Batista was an intelligent man who rose from the bottom to the top of his society, He was in his first presidency a model for Latin American leaders. He unfortunately fell to his own ego and became a parody in his second presidency. It appears his regime executed well less thana thousand rebels, far fewer than Castro did in any year of the first decade of his tyranny. Anyone old enough to remember what the capital of Cuba was like in 1958 and what Havanna is today knows who was the better ruler. Incidentally Batista diverted himself in retirement in Portugal in writing historical memoirs which are remarkable.
Even the Mob told him to lighten up and give into some of the peoples demands—he would not listen. He bought Max Fleishmann’s old Yacht—a 160 footer named the Haida. Sailed it to Europe where it is today.
My dad told me a story, when mom was pregnant with me and giving birth at the hospital, this was in the mid 1960s. Dad was nervous as hell, and distractedly reading a Time magazine, it was an article about Castro and what a great guy he was. It didn’t make any sense. Castro was not considered a good guy in the 1960s, not even by Time magazine.
Then he looked at the date, the joke about old out of date magazines at Doctors offices isn’t false, it was a pre-revolution slob job on old Fidel.