Menocal, Mario García (1866–1941)

Mario García Menocal (b. 17 December 1866; d. 1941), president of Cuba (1913–1921). Born in Jaguey Granada, Cuba, Menocal attended Cornell University in New York, receiving an engineering degree in 1888. Upon completion of his studies, Menocal went to work with his uncle, Ancieto G. Menocal, a noted canal engineer. Both men worked in Nicaragua, then a proposed trans-isthmian canal route.

Menocal participated in the Cuban War of Independence, he was appointed assistant secretary of war in the revolutionary government (1895), and fought with General Calixto García in the Oriente campaign. In 1897, after a strategic success at Tunas he was promoted to general. Menocal cooperated with the U.S. intervention and was named Havana's chief of police. He ran for president on the Conservative Party ticket in 1908 but was defeated by the Conservative turned Liberal José Miguel Gómez. Renominated in 1912, Menocal won, serving two terms. His presidency was fraught with corruption (including 372 indictments against public officials) and disrespect for the law. Indictments of government officials were rarely taken seriously and convictions were often negated through presidential pardons or congressional declarations of amnesty. Menocal's third attempt for the presidency in 1924 met with failure.

See alsoCuba: The Republic (1898–1959) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

William Fletcher Johnson, The History of Cuba (1920).

Louis A. Pérez, Cuba: Betweeen Reform and Revolution (1988).

Additional Bibliography

Fonte, Luisa. La nación cubana y Estados Unidos: Un estudio del discurso periodístico (1906–1921). Mexico City: El Colegio de México: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, 2002.

Ibarra, Jorge. Cuba, 1898–1921: Partidos políticos y clases sociales Havana, Cuba: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1992.

                                    Allan S. R. Sumnall