Greater Caribbean Strongmen: Leadership Styles in Louisiana and Cuba in 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

During the 1920s and 1930s dire economic conditions in the Greater Caribbean facilitated the rise of political regimes led by peculiar strongmen. This dissertation offers a comparative analysis on the leadership styles of senator Huey Long from Louisiana and president Gerardo Machado of Cuba, who rose and fell during the interwar period in the broad space of the Greater Caribbean. Long and Machado found similar solutions to analogous problems their respective societies were experiencing. They both favored the development of expensive public works programs and created political discourses aimed at empowering poor farmers. At the same time, and thanks to these policies they were able to accumulate unprecedented power. This comparison enables a better understanding of the shape that politics took in this complicated period in history, and suggests a reassessment of simplistic culturally biased explanations influenced by the idea of American exceptionalism by transcending politically determined frontiers.

En los años veinte y treinta del siglo XX condiciones económicas adversas que ocurrieron en el Gran Caribe catalizaron la emergencia de regímenes políticos liderados por peculiares strongmen. Esta tesis ofrece un análisis comparativo del estilo de liderazgo del senador Huey Long de Luisiana y el presidente Gerardo Machado de Cuba, dos políticos que gobernaron en los años de entreguerras en el amplio espacio del llamado Gran Caribe. Long y Machado aplicaron soluciones similares a problemas análogos en sus respectivas sociedades, como fue el desarrollo de extravagantes programas de obras públicas y la creación de discursos políticos destinados a dar voz a granjeros pobres, mientras que acumulaban un poder sin precedentes. Esta comparación permite una mayor comprensión de las formas políticas que se desarrollaron en este complicado periodo y, trascendiendo fronteras políticamente determinadas, sugiere un replanteamiento de explicaciones simplistas y culturalmente predeterminadas, influenciadas por la idea del excepcionalismo norteamericano.