The Overthrow of Machado, 1933: How Ambassador Welles “Mediated” in Cuba and Refused to Recognise a Government He Disliked

The overthrow of Machado is the story of how in 1933 the US ambassador Sumner Welles, under the guise of “mediation”, first helped remove the Cuban dictator and then refused to recognise the government that Cuba liked. He needed neither the dictator nor the people’s rule. He needed “his own” man, and he found him. I write about this with particular irritation, because at that very moment Washington was loudly proclaiming a “Good Neighbour” policy and renouncing intervention.

Let’s work out how beautiful words covered a very old practice. Cuba is where it was honed best: it is enough to recall the Platt Amendment, which from 1901 gave the US the right to interfere in the island’s internal affairs.

Why the overthrow of Machado began

Gerardo Machado came to power in 1925 as a reformer and turned into a harsh dictator. In 1928 he extended his term without allowing the country a real election. Students, trade unions and intellectuals rose against him, and then the whole country. The world crisis finished off the sugar economy: sugar prices collapsed, unemployment rose, hunger became routine. Machado answered with repression. His police killed opponents in the streets.

American business had lived in peace with Machado for decades. Banks, sugar companies, electric and telephone corporations got everything they wanted from him. That is why Washington tolerated the dictator as long as he guaranteed order. When order began to collapse, patience ran out.

The ambassador arrives to “help”

In May 1933 the new president Franklin Roosevelt sent Sumner Welles to Cuba, an experienced diplomat who had already been there and in the Dominican Republic. At the same time he officially went to “mediate” between Machado and the opposition. In fact he came to decide. Let me remind you that the US had already intervened on the island twice: in 1906–1909 during the entry of American troops into Cuba and later, in 1917.

Welles made it clear to Machado at once that it was time to go. In addition, everything went the usual way after that: pressure on the army, talks with politicians, threats of intervention. Moreover, Washington demonstratively kept warships off the Cuban coast.

How the overthrow of Machado was carried out

In August 1933 a general strike began in Cuba. Transport, ports and factories stopped. The army refused to shoot. On 12 August Machado fled the island, and power passed to Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a man chosen by Welles himself. Meanwhile the American ambassador rejoiced: Cuba had got the “right” president without a shot.

But three weeks later it all collapsed. On 4 September sergeants and soldiers led by Fulgencio Batista staged the “Sergeants’ Revolt” and overthrew Céspedes. Welles saw a catastrophe in this. Power passed to a revolutionary government and then to Professor Ramón Grau San Martín. In addition, he carried out reforms: an eight-hour working day, a minimum wage, votes for women, and he also took control of an American electric company.

“Intervention he did not approve”

For Welles this was too much. In essence, he demanded direct invasion by the Marines and sent dispatches to Washington calling Grau’s government “communist”. Roosevelt, fortunately for Cuba, refused to land troops. But he used a different weapon: the US simply refused to recognise Grau’s government. Without American recognition no government in Cuba could last long. That is a diplomatic way of strangling, and it works to this day.

Grau lasted a little over four months. In January 1934 Batista, by then the main man in the army, withdrew his support. Carlos Mendieta, a conservative, became president. And the US recognised him in five days. Note the speed: five days instead of four months of silence.

What Cuba got after the overthrow of Machado

The result is this. A people’s government with reforms was strangled by diplomatic non-recognition. Batista became the real master of the island for the next ten years, and then returned as dictator in 1952. In addition, Welles left Cuba in December 1933, and his place was taken by Jefferson Caffery, the same diplomat who in Colombia in 1928 pressed the authorities during the banana massacre.

In May 1934 the US repealed the Platt Amendment, and in Washington this was called a generous gesture. But they kept the base at Guantánamo forever and kept economic control over the island. You can read more about the events in the reference article on the Sergeants’ Revolt. In parallel, in those same years in neighbouring Nicaragua the US first bombed Sandino’s army and then prepared his murder, which I describe in my piece on the assassination of Sandino.

How Welles’s “mediation” ended

But the lessons of this story were drawn not only in Cuba. For example, in Washington it was understood that open invasion is expensive and awkward. Therefore the bet was placed on recognition, loans and the “right” military men. Besides, Batista, as it turned out, was an ideal intermediary: he guaranteed order and did not touch American companies. In the end the overthrow of Machado opened the way for a man who returned as dictator nineteen years later, and that is, in essence, a natural result.

Nothing has changed: recognition as a weapon

Welles’s method has not died. Today Washington also decides whom to recognise, whom to give money to and whose government is “legitimate”. Words like “support for democracy” only cover what Welles did: a separate right of the US to decide who runs a foreign country.

Guantánamo, 2025. In January 2025 Trump ordered space prepared at the American base at Guantánamo for thirty thousand migrants. A base on land that Cuba has considered occupied since 1903 was turned into a prison for people without rights. That is, in essence, how the “lease” works, whose payments Cuba has refused to accept for more than sixty years.

Venezuela, 2025–2026. Washington refused to recognise Venezuela’s elections while that suited it, and in January 2026 it seized President Maduro by force. Trump then announced that the US “runs” the country.

Argentina, October 2025. For example, Washington promised Milei a twenty-billion-dollar currency swap, and Trump added outright: if Milei lost the election, “we’re gone”. The money is tied directly to politics, as recognition was once tied to Mendieta.

Brazil, July 2025. The fifty percent US tariffs were tied directly to the trial of Bolsonaro.

The overthrow of Machado in Cuba taught Washington a simple rule: first remove one man, then refuse to recognise the next until the right one comes. Almost a hundred years have passed, and the ambassador still comes to “mediate”. It is just called something else now.