Raul Garcia

Raul Garcia Alvarez (21 August 1894-3 April 1962) was a Cerveran revolutionary and politician who was the founding father of the Cerveran People's Directorate and its National Directivist Party. Ideologically a, his applications of Duvalist thought to political, economic, military and social affairs are collectively known as Directivism.

Early Life and Education
Raul Garcia Alvarez was born to Jorge Garcia Salas and Rosa Alvarez Guardiola on 21 August 1894, the eldest of three brothers. Jorge, the son of a farmer, had sold the family farm and used the proceeds to move to the city of Bayamo in 1883, where he opened a print shop and publishing house and established a comfortably middle class lifestyle for his family. The liberal, bordering on radical, political climate of Bayamo and frequent exposure to various political tracts and pamphlets the family business took on as commissions had an early and lasting impact on Raul, as did frequent inspections and harassments by the authorities. In line with Jorge's humanist values, all three Garcia brothers were educated in secular schools as opposed to the more common parochial institutions run by the Marian Church. Raul in particular excelled in his studies, being described as bookish and philosophical in imitation of his father, to whom he was especially close.

In 1911, Garcia graduated from Public High School No. 17 with a humanities diploma and traveled to Matanzas, where he intended to sit the entrance exam for law school; for unknown reasons, but likely related to his father's political activities, he was rejected prior to examination.

Matanzas Years
Dejected, Garcia wrote to his father to ask for advice in the summer of 1911. Writing in response, Jorge advised his son to continue efforts to obtain college admission, if not as a lawyer than in another field of letters. A further two unsuccessful attempts at law school, and one at a teacher's college, followed in Garcia's three years in Matanzas, during which time he worked a series of odd jobs to support himself and supplanted his meagre income with petty crime, gambling and bookmaking. During this period he lived in a boardinghouse with other young unmarried men and developed a friendship with his fellow boarders, whom he described in later recollections as "not hardened criminals by any means, but certainly no angels either." This exposure to the working class life of Matanzas, he would write later, began his political awakening, demonstrating the harsh realities of the urban poor and the extent to which vice and criminal activity became activities of necessity and survival among them. In spite of this, there is no evidence that Garcia ever joined a political organization while in Matanzas, as communism was still in its infancy in Cervera at that time.

In 1914 Garcia abruptly returned to Bayamo, reportedly to avoid gambling debts, and began work in his father's print shop.

Bayamo Years and Occupation
Despite earlier setbacks, Garcia initially settled into life in Bayamo as his father's assistant and continuing his political and philosophical education by means of commissions the shop undertook. Increasingly drawn to the writings of Marie-Helene Duval, Garcia joined the Communist Party of Cervera in 1915. This first experience with organized communism saw Garcia clash with party leadership, whom he described as petty-bourgeois intellectuals and criticized for a perceived lack of action to bring about socialism; they in turn distrusted Garcia, whom they regarded as brash, arrogant and hotheaded, and a potential liability. By winter of 1915 Garcia had ceased regular attendance at party meetings, though he continued to pay membership dues.

In 1916 a mounting sovereign debt crisis saw the government of Rogelio Batista deposed by a SiWallqanqa-backed junta, which installed Colonel Xavier Rios as dictator. Both the coup and the imposition of a puppet regime caused widespread popular outrage, particularly in Bayamo and surrounding areas where pro-government and pro-Junta forces clashed throughout the year. In January 1917, with junta control firmly established, the Garcia print shop was shuttered as part of a press crackdown, with Jorge being arrested and tortured in an apparent effort to turn him informant. He did not provide any names of dissidents and refused to cooperate, ultimately dying of his injuries in February 1917. Now thoroughly radicalized, Raul began active participation in protests and civil disobedience campaigns against the regime, including an Easter protest at the Cathedral of San Marin de Bayamo which was suppressed by force, with seven killed. The following week, Raul circulated a pamphlet entitled Siete Mártires del Pueblo ("Seven Martyrs of the People") condemning the regime and calling for a "people's uprising" to retake the country and establish a "people's state" in place of both the junta and the Republic which preceded it. Published under the name of the Communist Party of Cervera, the pamphlet was quickly repudiated and denounced by the remnants of the Party not already imprisoned or in exile, and Garcia arrested for its publication on 19 April 1917.

Imprisonment and Birth of Directivism
Initially facing sedition charges and the possibility of execution, Garcia was ultimately charged and convicted on a number of lesser charges including obscenity, contempt of religion and inciting a breach of the peace. The exact reasons for the shift in prosecutorial attitude have never been fully understood and theories range from a desire of the regime to de-escalate the situation in Bayamo to mere bribery of public officials by Garcia's sympathizers. Sentenced to fifteen years with hard labor, Garcia was transported on May 6 1917 to Isla de Las Almas, the maximum security prison facility established by the regime for political rivals, despite his official status as a common criminal. The following day, he received a letter from the Communist Party informing him of his expulsion.

Conditions on Las Almas were harsh, with fourteen hour work days in the stone quarries and prisoners forbidden to speak to one another. In spite of these harsh restrictions, Las Almas proved fertile ideological ground for Garcia, who soon made the company of various anarchists, revolutionary nationalists and socialists who had been imprisoned there. These friendships were cemented by a common desire to overthrow the junta government and equal disdain for the liberal democracy which they regarded as having enabled it. From these disparate threads, Garcia and others began to build the framework of what would become Directivism: a socialist outlook which focused on the building of a proletarian-driven national consciousness as a precursor to an eventual communist state, to be driven by a "Directive Party" composed of and engaged with the working classes. The first drafts of the Directivist manifesto were written and circulated in secret in Las Almas between 1917 and 1922, before Garcia was moved to a minimum security facility outside Resistencia in the interior, in an effort to curtail the growing radicalization at Las Almas.

In 1924, with the junta's foreign support crumbling, Garcia was released from prison as part of a drive by the Rios government to legitimize itself domestically and abroad. Rather than return to Bayamo, he settled in the working class Tallapiedra district of Matanzas, where the National Directivist Party was founded on 9 March.

Revolution
The National Directivist Party quickly grew in popularity as remaining vestiges of support for the junta crumbled; the withdrawal of SiWallqanqa occupation forces and subsequent bloodless collapse of the Rios regime ushered in a provisional Republic as various political forces ranging from the mainstream to the radical struggled to fill the power vacuum. In March 1925, the Provisional Government of the Cerveran Republic was declared with jurist Federico Bustamante Chavez, a conservative, as Interim President. The prospect of another weak, corrupt republic did little to inspire public confidence, and Bustamante's position was tenuous from the outset. Sensing opportunity, Garcia, the Directivist Party and rival parties began mobilizing with speeches and rallies which frequently turned into street brawls among their respective paramilitary wings. Alarmed, Bustamante repeatedly sought to delay democratic elections while coming under increasing pressure from conservatives to crack down on the Directivists. Due to the severely weakened state of the military post-junta, Bustamante was unwilling to risk a direct confrontation with the Directivist paramilitaries and so resisted calls for heavy-handed action. Instead, he sought to negotiate with Garcia, whose Directivists had emerged as the clear front-runner among the masses by 1927. To his own surprise, as well as that of many Directivist leaders, he obtained from Garcia a guarantee that the democratic process would be respected, and that if in the majority the Directivists would uphold the democratic nature of the state. In return, the Directivist Party would be permitted access to the ballot. Privately, Bustamante hoped that the accession of Garcia to democracy in defiance of prior statements would alienate the rank-and-file Directivists and perhaps cause their movement to implode at the polls and on the streets. The following week, Garcia issued a statement asserting that his promises were contingent upon good faith acting by the government, and explicitly reserved the right of Directivists to engage in armed rebellion if the government's end of the bargain was not kept. Interpreting this as a renege, Bustamante moved to outlaw the National Directivist Party in October 1927, dispatching the army to arrest Garcia and other key Directivist leadership.

Tipped off in advance of the raids by an informant within the ranks, Garcia and his top deputies were able to avoid capture as his Army of the People's Directive clashed with government forces in Matanzas, Puerto Fortuna and Bayamo with heavy casualties. Garcia, his brothers Edwin and Lazaro and approximately a thousand Directivist fighters subsequently fled the coast and dispersed in what historians have described as "something between an orderly retreat and an all-out rout." The bulk of these forces under Raul and Lazaro landed in San Juan Batista at the foot of the Sierra Gordo mountains in the far south of the country, where they were able to retreat into the mountainous jungle and reorganize. Edwin, meanwhile, had retreated with his cadre northwest toward the Albaterra border, eventually making headquarters in the border town of Colonia Nueva Paraiso. Though cut off from direct contact with one another, the Northern and Southern Cadres as they came to be known forged alliances with various groups of antigovernment militants including anarchists, libertarian socialists and nationalists; on 1 January 1928, in imitation of the traditional New Years address given by the Cerveran head of state, Raul Garcia issued a radio declaration announcing the formation of the Popular Liberation Front of Cervera, a coalition of Directivists and allied groups.

From mid-1928, PLFC forces scattered throughout the country mounted a succession of harrying attacks on military positions, banks and government buildings in addition to targeted assassinations of government officials and military officers. This guerrilla warfare served as much to acquire vital supplies and funds for the revolution as to demoralize government forces and act as. This lattermost objective bore fruit in dramatic fashion on 17 August 1929 when sailors aboard the cruiser San Clemente, moored at harbor in Puerto Fortuna, mutinied and fired the vessel's main battery upon City Hall, the Municipal Court and other government buildings. While high-ranking government officials escaped injury, the incident was widely covered by international media and brought further embarrassment to the government and further domestic support for the PLFC. With the military's discipline increasingly wavering, Garcia's allies increasingly began to press for large-scale offensive action, and in the fall of 1929 Raul, Lazaro, Edwin and allied forces of the Cerveran Black Army and Free Cerveran Armed Forces began planning for the next phase of the war, aimed at taking Matanzas and driving government forces into the sea.

Planning for the offensive was hampered by poor lines of communication, disagreements on strategy and military objectives, and an element of mutual distrust amongst the various factions. This latter factor was most pronounced between the anarchist Black Army led by Borgosesian expat Rochelle Polani and the Free Cerveran Armed Forces, comprised of defectors from government ranks. The plan, as finalized in early 1930, called for the offensive to commence in Spring, with a final date of 15 April agreed upon as D-Day. Initial thrusts were bogged down by summer rains and stiff government resistance in the northwestern approach, with both Polani and Raul's brother Edwin killed in this early fighting. Reinforcements in the Northern Contingent throughout the rainy season raised its effective strength to 35,000 and included tanks and aircraft defected or liberated from government bases; it was now approximately equal in size to the Southern Contingent commanded by Raul himself, but still dwarfed by the Cerveran III and IV Corps at a paper strength of 100,000 total. Despite the long odds, Raul authorized a pincer attack to commence in fall, gambling that the actual strength of the enemy was much less than intelligence reports indicated. In the end, this analysis would prove correct, as government forces were severely understrength due to materiel shortages and desertions. Thus encircled, the combined government formation offered only limited resistance before surrendering in the field on 28 October; Matanzas would provide much stiffer resistance as loyalist forces from the coastal regions and other theatres were deployed en-masse to defend the capital. Finally, on 6 January 1931, the capital would fall to the PLFC, with Garcia himself entering the city on 15 January and declaring victory and the establishment of the Cerveran People's Directorate.

Director-General
Though victory was declared, the situation on the ground was much more complex; anarchist cells held significant territory which they constituted as "Free Cervera" and cracks in the ranks were forming between the Directivists, anarchists and ultranationalists who had previously made up the FPLC. Ultranationalist forces were quickly outmaneuvered and purged from the new order, but sporadic fighting with Free Cerveran forces and republican government holdouts would continue until 1934, a timeframe retroactively known as the Special Period. With a measure of security now firmly established, Garcia moved to legitimize his party's control of Cervera by calling a plebiscite on the Directivist Constitution. Unsurprisingly, official government figures reported over 90% in favor as the Directivists solidified their nascent regime.

Garcia's early policy moved in broad strokes, promoting a vast program of modernization including efforts at education, road improvement, electrification, and the development of industry. These efforts bore fruit, as literacy increased from 56% in 1931 to nearly 90% a decade later, and economic indicators as well as life expectancy skyrocketed. In economic policy, Garcia clashed with his first choice Director for Economic Development, Mario Gomez, on the structure of the Directivist economy; Gomez favored traditional Duvalist lines and called for direct state ownership of the and collectivization of agriculture. Garcia, by contrast, reasoned that the workers of a specific industry were best suited to guide its production and so favored a approach divesting direct control to trade unions, and likened collective agriculture to the much-resented colonial latifundia of history. Gomez resigned in 1937 and was replaced with Jorge Aguirre, who shared Garcia's views and began their implementation to society at large.

Unanimously re-elected to the position of Director-General by the I Presidium of the National Directive in 1941, Garcia prioritized heavy industry and economic relations, taking his first trip abroad in 1942 to Goetia and the Artemian Union, followed by visits to Kaya and Osorra the following year. Despite these early successes, Garcia often found himself frustrated and out of his depth with the minutiae of daily politics and statecraft; according to biographer Jaime Escolar, "his mindset was one which saw every problem as immediately solvable with sufficiently broad strokes of momentum, and so he had little patience for the incremental pace of policy, which he saw as implicitly defeatist." By 1945, he had effectively stepped aside from the day to day policymaking of the Directorate, instead supplying overarching goals of foreign and domestic policy and largely leaving their execution to his subordinates. Despite his own stated desire to resign and devote his life to theory and writing, Garcia was ultimately convinced to remain in the position for a further two terms, being elected in 1951 and 1961 at the II and III Presidiums respectively.

In 1955, the People's Directorate formally established relations with the government of the Federal Republic of Arbenz, newly independent under the rule of Alejandro Castillo who was controversially invited to the 25th anniversary gala for the Directorate's independence in 1956. Photos of the aged Garcia embracing Castillo were subsequently altered in the 1970s as the association became a source of embarrassment before would-be allies and Arbenzan rebels FURP, with subsequent releases alleging that the former had admonished the latter to pay greater heed to his people.

Garcia's declining health progressively led to fewer and fewer public engagements from the already hands-off ruler through the remainder of the 1950s; his last major contribution to policy was his publication in 1960 of The Technological Path to Socialism, which both foresaw and advocated for the development of a as an accelerating factor toward the realization of full communism. Elected to a final term as Director-General the following year, the visibly frail Garcia made only a brief appearance at the Presidium as an aide read prepared remarks in acceptance.

Later Years and Death
A prolific chain-smoker since his youth, Garcia began to exhibit symptoms of in his 50s, which some speculate may have contributed to his decision to reduce his workload after 1945. He was subsequently diagnosed with lung cancer in 1955, though the nature and extent of his illness was largely kept hidden from the public until it became unavoidable. By 1959, Garcia and others in his inner circle were aware that his condition was likely terminal, though he refrained from directly naming a successor, insisting that he wished to avoid setting a dynastic precedent and that the Presidium of the National Directive should fulfill that role as directed in the Constitution. It is thought that he expected to be replaced in the 1961 Presidium, with his re-election coming as a means to divert or at least delay a brewing power struggle between the first-generation revolutionaries and a younger, technocratically inclined faction encouraged by the publication of The Technological Path to Socialism the prior year.

March 1962 was exceptionally rainy and cool, and Garcia was taken ill with pneumonia that month as a result; on his deathbed, he ordered that his private letters be burned and dictated his last will and testament, bequeathing his material assets to the Party and expressing a desire to be cremated and scattered "in some inconspicuous place where I will be undisturbed." Chief of Staff and long-time confidant Jairo Santos was tasked with carrying these orders out, though they were not fully obeyed; in particular, Garcia's body would end up embalmed in a mausoleum in the Revolutionary Heroes' Cemetery. Garcia subsequently died in his sleep in the early morning of 3 April 1962, with public announcement coming later that day and a ten-day mourning period declared. A Special Presidium was convened on 16 April and elected Santos as the first Director-General to succeed the revolutionary leader; the feared power struggle did not materialize in the end.

Though ardently against the development of a in life, Garcia was unable in death to prevent his stature being raised to that of a near demigod; the Order of Raul Garcia was instituted in 1963 as the second-highest military and highest civil decoration, a settlement in the south was renamed Ciudad Garcia, and the family home in Bayamo became a museum.