Laureano Batista Falla Papers

Laureano F. Batista Falla was a Cuban political activist and founding member of Movimiento Demócrata Cristiano (MDC).

Batista was born in Havana, Cuba, on May 1, 1935. He received his elementary and secondary education at De la Salle School in Vedado, Havana. In 1952, he entered the law school of the Universidad Santo Tomás de Villanueva in Marianao, Cuba, and in 1953, he was admitted to the Ëscuela de Filosofía y Letras of the University of Havana as a part-time student. After receiving his law degree in 1957, Batista spent a year in Germany, where he studied the German language and took on special studies in banking at the Deutsch Bank A. G. in Hamburg and Munich. In January 1959, he returned to Havana, and was employed in the legal department of the Trust Company of Cuba. In 1960, in response to the Cuban Revolution, Batista left Cuba and entered exile in Miami, Florida.

Batista fought for Cuba’s freedom while living in Cuba and in exile. In 1960, he founded the Movimiento Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba with José Ignacio Rasco and others. He was also the president of the Catholic student youth organization Joventud Estudiante Católica (JEC). He continued to work actively against Castro’s communist regime in Miami through the Movimiento Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba en el Exilio and organized clandestine operations against the Cuban government. He was a member of the delegations representing the MDC at different congresses such as the Örganización Demócrata Cristiana de América, of which the MDC was a member in Lima, Santiago de Chile, Strasbourg, Caracas, and other cities.

Batista continued his education in exile, receiving a master’s degree in government from the University of Miami and, in the late 1960s, a Ph.D. in political science from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

He also lived in Venezuela for several years, where he was a professor at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and occupied important positions in different organizations such as Centro de Información y Documentación para América Latina (CIDAL), Ecodata, C.A.; and Cibernetica Internacional, C.A.

When Batista returned to Miami, he founded the Cuban exile publication Revista Raíz, together with Alberto Pérez, Marta Fernández Morell, Raquel la Villa, and others. He was also the director of the Instituto Jacques Maritain in Miami.

Laureano Batista was a tireless advocate of pluralism and democracy. In the last years of his life he organized the Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba, a political party composed of former members of different organizations that fought for Cuba’s freedom. He died in Miami in 1991.