The bravado in those elections

The political parties and politicians pushed to win seats and climb to privileged positions in the Government, adjusted to the model of the North.

President Mario García Menocal, the Mayoral, played dirty games among his co-religionists to win at any cost in the 1924 general elections. His opponent, the former general of 1995, Gerardo Machado Morales, was not far behind in the other corner of the political ring in his attempt to throw Menocal to the canvas in his fight for the presidency.

Thinking of gaining followers, the latter would undertake a tour against Machado through the center-east of the country. All marked by skirmishes between liberals and conservatives, shootings and street fights between handsome neighborhoods and “guatacas” of the two party candidates.

It would happen that when the presidential train that brought Mr. Menocal and entourage to Camagüey passed, the liberals would form an opposition tangana. Governor Rogerio Zayas-Bazán would be behind the derailment caused and the shooting at the cars, in which there were many injured; rumors said that he was taking morphine.

To tell the truth, Menocal was not liked in Camagüey, among other reasons, due to the occurrence of the murder in Nuevitas by a shot in the forehead of the commander of the ’95 Gustavo Caballero Arango and the worker of the newspaper Las Dos Repúblicas, Nicolás Guillén Urra, all originated by the Menocalista re-election struggle in the so-called “little war” of August or “La Chambelona”, of 1917. Memories that the candidates of the corrupt Gerardo Machado would revive in his favor.

Thus, conservatives and liberals would shake their fists and revolvers at the rally in the “Ignacio Agramonte” Park, in front of El Liceo Society. That October blood would flow, 7 dead and 46 wounded. But neither bullets nor blows would stop the Mayoral from aspiring to the highest post in the Republic. He would even toast his safe presidential return among the Camagüeyan bourgeoisie, who would entertain him at the Liceo, among little Cuban flags and other artifices.

Outside, on top of the red granite pedestal of Baveno, the bronze Major Agramonte turned his back on those usurpers of the Republic, for so much shame and affront. There would be elections uselessly tarnished by the blood of the people. And among all kinds of fraud, bribes and corruption. He was part of the game of the “democrats” to assault the power of the Republic, -the servile surrender to the Yankees-, to which he will never return.

The current elections without a political campaign or rigged ballot boxes will be a forceful demonstration of the popular commitment to prosperous and sustainable socialism. ¡“Pa´ atrás, ni pa´ coger impulso”!

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García