The CIA Trained Fulgencio Batista’s Torturers in Cuba
Fulgencio Batista’s Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities had a blood-spattered record of torture and political killings before the 1959 revolution. Declassified files show how the CIA nurtured the bureau and its repressive techniques.
Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista of Cuba (right) with then interim Cuban president Andrés Domingo (center) and then US vice president Richard M. Nixon (left) at a Cuban presidential palace dinner in February 1955. (Bettmann / Getty Images)
Seventy years ago this year, on May 4, 1955, the Central Intelligence Agency helped Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista set up the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (BRAC). The move came two years after Fidel Castro launched the Moncada Barracks attack in a bid to overthrow Batista’s regime and a year before Castro and his allies returned to Cuba from exile to begin a campaign of guerrilla warfare.
Batista had taken power in March 1952 after a coup that ousted President Carlos Prío. US support for the Batista dictatorship was the latest episode in a long history of interference with Cuban affairs, dating back to the late nineteenth century. BRAC agents spent the best part of four years brutally torturing and killing Batista’s opponents before the revolution of 1959 put an end to their activities.
Technicians of Torture
A declassified CIA document from the 1950s placed the formation of the BRAC in the context of a wider clampdown on communist political activity under Batista:
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