Cuba on the Verge: Martyrdom, Political Culture, and Civic Activism, 1946–1951

This chapter argues that the reason for Eddy Chibás's appeal—indeed, the reason he was seen as a selfless loco or madman amid hordes of self-interested hypocrites—lay in the crushing weight of nationalist consciousness and anti-imperialist sentiments among Cubans at the time. Consequently, when Chibás founded La Ortodoxía as a movement in 1947, his rivals in the ruling Auténtico Party simply could not control a stage increasingly crowded by average citizens committed to this task. From the mid-1940s to the early 1950s, government-sanctioned violence and widespread corruption characterized Cuba's brief “democratic moment,” but so did civic activism, unarmed struggles for political liberty, and a flourishing, expanding media.