EDIT: “Might be true” is a better way of putting it.
On the Wikipedia article about Fulgencio Batista, the famously corrupt 1940s-1950s President of Cuba, there’s a statement that “his mother named him Ruben and gave him her surname, Zaldivar. His father did not want to register him as a Batista.”
Something about that makes me suspicious mostly due to the fact that most sources I find list Batista’s full name as “Ruben Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar”. These secondary sources I’ve read (in English as I can’t read Spanish although I’d love to learn just to have access to Cuban sources and out of interest) generally claim that he was born in wedlock to a poor family, the firstborn child of a canecutter who fought in the Cuban War of Independence/Spanish-American War, which is true. If he was born in wedlock it’s unlikely his father wouldn’t have acknowledged him as his son (especially not in 1901).
So is there any hard evidence for the idea that Batista was a) not born in wedlock and/or b) not originally called “Fulgencio Batista” but ran for President in his first election under a fake name?
Here’s the rest of the quote (Ignore the bit about the US$15000 bribe):
A quick search in Spanish yielded several sources which stated he was born “in a humble family”, but did not indicate marital status of the parents specifically.
This one indicates unión libre (that is, common-law marriage) and says in footnote 1 (I’ve translated legal and military concepts to the best of my ability, suggestions for improvement accepted): In 1923, Fulgencio Batista was able to get his father’s lastname recognized in General Order 148/1923, signed by Alberto Herrera, Chief of Staff of the National Army. Document included in “La gran mentira del 4 de septiembre de 1933” (the great lie of september 4, 1933) by Ricardo Adam Silva.
Note that common-law marriage was pretty common among the lower classes, such as Batista’s parents, for a variety of reasons. Lack of money for a wedding, it’s just so much easier to shack up, or even that one or both had been born out of wedlock themselves and believed they could not get married because of that (this last one was the case for many of the people my cousin helped get “paperworked” during her time as a voluntary in Venezuela in the 1990s).
As were Benito Juarez and Porfirio Diaz, Mexico’s late 19th C presidents – the first was the only Indian (indigenous) president Mexico has had, while the latter is largely remembered as a dictator favoring the wealthy classes (although, actually, the truth is more complex – Juarez presided over the “liberal” reforms which, among other things, emphasized individual-oriented capitalism, to the detriment of some indigenous territory and culture.)
Online friend of mine (born in 1987, so sixteen years older than me) who’s Mexican says Porfirio Diaz and Santa Anna are notorious in Mexico and that Mexican history doesn’t have a good view of Santa Anna, blaming him for “losing Texas to the Americans.”
Wasn’t Porfirio Diaz also just about the only president in Central America whose government wasn’t heavily influenced by the United Fruit Company?
To return to the OP there are probably a number of Dopers who (don’t) know that Belisario Batista worked on a UFC plantation or that Banes was a UFC town.
Huh, when I was in Guatemala they thought different. Basically, that Mexico was kidding itself that it was part of “north” america. However, this was just a tour guide.
Off topic, but this is just a confusion about two definitions of “continent” (or “region”): a cultural definition (in which Mexico joins Central America and South America as something called “Latin America”), and a physical definition (in which Mexico, the USA, and Canada make up “North America,” which Central America can be included in if we’re talking in broad generalities, but often it’s better to think of “Central America and the Caribbean” as a sort of sub-continent. Which brings us back to Cuba.
So, your Guatemalan guide was neglecting to consider the physical definition of a continent, while subtly criticizing Mexicans for their supposed feelings of socioeconomic superiority over Guatemalans.
And Guatemala is absolutely anything but boring, unless your friend is from the Mexican state of Chiapas, in which case he might find it boring because it’s so similar (they were even one country for a few years in the early 1800s.).
Okay, welcome to the Dope, but let’s continue this talk in a new thread somewhere, if you’d like!
Back when I was in school, the Spanish-from-Spain subdivision of America-the-Continent included Mexico in Central America (the southern limit is Panama); nowadays the subject gets la-la-laed away, but as this site says the border isn’t clear (link in Spanish, the EN version is blank). Historically, Mexico was never part of the Central American federation of countries, but it was considered Central America geographically. As in, “physical geography”. The argument I’ve heard most often from Mexicans to explain why they’re North America is not based on physical geography or history, it’s “we’re in NAFTA! N-A, North America!”
Note that one of the words meaning “American citizen/national” in Spanish is norteamericano (even though it’s listed as definition 3 and the previous ones are more inclusive), so saying that mexicans are norteamericanos is something which can lead to a lot of confusion.
Sidenote: I *have *been accused of lying about my age on the Internet before and while some people definitely do lie about their ages (my cousins for one, one of them’s eleven and has a Facebook account so that’s to be expected) I have no idea why people think I’m lying about being older.
??? My three-year-old could tell you what continent Mexico belongs to, as in physical geography.
I’ll give you an “out”: I’ve heard that (some?) European school systems emphasize considering “The Americas” as a single continent. For someone brought up with that perspective, rather than the standard US teaching (where “North America” and “South America” are as distinct as, say, “Africa” and “Asia”), I can see why the Panamanian isthmus might not see like such an obvious bridge between two continents.
But even then, I can BARELY understand this. Like I said, not to be mean, but my three-year-old can see the Panamanian isthmus as bridging two large, distinct land masses.
