Eduardo Chibás

Eduardo René Chibás Rivas (1907 - 16 August 1951) was a Cuban politician who used radio to broadcast his political views to the public.

Above all he denounced the corruption and gangsterism that raged during the governments of Ramón Grau and Carlos Prío, which preceded the Batista era. He believed that corruption was the most important problem Cuba faced.

He was born in Santiago de Cuba to Eduardo Justo Chibás Guerra and Gloria de Rivas Agramonte. Chibás is considered to have influenced Fidel Castro\'s views.

Fidel Castro wrote an essay praising him, published in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde on 26 August 2007.

In 1947 he founded the Orthodox Party, whose aim was to expose corruption in the government and to achieve revolutionary change by constitutional means.

Castro also joined, because he considered Chibás his mentor. Chibás lost the 1948 presidential election, finishing third. He was an extremely strong critic of the winner of that election, Carlos Prío Socarrás.

Death

On 5 August 1951 Eduardo Chibás went to the CMQ radio station in Havana for his weekly radio show. That day he had promised to present evidence supporting his claim that the minister of education, Aureliano Sánchez Arango, had embezzled money.

Instead he talked about other subjects, warned that Fulgencio Batista might attempt a military coup, and made a farewell statement. Chibás, who was also a senator, was to present the testimony of congressmen supporting his statement, who in the end refused to do so, and Chibás believed that killing himself was the only way he could apologise for his failure to keep his promise.

Chibás shot himself during his weekly radio show; however, he had forgotten that his allotted radio time was only 25 minutes.

The shooting happened during a commercial for "Café Pilón", which removed the planned effect of "his grand finale".

At first it was assumed that Chibás would survive, but after 11 days of intensive care he died in hospital of his wounds.

The whole country mourned his death. He is buried in the Colón cemetery, Havana. Hundreds of thousands of people attended his funeral, and it was suggested that he could have been a candidate in the 1952 presidential election.

Batista took the government by force on 10 March 1952. Chibás lived on the fourteenth floor of the López Serrano building at the time of his suicide.

Article author: Andrei Olegovich