EDUARDO CHIBÁS. THE FURY OF DEMAGOGUERY

*By Pedro Roig

Eduardo Chibás Ribas (1907-1951) is remembered as one of the first Cuban politicians that used radio, modern broadcasting technique, to reach an immense audience.  By the 1950s one in five Cubans owned a radio.  It was a way of entering in hundred of thousands of homes, and talk directly to the Cubans.  Chibás had the gift of an outstanding communicator who could turn his words into a frenzy of emotion that mesmerized his audience. (In 1960 there was one TV set for every 15 Cubans.  Fidel Castro used the TV podium as Chibás had done with the radio).

Chibás went to “Dolores” Jesuit School in Santiago de Cuba, and when his family moved to Havana, he continued his Jesuit education at “Belén” and joined Cuba’s social elite at the Havana Yacht Club.  By 1947, this child of privilege, was Cuba’s foremost social justice and individual freedom leader.  Strongly anti-communist, Chibás attacked Blas Roca, the Secretary General of the Communist Party, with his bare fists, and monopolized the rhetoric of nationalism and honesty.  The idol of the new generation, the leader of the “Ortodoxo” Party, founded in 1947, Chibás was a charismatic, sizzling communicator, a volatile and moody showman with a laser tongue that cut deep into his political adversaries’ characters and agendas.  Courageous, at times reckless and prone to depression spells, Chibás became the gospel of a national regeneration.  From the depth of history, like a recurrent curse, the Cuban people looking for a political messiah had found an incendiary demagogue.  A curse to be repeated in 1959 with Fidel Castro’s failed revolution of dogmatic Marxist-Leninist criminal intolerance.

In 1947 Chibás broke away from his political alliance with President Ramón Grau.  This government was to be the fulfillment of the 1933 revolutionary promises but turned out as a miserable charade of broken dreams.  The reality is that Grau truly did not care.

At this juncture, Eduardo Chibás, by now one of Cuba’s most popular leaders, formed the Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Ortodoxo) to whose ranks ralled the liberal left, willing to wipe out corruption.  For the disillusioned masses, Chibás’ slogan was a call to action “Verguenza contra dinero” (Honesty against money).  It became a powerful message of decency and honesty.  The roots of the “Ortodoxo” leadership were mostly anchored among the rebellious Oriente province: Emilio “Millo” Ochoa, Luis Conte Agüero, Roberto García Ibanez, Alberto Saumell, Federico Fernández Casas and Chibás himself.

In 1948 Chibás ran for president and lost, but by June 1951 his radio program was a huge success (Sundays at 8 p.m.).   Chibás’ popularity was at an all time high and he seemed on his way to be Cuba’s next president when he clashed with President Carlos Príos’s Secretary of Education, Aureliano Sánchez Arango, a seasoned debater and well-respected politician.  On his Sunday radio broadcast, Chibás kept hammering at the need to eliminate corruption.  It was the obsession of his life and became more than any other issue, the driving force of the revolution’s generation.

The clash began in June, when Sánchez Arango called Chibás a master of defamation… a man of no honor, a fake apostle of the lie, the demagoguery, and the calumny, accusing Chibás of being involved in dishonest coffee deals.  Chibás response was swift.  He accused Sánchez Arango of stealing money earmarked for the children’s education to buy a lumberyard farm in Guatemala.  For weeks, the Cubans were caught in the ferocious clash of these high rated debaters.

Chibás assured his audience that he had the evidence of Aureliano’s corruption in his briefcase and that he was to show it in a public forum.  But he was wrong, as the Secretary of Education was an honest man and there was no evidence to show.  Chibás had been misled into believing the evidence was forthcoming, a huge mistake that put in jeopardy his credibility.  On the streets people began shouting at him “Chibás, where is the briefcase?”  The leading presidential candidate seemed doomed.

On Sunday, August 5, 1951, Chibás went to CMQ radio station, spoke for a few minutes, and ended with a desperate farewell.  “People of Cuba, arise and walk!  People of Cuba keep awake!  This is my last knock at your door” (Mi ultimo aldabonazo).  Chibás then took a 38 pistol and shot himself.  He died the 15 of August 1951, the nation was shocked.

During Chibás funeral, over 200,000 persons walked with the fallen idol’s casket through the streets of Havana.  There was a terrible feeling of despair, anger, confusion, and political emptiness.

From the historical failure of the Spanish political heritage, deeply rooted in Cuba (and Latin America), Eduardo Chibás, a reckless demagogue was turned into a role model.  He was given the honor of a colonel killed in action.  In his quest to save the Republic he undermined its democratic institution and facilitated Batista’s coup on March 10, 1952.  The free and prosperous Republic was 49 years old.

*   Pedro Roig is Executive Director of the Cuban Studies Institute. Roig is an attorney and historian that has written several books, including the Death of a Dream: A History of Cuba. He is a veteran of the Brigade 2506.