal of a "free, democratic and just Cuba", promised a return to the constitution of 1940 and thus the revolutionaries to greater support within moderate parts of the Population helped. In 1958, the PPC supported other groups of the opposition allied to Batista, the proposal, declared by Castro on behalf of the July 26th Movement, to appoint the independent judge Manuel Urrutia as transitional president after a victory over Batista .

Chibás and Pazos, as well as the former presidential candidate Agramonte, took over important government offices after the victory of the revolution in January 1959, but were soon disappointed by Castro's departure from the goals of the revolution declared before his victory and went into exile in 1959 and 1960 respectively. Emilio Ochoa, the party's co-founder and former chairman, also went into exile in 1960. In January 1961, the long-time president of Juventud Ortodoxa and Castro's friend from student days, Max Lesnik, followed.

Start-ups with reference to the PPC (O)

Even after party political activity outside the Communist Party of Cuba was banned under the rule of Fidel Castro, numerous Cubans continued to invoke the goals of the Orthodox Party and its charismatic founding figure Eddy Chibas. With express reference to the Orthodox Party, its former general secretary, the Chibás biographer and former supporter of Fidel Castro, Luis Conte Agüero, founded the exile organization Partido del Pueblo Cubano Ortodoxo - Partido Ortodoxo Cubano in Florida in July 2009 , of which he has been president since then whose founding supported numerous personalities, especially those of the right-wing spectrum among the Cubans in exile (including Marco Rubio , Armando Valladares and David Rivera ). Within Cuba, the Partido Cubano de Renovación Ortodoxa ("Cuban Party of Orthodox Renewal") has existed since its founding in Santiago de Cuba in 1998, which violates the legal prohibition of political union . Both groups, which refer to the ideological legacy of the historical PPC (O), have so far - in contrast to other oppositional groups - remained without any noticeable political response, neither within Cuba nor in exile.

Web links

literature

  • Julia Sweig: Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground . Harvard University Press 2002 (English), ISBN 978-0-674-01612-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Concepción Portuondo López: El Nacionalismo Ortodoxo. Su repercusión en la región de Santiago de Cuba ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The 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. , in: Santiago (Revista de la Universidad de Oriente) 91/2000, pp. 94–113, accessed via Google Docs on November 10, 2012 (Spanish) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ojs.uo.edu.cu
  2. ^ Julia Sweig: Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground , p. 22
  3. ↑ Dina Martínez Díaz: Crisis política en Cuba en la década del 50: desintegración de la Ortodoxia  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / ojs.uo.edu.cu   , in: Santiago (88) 1999, accessed July 30, 2013 (Spanish)
  4. ↑ 1955: SAR Manifesto , in the blog Cuba 1952–1959 , from April 22, 2009, accessed on November 8, 2012 (English)
  5. ↑ Marifeli Pérez-Stable: Reflections on Political Possibilities: Cuba's Peaceful Transition That Wasn't (1954-1956) , working paper of the Cuba Project of the City University of New York, undated, accessed on November 8, 2012 (English)
  6. ↑ Hal Hendrix: Castro Abandons Liberation Group , in: Miami News, January 5, 1958, accessed November 8, 2012
  7. ↑ Richard Gott: Obituary: Raul Chibas , in: The Guardian of October 5, 2002, accessed on November 8, 2012 (English)
  8. ^ Paul Lewis: Felipe Pazos, 88, Economist; Cuban Split Early With Castro , in: New York Times, March 9, 2001, accessed November 9, 2012
  9. ↑ Mauricio Vicent: Emilio 'Millo' Ochoa, político cubano , in: El País of July 2, 2007, accessed on November 8, 2012 (Spanish)
  10. ↑ Will Weissert (AP): Max Lesnik: Cuban refugee, Castro friend and communist hater , in: Herald Tribune of December 25, 2007, accessed on November 10, 2012 (English)
  11. ↑ Volker Skierka: Fidel Castro. A biography , Rowohlt: Hamburg 2002, p. 44
  12. ↑ Partido del Pueblo Cubano Ortodoxo - Partido Ortodoxo Cubano , founding document of July 11, 2009, accessed via the organization's blog on November 12, 2012 (Spanish)
  13. ↑ A Los Cubanos de la Isla (PDF; 117 kB), accessed on August 10, 2009, accessed on November 12, 2012 (Spanish)
  14. ↑ Partido Cubano de Renovación Ortodoxa ( Memento of the original from October 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , PCRO official website, accessed November 12, 2012 (Spanish) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.partidortodoxo.org