Manuel Urrutia Lleó
Manuel Urrutia Lleó ( born December 8, 1901 in Yaguajay / Las Villas, Cuba; † 5 July 1981 in New York, United States) was a judge and first president of the Republic of Cuba after the revolution of 1959.
Manuel Urrutia took part against the Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista on resistance.
On March 14, 1957 Urrutia spoke in his capacity as a judge in the eastern province of Oriente 150 revolutionaries accused with the court's opinion freely that they had made of their constitutional rights in the fight against the illegal seizure of power by Fulgencio Batista use.
After the Cuban revolution of 1959 Urrutia was the first president of the revolutionary government ( January 3, 1959 to July 17, 1959). In the revolutionary government he represented the conservative camp. One of his first orders as president was the nationalization of the casinos and hotels in Cuba. This U.S. Mobstern as Meyer Lansky was deprived of his business base, which then left the island. He called for the speedy holding of free elections and was against the participation of Communists in the revolutionary government, as the Communist Party was not involved in the fight against Batista. After Fidel Castro took over the office of prime minister in February, developed between the two main characters of the government soon growing disagreements over the government's course.
Using his enormous personal popularity Fidel Castro Urrutia urged to resign by justification for his own temporary resignation from the post of Prime Minister on July 17, accusing him in a well-received televised speech acts " that bordered on treason ." In the speech Castro Urrutia accused to obstruct the business of government in that it suspicious " without any proof " of communism, the government, however, neither the communist revolutionary movement even Castro himself was a communist. Manuel Urrutia gave the same night his resignation and found asylum in the Embassy of Venezuela. When his successor as president of the Republic of Cuba, the long-time activist of the Communist Party of Cuba Osvaldo Torrado Dorticós was used.
Urrutia little later emigrated to the USA, where he worked as a Spanish teacher in the New York City borough of Queens.