Cuba under País

The Vulture

Banned
Suppose both Fidel and Raul are killed shortly after beaching the Granma in Cuba. However, Frank País and his urban guerilla movement are able to wrench power away from Batista nonetheless. Without the influence of the Castro brothers, how would a Cuba meant to be wholly democratic turn out? What might Ernesto Guevara do in this situation?
 

NothingNow

Banned
Suppose both Fidel and Raul are killed shortly after beaching the Granma in Cuba. However, Frank País and his urban guerilla movement are able to wrench power away from Batista nonetheless. Without the influence of the Castro brothers, how would a Cuba meant to be wholly democratic turn out? What might Ernesto Guevara do in this situation?
It'll be a fairly nice place. However, the CIA would still try and co-opt the government if it moves against American buisness interests.
Now about Che, He was on the Granma, so there's a very good chance that he's dead as well.
 

maverick

Banned
It'll be a fairly nice place.

Not necessarily.

It could turn out just like IOTL Cuba, It could turn out like Cambodia.

Before 1789, Robespierre was the nicest guy in the world, and Castro might have been real nice before 1952-1957 as well, that's not a guarantee that power won't drive them crazy.

Pais was strongly pro-Democracy and pro-Religion before his death, but lest we forget that Robespierre was opposed the Death Penalty before the French Revolution.

Well, nevertheless, let's assume that Pais remains a, let's call him Christian-Democrat to save time, which means that he can't ally with the Godless, Authoritarian Dictatorship of the USSR, and he's a young reformist revolutionary, so that can't endear him to the Eisenhower crowd in Washington.

There might be a coup in the early 1960s, depending on how competent the ITTL CIA is.
 
Mav: Christian Democrats were the Kennedys' preferred allies in Latin America- why would there be a coup? Nixon didn't mind CDs either.
 

The Vulture

Banned
Mav: Christian Democrats were the Kennedys' preferred allies in Latin America- why would there be a coup? Nixon didn't mind CDs either.

If he tries to nationalize American business interests, Washington won't be happy. He probably would have kicked out the Mob as well.
 
Hmm... I know Nixon would do what he did in '73 IOTL but I think the Kennedys' response would be FDR's to Cardenas in '38- fair compensation & no worries.
 
Hmm... I know Nixon would do what he did in '73 IOTL but I think the Kennedys' response would be FDR's to Cardenas in '38- fair compensation & no worries.

Cuba doesn't work that way. The USA viewed it as their own private backyard, and no revolutionary government would have been tolerated. There would have been an intervention.
 
Knowing the CIA's dark history of butting into the affairs of Latin American governments, I would suspect that Pais would be overthrown in a coup or outright assassinated.
 
Cuba doesn't work that way. The USA viewed it as their own private backyard, and no revolutionary government would have been tolerated. There would have been an intervention.

More likely they'd have just generously funded his opponent's election campaign. Unlike Chile's Allende, Pais is obviously not a Communist, and if Pais gets the Church on board, American intervention is just inviting loud complaints from the cassocked hordes, at the very least...

And IIRC the United States originally recognized Castro's government when they took over; it wasn't until the nationalizations and the buddy-buddy with the Reds that things got pear-shaped. With a strong non-Communist alternative, the likelihood of outright gunboat diplomacy decreases.
 
More likely they'd have just generously funded his opponent's election campaign. Unlike Chile's Allende, Pais is obviously not a Communist, and if Pais gets the Church on board, American intervention is just inviting loud complaints from the cassocked hordes, at the very least...

And IIRC the United States originally recognized Castro's government when they took over; it wasn't until the nationalizations and the buddy-buddy with the Reds that things got pear-shaped. With a strong non-Communist alternative, the likelihood of outright gunboat diplomacy decreases.

In this time period, a Latin American nation was Communist if it didn't open itself up for US exploitation. Nationalizations would have been enough to get Pais painted as the Stalin of the South. If he's lucky he'd end up like Hugo Chavez today, thoroughly demonized in the west while they exploit the country's freedoms to compromise the democratic process. Pais will be forced to insulate the democratic process from outside influence and will be called a dictator in the process. At this point he might as well seek soviet help, because if the US can't topple him peacefully, they'll try using other means.
 
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