Fulgencio Batista - Post-presidency

Post-presidency

In 1944, Batista's handpicked candidate for his successor, Carlos Saladrigas Zayas, was defeated by Grau. In the final months of his presidency, Batista sought to handicap the incoming Grau administration. In a July 17, 1944, dispatch to the U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Ambassador Spruille Braden wrote:

It is becoming increasingly apparent that President Batista intends to discomfit the incoming Administration in every way possible, particularly financially. A systematic raid on the Treasury is in full swing with the result that Dr. Grau will probably find empty coffers when he takes office on October 10. It is blatant that President Batista desires that Dr. Grau San Martin should assume obligations which in fairness and equity should be a matter of settlement by the present Administration.

Shortly after his successor was inaugurated, Batista left Cuba for the United States. "I just felt safer there," he said. He divorced his wife, Elisa, and married Marta Fernández Batista in 1945. Two of their four children were born in the United States.

For the next eight years Batista remained in the background, spending time in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City and a home in Daytona Beach, Florida.

He continued to participate in Cuban politics, and was elected to the Cuban Senate in absentia in 1948. Returning to Cuba, he decided to run for president and was given permission by President Grau, whereupon he formed the United Action Party. He later founded the Progressive Action Party, on taking power, but never regained his former popular support, though the unions supported him until the end.