Political Life
A political figure, he served in the Liberal Party Administration of José Miguel Gómez. Allied with his predecessor outgoing president Alfredo Zayas and running as a Liberal Party candidate, he defeated Mario García Menocal of the Conservative Party by an overwhelming majority to become Cuba's 5th president. He took office as President of Cuba on May 20, 1925 and left office on August 12, 1933. Elected at the time of a fall in world sugar prices, he was a Cuban industrialist and member of the political elite of the Liberal Party.
Machado believed in the infant industry argument for protectionism. This led him to support the Vejeda Act of 1926, which attempted to raise sugar prices by cutting production, and the Customs-Tariff Law of 1927.Machado supported construction of the Central Highway.
Politically he was less adroit. He determined to make Cuba the "Switzerland of the Americas." His detractors claimed that he became despotic and forced his way into a second term. According to his critics, Machado abused and censored the press. The struggles against Machado have influenced both film and literature. It was in these turbulent times, when Machado ruled, that Cuban links to the Stalinist Communist International were made for the first time by Fabio Grobart. Turbulent times erupted in Cuba when the newly formed Communist Party began to destabilize the nation by allegedly committing terrorist acts of placing and exploding bombs in hotels and movie theatres in Havana, killing innocent men, women and children. President Machado threw Cuba into Martial Law as a result, while a partisan leftist media criticized the action taken by the 5th Cuban President. Although Machado is said to have ordered the murder of defecting communist Julio Antonio Mella in Mexico this murder is generally conceded to have been carried out by the Stalinist faction of the Communist International who were in a death struggle with the followers of Leon Trotsky. The actual assassination was probably done by an action group that included notorious communist assassin Vittorio Vidali. Trotsky was eventually also murdered in that country by communist assassin Ramón Mercader.
Read more about this topic: Gerardo Machado
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