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The paper is a revisionist history of Gerardo Machado and the role he played as president of Cuba from 1925 to 1933.
The thesis of the paper is that President Machado played a heroic, albeit tragic, role in the development of the Cuban nation. It describes why Machado has heretofore played the role of "villain" in Cuban histories, re-evaluates his contribution to the nation, argues that he was the best alternative for Cuba in the 1920s and 1930s, and examines the aftermath of the 1933 revolution. This is an account of the economic and physical reformation under Machado, his management of the political situation, the identities and methods of his political enemies, and a fresh analysis of why and how the Revolution of 1933 undermined the development of a stable Cuban political culture. Machado and the Revolution of 1933 play pivotal roles in interpretations of Cuban history. Since this work presents an entirely new understanding of this era it is sure to incite renewed discussion of not only Machado's role in Cuban history, but of the use and validity of violence in Cuba's history. The manuscript comprised my completed doctoral dissertation in the Department of History at the University of Miami under the direction of Professor Jaime Suchlicki. It seems to me that every doctoral dissertation and thesis should be published on the Internet in either html of pdf and so I have used Adobe Acrobat to translate this work into a PDF file.
Fritz Berggren, Ph.D.
November 1, 2001
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Theory and Introduction
American Opposition to Machado |