Maybe in search of New York Times’ coverage “The Ladies in White” should switch to Black? (sure worked for Batista’s opponents)
"The women, many dressed in black chanted “freedom! freedom!” They were drenched with fire hoses." (reported the New York Times Aug. 1957)
The New York Times sure went to bat for Cuba's "Ladies in Black."...Hummmm?
Apparently under the DIABOLICAL(!!!) Batista DICTATORSHIP(!!!), foreign newsfolks felt perfectly free to publish whatever the hell they wanted. They sure conduct themselves differently under the REFORMIST and PRAGMATIC PRESIDENCY of Castro.
Unreal.
Drenched with fire hoses? I rather doubt that. Sounds either exaggerated or false. Batista, given his mixed race and very humble origins, was always very sensitive about his image and always trying to be accepted as a gentleman. It seems highly unlikely, if not impossible, that he would have allowed his people to run roughshod over respectable middle-class WOMEN demonstrating peacefully.
"el comunista sabe que si él está en el Poder es porque Batista no quiso ser un soldado mulato, sino un caballero blanco." Gaston Baquero
True. But some "caballeros blanco" (Augusto Pinochet, for instance) handle these matters a bit more effectively.
Unreal
Baquero was black, came from poverty and happened to be homosexual. According to the official, “correct” narrative, that means he had three strikes against him and would thus have struck out in the horrid pre-1959 era. He was, however, a distinguished poet and essayist, a respected intellectual, and one of the leading and best-known journalists in pre-Castro Cuba. He became the editor of Cuba’s oldest and most aristocratic and conservative newspaper, the Diario de la Marina. He owed his position to very “reactionary” concepts: talent and integrity. His newspaper was one of the very few clearly anti-Castro voices in Cuba in the delirious early days of the “revolution,” until it was closed down and confiscated by the regime. He did not stay around to prostitute himself, but went into exile in Spain, where he died in 1997.
Batista always had acceptance issues, which is one big reason he was effectively weak against Castro. Fidel, after all, was white, from a well-heeled family, and at least nominally a lawyer, meaning he was perceived as having a clearly superior socioeconomic background and education. Batista was keenly aware that his own credentials, so to speak, were considered inferior, and he always tried to compensate, or overcompensate, for that disadvantage. The last thing he wanted was to look like a coarse, ignorant, thuggish mixed-race parvenu, so he bent over backwards to avoid resembling someone like Hugo Chávez. If he had been as bad as he’s been painted, he would never have been anywhere near as lenient, not to say magnanimous, as he was with Fidel and his brother, both of whom he could easily have eliminated early on. It’s also possible, of course, that he was simply too dense to realize the seriousness of the Castro threat, but there’s little doubt that his personal insecurity played a role. Basically, he wanted not only to rule but to be liked and genuinely accepted as legitimate, and that’s a need a dictator cannot really afford.