as President of the Convention. 1944: Ramón Grau San Martín is elected President of Cuba, with the support of several former Liberal Party members, as the PRC wins its first elections. 1947: Eduardo Chibas breaks off from the PRC to protest the corruption of the Grau government and forms the Partido del Pueblo Cubano-Ortodoxo (PPC) or the Party of Cuban People-Orthodox. Several former PRC and Liberal Party members, including Márquez Sterling, join. 1948: Carlos Prio Socarras of the PRC is elected President of Cuba. 1951: Eduardo Chibas dies from an accidental suicide. Had he survived, the PPC would most likely not have fragmented as it did during the 1950s. Batista's coup and second government 1952: The Liberal Party of Cuba supports Batista's coup of 1952 and joins the provisional government, and later Batista's second government. By now the Liberal Party is a shell of its former self, controlled by Batista. 1952–1958: The PRC and PPC split between those who argue for revolution and support Castro, and those who seek compromise with Batista and support free and fair general elections. 1958: The General Elections of 1958 fail, as Batista rigs the elections to ensure the victory of the government candidate Andrés Rivero Agüero and a member of the Liberal Party, against Carlos Márquez Sterling running for the Partido del Pueblo Libre. 1959: Castro takes power and outlaws all political parties except the Communist Party. The traditional Liberal Party, PRC, and PPC legally cease to exist. The Liberal Party continues underground and extralegally. Liberal leaders José Martí, founder of the PRC and leading Cuban intellectual Martín Morúa Delgado, Afro-Cuban and President of the Cuban Senate Juan Gualberto Gómez, Afro-Cuban revolutionary leader, close collaborator of Martí's, served as part of the committee of consultations that drafted and amended the Constitution of 1901, and as a Representative and Senator José Miguel Gómez, the first member of the Liberal Party elected to the presidency of Cuba Gerardo Machado, a president of Cuba elected under the Liberal Party Orestes Ferrara, a professor at the University of Havana, Cuban Secretary of State and delegate to the Constitutional Convention Carlos Márquez Sterling, a leading member of the Liberal Party during the 1930s and 1940s and President of the Constitutional Convention in 1940. He later served in the first government of Fulgencio Batista. See also History of Cuba Politics of Cuba List of political parties in Cuba References Cuba