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-2- that were gouged out. It is almost a Buchenwald story, the crimes committed by this clever little dictator so pampered by our State Department in both Democratic and Republic days." Carleton Beals, in The Nation, January 24, 1959. Refugees from Batista's tyranny, of which there were thousands, were harassed in the U.S. by immigration authorities. The Batista clique enriched itself by outright corruption, sale of concessions and in countless other ways. The thefts ran into billions. The Batista tyranny, as the Popular Socialist Party (the Cuban Communist Party) points out, represented a government of unconditional submission to imperialism, to the foreign banks and corporations, to the big landowners, to the big import merchants and sugar magnates and other producers. That is why the Batista government was an anti-national, anti-workingclass and anti-people's regime. These forces feared the growing movement of the workers, peasants, intellectuals, and the national bourgeoisie for the greater democratic freedom and for freeing themselves from the domnation of the U.S. imperialism which has ruled the country for the past sixty years and which today owns 70 percent of the wealth of the country. The trade union center, the Confederation of Cuban Workers, was transformed into a government agency. The trade unions leaders elected by the workers removed from office by the government and corrupt and subservient men were designated in their places. The dictatorship ruthlessly intervened in union matters on all levels, dismissed, murdered, and imprisoned those loyal to the workers' cause. Batista would not have have been able to remain in power without the direct military aid of the U.S. State Department which supplied the guns, planes, and ammunition from the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo and through the Dominican government. "Our military men were advisers and trainers of the Cuban army ... Our commanders in the area decorated the worst killers of the Cuban Army. Diplomatic anc army banquets with the dictator were frequent and lavish." (Beals, The Nation, January 17, 1959) Moreover, the State Department and the Ambassador E. T. Smith intervened directly in the affairs of the government and virtually dictated Batista's actions to the very end. As Herbert Matthews writes in the New York Times, January 4, 1959: "History will prove that the dictator did have U.S. support for much of rhe greater part of his second seven years as the sole ruler. The U.S. ambassadors either by inclination or under orders from the State Department were friendly to Batista and openly so. Ambassador E. T. Smith, now in Havana, also openly showed his hostility toward Fidel Castro and this is something every well-informed Cuban Knows." III. BREID ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FATCS U.S. imperialism has dominated the country economically and politically for more than half a century. Cuba, with and population of about six and one-half billions, is one of the largest of the Caribbean Islands and one of the wealthiest. But its wealth is largely in the hands of American banks and industrialists. "Economically Cuba is as much a pat of the U.S. as if the 90-mile stretch of water between it and Key West never existed," wrote Robert M. Hallet, Latin American expert for the Christian Science Monitor in 1956. U.S. monopolies' sales amounted to $1,425 millions in 1953. All raw materials and all public utilities are owned by U.S. monopolies. Three-fourths of the tillable land is in the hands of foreigners. The sugar industry accounts for 75 percent of income. This is controlled by 161 sugar "centrals" most of which are controlled by U.S. interest that has 75 million dollars invested in the industry. In 1952 the Cuban Atlantic Sugar Company grabbed profits equal to forty percent of its capital in 1952. Other American corporations received like sums. The lack of read estate tac increases their profits.