Mendieta y Montefur, Carlos (1873–1960)

Carlos Mendieta y Montefur (b. 4 November 1873; d. 29 September 1960), president of Cuba (1934–1935). A colonel in the war of independence and afterward a congressman for more than twenty years, Mendieta was also a vice presidential candidate in 1916. Three years later he became editor of Heraldo de Cuba, where he achieved considerable fame as a combative political journalist. He was generally regarded as an honest man, and for a long time he was held by many to be the "hope of the Republic," until army chief Fulgencio Batista appointed him Cuba's provisional president on 18 January 1934.

Mendieta proved to be an inept and weak president whose main administrative skill was the ability to organize ephemeral compromises among party leaders. For this reason he was quickly dubbed Batista's puppet. During his brief term in office the revolutionary impetus that had begun the previous year came to an end when a general strike against the government was harshly repressed by the military. Mendieta's administration, however, was not altogether counterrevolutionary, for it confirmed much of the social legislation passed by the preceding revolutionary regime. It was also under Mendieta that women were enfranchised, and the Platt Amendment (1901), perceived by many Cubans as an infringement on their sovereignty, was finally abrogated by a treaty signed with the United States on 29 May 1934. Mendieta resigned on 10 December 1935.

See alsoCuba: The Republic .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Herminio Portell-Vilá, Nueva historia de la República de Cuba (1986): 429-455.

Additional Bibliography

Aguilar, Luis. 1933: Prologue to the Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972.

Pérez, Louis A., Jr. Cuba under the Platt Amendment, 1902–1934. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986.

                                  JosÉ M. HernÁndez