his contemporaries. However, he finished in third place. A few years later, though, his platform picked up steam. By 1951, Chibás ranked first among Cubans' voting preferences for the 1952 election. Chibás died by suicide before any ballots were cast. Death Later in his life, Chibás' claims of corruption against the Cuban government became increasingly reckless. In January 1951, he asserted that a public loan of 25 million pesos was an unnecessary levy that would be pocketed by the rich owners of sugar plantations. Later that year, Chibás tried to take on education minister Aureliano Sánchez Arango. He raised numerous allegations of embezzlement. He faced mounting pressure from the Cuban public when he was unable to offer definitive evidence that Sánchez Arango was corrupt. On August 5, 1951, Chibás walked into the Radiocentro CMQ Building in Havana, for his weekly radio broadcast. That day he had promised to furnish the evidence supporting his claim that Sánchez Arango was embezzling money. Instead, he talked about other topics, warned that Fulgencio Batista might attempt a military coup, and made a farewell statement. He shot himself in the stomach shortly after his broadcast ended. Chibás was initially expected to survive, but after eleven days of intensive care, he died in the hospital of his wounds, exactly one day after his 44th birthday. The whole country grieved his death. He is buried in the Colón Cemetery, Havana. His funeral was attended by hundreds of thousands, and it has been speculated that he might have been a contender for the 1952 presidential elections. Batista took the government by force on March 10, 1952, less than 8 months after the death of Chibás. Comparisons to Fidel Castro While locked in a prison cell in 1931, Chibás reportedly proclaimed: "If I am going to die, I want my last words to be for the Cuban revolution. I am a revolutionary; I love my patria and have contempt for the current regime." Five years later, he declared "If I die, it will be for the revolution" to a taxi driver rushing him to the hospital. These sorts of radical nationalist sentiments have drawn comparisons between Castro and Chibás. Castro was undoubtedly familiar with Chibás' Orthodoxo Party, which pushed strong revolutionary ideals. There are numerous cases of rousing rhetoric from Castro that verify those assumptions. Before his attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, Castro referenced Chibás, in front