On stormy days, the waves crash mercilessly against the breakwater at the northern end of Havana. They flood the pavement and spill onto the promenade of Malecón Avenue. On such days, it seems as if the city is about to be swept away by a storm, taking with it what little of its outdated infrastructure is left. But more than half a century ago, another storm hit, not just the capital Havana, but the whole island country.
At the beginning, the storm seemed to bring something positive. For more than seven years, from 1952 to 1959, the city flourished and developed. Big hotels and casinos, nightclubs and holiday resorts were springing up everywhere, roads and tunnels were being built. Neon, glitter and sex were the hallmarks of the tourist boom, and together with the horse races and the nightly pageants of beautiful girls, they brought big money to Havana. Naturally, all this attracted foreign investors, mainly from America.
But those who looked beneath the surface of this boom could see hunger, illiteracy, homelessness, high infant mortality, poverty, begging and prostitution, and money pouring into the pockets of corrupt politicians and American businessmen. These were not, in fact, the kind of businessmen we think of when we talk about businessmen. They were an organised group of American criminals who came to the island between 1940 and 1950 and made their initial fortune in America during Prohibition. Some of them got too hot in their home country and saw Cuba as the ideal opportunity to get even richer.
Their names were known to all; Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Santo Trafficante, Albert Anastasia and others. They owned Havana’s hotels, casinos, nightclubs and money from racing and prostitution, and of course they had the support of the half-educated Cuban President and the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivarjam, who came to power in a coup d’état in 1952. How many commissions he managed to amass in the few years he ruled, no one knows, and probably not even Batista. Everything was running smoothly and the money was coming into his accounts regularly, but he had only one problem, which did not seem to be a big problem at the beginning, but it became bigger and bigger as the years went by.
A small group of his opponents, led by a certain Fidel Castro Ruz, a lawyer and former political candidate, was camped out in the Sierra Maestra mountains. The story of the Havana mafia cannot be told without also telling something about the development of the revolutionary movement. Sometimes these two stories ran parallel, except that some of the heroes partied in nightclubs, while others starved in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Of course, it would be wrong to say that the sole purpose of Castro’s revolution was to drive the Mafia off the island. Its main purpose was a profound social revolution, and it was supported by many ordinary people.
Who was it that chose Cuba as the centre of crime? The story is very instructive. In the autumn of 1946, Lucky Luciano, a 50-year-old American gangster with Italian roots, after having spent 50 years in an American prison and having been deported to Italy by the American authorities, boarded a ship in Naples with one goal in mind: to get to Cuba. He hoped to regain the throne of the most powerful criminal organisation in the world: the American mafia.
He took a circuitous route and arrived in Cuba by private plane. On 29 October, at Camagüey airport in the interior of the island, his plane landed unnoticed at the end of the runway, Luciano got off and his first words were: ‘Where is Lansky?’ Soon a car appeared and Meyer Lansky, his long-time associate in criminal dealings, got out. Meyer Lansky was a small man and they called him Little Man. But he was anything but small; he was in fact the treasurer of the mafia, and in Cuba he had connections in the highest echelons of power.
The next day, Luciano and Lansky were already in Havana at the prestigious Hotel Nacional. Lansky flew back to America the very next day to inform the heads of the mafia families that the first big meeting of all the families in 14 years would take place in Havana at the Hotel Nacional in December, where they would agree on how to turn Cuba into a gangster stronghold. The Mafia had been thinking about Cuba since the 1920s, when it became an important base for smuggling alcohol, especially rum, into the United States during Prohibition. Even then, American tourists were coming to Havana for alcohol and sex. Meyer Lansky also made several trips there. Not for fun, he carried suitcases full of dollars and used them to buy ‘friends’. One of these was the island’s rising military and political star, Fulgencio Batista.
The preparations for the meeting of the Mafia families were meticulous. It was agreed that there would be no bilateral talks and agreements apart from the group meetings. From 22 to 26 December 1946, the two upper floors of the Hotel Nacional were inaccessible to other guests of the hotel. The godfathers came to Havana from all over America: New York, Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey and elsewhere. On the first day, they gathered only for dinner and then went out to enjoy the city. The best dancers and orchestras entertained them all night, and prostitutes from the best brothels kept them company.
The next day there was a working meeting, at which Lansky explained in graphic detail what could be made of Cuba. Everyone present knew that he had been involved in Cuba for a long time, and although many of them had only finished primary school, it was clear to them that this business had to be run by capable people, ready to bribe anyone or kill them if they stood in their way. The issue of drugs was also important, as it could become a most lucrative business. But here, too, the risks were greater.
“Why get involved in drugs and kick the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) on the neck when there are so many things in this world to make a good living from,” Luciano assured the audience. In vain. Vito Genovese and others were already making much more money from drugs than from casinos and prostitution. Even Frank Costello, Luciano’s long-time partner and friend, advised him, “Don’t stick your head through the wall, because you can see that most people are in favour.” And Luciano relented.
In the following weeks, Luciano rested and enjoyed. Friends visited him and he hosted them. Among them was Frank Sinatra, the most famous American singer. Sinatra had admired the Mafiosi from a young age and had friends among them. One morning on 11 February 1947, he flew into Havana, accompanied by two mobsters, with a suitcase containing 2 million dollars. He handed the money to Luciano. The singer’s arrival in Havana was partly business and partly pleasure. Sinatra had invested in mafia-controlled businesses, including car sales and gambling. He probably couldn’t have done it any other way, as the syndicate had invested a lot of money in his singing career.
Sinatra repaid the union by occasionally acting as a courier for it. money. Of course, he didn’t come to Havana just for the money bags. He also came to have fun, and Luciano liked to offer it. The FBI was also informed about the orgy at the Hotel Nacional, because a special plane brought a whole bunch of prostitutes from Miami to Havana to party at the hotel.
But things soon took a turn for the worse for Luciano. He had been deported from America to Italy, and now he had turned up and settled on an island just over a hundred kilometres from America. The American administration decided not to look on calmly at this violation of the deportation order. This was soon followed by an official request from the American authorities that Cuba expel him back to Italy. The Cuban government was in a quandary, but refused Washington’s request, because Luciano had a valid passport and had done nothing criminal in Cuba. But America did not back down and threatened Cuba with sanctions.
On February 27, 1947, Luciano was having lunch in Vedado, a restaurant near Havana, when six policemen approached him, arrested him and gave him a few days to sort out his affairs. On 29 March, he was simply put on a rusty Turkish tanker bound for Europe and his Cuban adventure ended where it began; at sea.
But for Lansky, expelling Luciano from Cuba was the best thing that could have happened to him. Lucky Luciano was a problem for the union in Cuba and with his removal Lansky became the first union man on the island. Now he could run things the way he wanted: quietly, behind closed doors and without attracting the attention of the press.
The Little Man
In the American mafia underworld, it was hard to meet a man like Meyer Suchowljansky. He was a Polish Jew, born in Grodno in 1902. It was only when the family moved to New York and lived in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood that they took the name Lansky. As a young boy, he realised that he would only succeed in life if he took up something that brought in money, lots of money, fast. At that time, the only way to earn money was by gambling, playing cards and things like that.
By 1947, he already owned several casinos in South Florida, and they were bringing him a lot of money. Every evening, he and his colleagues would sit in a closed room, counting the crumpled notes and separating those needed to cover daily expenses from those intended for investment. His marriage went badly wrong, leaving him with two sons and a daughter, but he preferred to leave them in New York in the care of his sister.
Unlike the other godfathers, he did not crave contact with other women, so everyone was surprised when he married a divorcee, Thelma Schwarz, in the autumn of 1948. The wedding at the Vedado law firm was more than modest. There were few guests, but among them was Fulgencio Batista, then a Cuban senator. Lansky and Batista had been working together for almost fifteen years, each building his own empire. There are no photographs of them together, and they did not sign any documents together, but each knew exactly what the other wanted from him.
Batista grew up in the shadow of the American United Fruit Company. The boy they called El Mulato Lindo (the beautiful mulatto) joined the Cuban army and slowly rose up the hierarchical ladder. Here, too, there was good money to be made from public procurement, especially the lottery, as officers decided on everything from the economy to politics.
In the 1940s, when the crowds in the streets shouted Viva Cuba! And Viva el Presidente Batista!, little Fulgencio had reached his temporary goal. Nevertheless, at the age of forty-four, for personal reasons, he decided to leave politics quickly for a temporary retirement. Although he was married, he was having an affair with a beautiful Cuban woman and he knew that he had to choose between an illicit affair and the presidency. He chose the former, moved to New York, divorced his wife, married his mistress and lived in the Waldorf Astoria.
In 1948, he decided to re-enter politics. His campaign was financially supported by Lansky, who had invested a lot of money in him over the years, but had received nothing in return. If Batista had become President of Cuba, Lansky could have had all his investments repaid a hundredfold. But because of legal restrictions, this could not yet be done, so Batista returned to Cuba and settled in a suburb of Havana, but there he merely waited for the legal restriction that prevented him from running for President to expire.
Those years were very dramatic for Cuba. The country was in chaos, political parties were arming themselves and hardly anyone walked around without a gun in their pocket. Murders, kidnappings, extortion and mass reckonings were the order of the day. In the midst of this disorder, young men emerged who became either real gangsters or political leaders, and one young man who could be seen in both streams was the student parava Fidel Castro Ruz.
He entered the political arena in 1948, when he was accused of murder. A police orderly was shot dead outside his house and, as he lay dying, he allegedly blamed Castro for the crime. In the end, the accusation turned out to be false. Castro was known at the university as a great orator who knew how to excite a crowd. Tall, with curly black hair and a seductive moustache, and an excellent athlete, he attracted a lot of attention among the women.
But someone else has been watching the political rise of the young Castro with particular attention. Fulgencio Batista was always on the lookout for young political talent to hitch his political wagon to. That is why he invited him to a meeting in his villa. According to some sources, the conversation was not about politics, but Batista wanted to assess the young man. According to other sources, Castro offered to help Batista if he decided to come to power in a coup d’état. Whatever the case, the two men parted amicably. What Batista did not know was that he was meeting his greatest enemy, who would also be fatal to the plans of the mafia syndicate in Cuba.
But 1949 did not start well for Meyer Lansky. Under the leadership of Senator Kefauer, a committee was hastily set up to investigate the operation of casinos. Sure enough, he quickly discovered that there were 29 casinos in Florida alone, most of them owned by Lansky. Then his ownership was linked to various illegal activities and Lansky found himself in a bind. His picture first appeared on the front pages of newspapers, he was called Enemy of the State No 1, and by 1952 he was already facing jail.
It is not known whether Batista followed the work of the Kefauer Commission, but he probably read American newspapers. In any case, in 1952 he announced that he would run for the presidency of Cuba, but the polls only predicted that he would come third. He knew he had to do something and he started meeting young officers. On 10 March 1952, a convoy of cars arrived at Campo Colombia, where the military headquarters were located. Batista got out of one of the cars and went to the headquarters, where officers were waiting for him. “Are the radio stations under our control?” he asked those present. The military coup then took place without bloodshed, a proclamation was issued to the people and Batista became the first man in the country. Within two weeks, he was recognised by America and felt safe.
But not everyone agreed with the way power was taken. Fidel Castro’s career ambitions were rudely cut short. He had stood as a candidate on a party list and had a good chance of being elected to Parliament, but 80 days before the elections, Batista prevented him from doing so. “Batista’s coup d’état is not a revolution, it is a desire for power. He is not a patriot, but an oppressor of freedom, thirsty for gold and power.” This hastily written pamphlet was then distributed on the streets of Havana by his supporters.
Far away in New York, Meyer Lansky was in his apartment reading about what was happening in Cuba. He had never been in a more difficult situation. He was threatened with jail, some of the casinos in Florida were closed, he was called a gangster and seen as a bad citizen. In the months that followed, he had only private problems to deal with. He paid his fines, but could not escape charges of conspiracy, illegal gambling and forging documents. At the same time, he kept a close eye on what was happening in Cuba, waiting for Fulgencio Batista to call him.
California lawyer Dana C. Smith sat at a gaming table in the Sans Souci, Havana’s most famous casino, playing a game of cubolo. It was a classic example of a game that no one understood and was designed to pick off naive tourists. Besides, cubolo was not even officially allowed. The lawyer lost and lost, but everyone advised him: “You cannot lose if you always double your bet.” Finally, he counted up what he owed the casino and wrote a cheque for $4200 (today’s $40,000). He returned home but did not calm down.
After returning to Los Angeles, he cancelled the cheque and the casino sued him through his US lawyer. Smith did not give up and telephoned his friend Senator Richard Nixon, who complained to the State Department on his behalf. The newspapers ran stories about what was happening in Havana, citing examples of Cuban casinos ripping off American tourists with unfair games. The US administration has put pressure on Havana to close the casinos. Batista knew when a scandal was serious and when it was not. He needed someone who could save the casinos from collapse. So he called Lansky and asked him if he would come to Havana to advise the Cuban government on reforming the gambling system.
For Lansky, who was still licking the wounds inflicted on him by the Kefauer Committee, this call was like a gift from heaven. He landed immediately and returned triumphantly to Havana in mid-1952, knowing that he could now fulfil the plan he and Lucky Luciano had dreamt of for years. Batista and Lansky knew they had to improve the reputation of Cuba’s casinos or else the tourists would start moving elsewhere. The Bahamas, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic had been opening casinos and trying to attract tourists for some time, while Mexico had already taken some of the tourist pie away from Cuba with cheap package holidays that included casino visits.
Lansky knew that it would not be enough to regulate gambling by laws and regulations alone, but that they would also have to improve staff training and repair infrastructure. The dealers did not know how to deal cards properly, they stole a little, the supervision of the gaming tables was poor and the gaming machines were outdated. Lansky introduced standards in the casinos that were in place in America. First, he bought a controlling stake in the Montmartre Casino and became its manager. He then brought in gambling teams from some of his Florida casinos which he had to close. These teams were made up of professionals who knew how to deal with customers who gambled for large sums.
Then Batista joined the gambling crackdown and the military police arrested 13 managers of casinos that allowed illegal gambling. Once again, the newspapers were full of news about how Cuban casinos had decided to play fair.
Lansky was so pleased that in March 1953 he pleaded guilty in an American court, paid a fine of $2500 and served three months in prison. In fact, he only spent two months in prison because he was released a little early because of his good behaviour. Now all the gangsters in America knew that the Batista-Lansky alliance was working and that they were in for some great loot. Gradually, they began to move much of their activity to Cuba. They sent their assistants there and made visits with their lawyers, interested not only in casinos but also in real estate, cigar factories, horse racing, plantations, prostitution, alcohol and drugs. The number of companies in Cuba with a majority US capital was growing rapidly.
Cuban Revolution, revolution
On the night of 27 January 1953, a procession of citizens marched through the streets of Havana to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Cuban national hero Jose Marti. The peaceful procession included a group of young men, led by the young lawyer and activist Fidel Castro, who shouted “Revolution, revolution, revolution!”. The police did not intervene because of the large number of foreign delegations and tourists attending the parade and the event passed without much attention. On the island, the 1953 season was slowly coming to an end and the hot and sultry days were arriving, when people preferred to rest in the shade rather than show their faces in the streets.
But on 26 July 1953, something happened that no one expected. In the early hours of the morning, shots rang out at the entrance to the Mocada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, Oriente province. A group of rebels led by Fidel Castro tried to break into the barracks. At the same time, a similar attack on the barracks took place in the nearby town of Bayamo. The rebels numbered 160 in all, and they were really poorly armed. They thought they were going to seize more weapons from a military depot. The attack had already got off to a bad start. The soldiers were not asleep as the rebels had thought and resisted strongly from the start. The rebels were also outnumbered and the mutiny was put down within an hour. Castro had three dead and the soldiers nineteen. The attack on the barracks in Bayamo was over after only 15 minutes. The army captured 80 rebels in a short attack, and Castro and the rest took refuge in a nearby forest, where he was captured a few days later.
But it took some time before the news of the attack was made public. There were rumours that a number of captured rebels had been tortured by the army and then shot, which was probably true, as the government announced that 60 rebels had been killed in the attack, and also published photographs of the bodies of those killed. Batista was not alarmed by the attack, which ended quickly and the rebels were captured. For the casino owners, gangsters and businessmen, the attack was also a minor problem, taking place at the other end of the island and outside the high season. No one even knew the name of the rebel leader, Fidel Castro.
When he was young, no one expected him to become the black sheep of the Cuban elite. He grew up in a world of cars and fine clothes and went to expensive restaurants. He went to a Jesuit school where he built up his character, but contrary to expectations, he became a willful atheist who blindly believed in the way of the cross and later wrote his own communist gospel.
President Batista wanted the trial of the “terrorists” who attacked Moncada to be over before the planes and cruise ships full of American tourists started landing. The last thing the American gangster syndicate wanted was rumours of some revolutionary ferment in Cuba. On September twenty-first 1953, 122 defendants were dragged into the Santiago courtroom, chained up. Castro protested on behalf of all of them against this humiliating measure. He and his comrades were charged under Article 148 of the Penal Code, which provided for five to twenty-five years’ imprisonment for armed rebellion against the State. The trial showed that only 16 of the 60 combatants died in the fighting. The rest had fractured skulls or were shot at point-blank range.
Although government censorship succeeded in keeping the press almost silent about the trial, word of mouth spread. Castro was interrogated separately before three judges in a small room of a civil hospital, where he was locked up and the public was informed that he had “suffered” a nervous breakdown. In the weeks that followed, Castro wrote his famous speech, History Will Forgive Me, which is, in fact, his political programme. He managed to send the speech on a small piece of paper to his colleagues, who then printed it out and distributed it as a pamphlet on the streets of Havana. At taxi ranks and in parks along the Malecon, people secretly read his Historia me absolvera!
Meyer Lansky did not read the pamphlet because he did not know Spanish and was not interested in the internal political passions in Cuba. Ultimately, that was Batista’s problem. He ran a casino and an economic empire and did not let himself be distracted by the political musings of a rich man’s son turned revolutionary leader. He wanted to turn the Hotel Nacional into the most luxurious hotel in Havana and his casino into the most successful cash cow of the mafia syndicate.
But Lansky was even more pleased when Batista got a new hotel law passed, exempting from taxes all foreign investors who invested a certain amount of money in building hotels and casinos. In this case, the gambling licence was granted automatically, without the involvement of the various commissions. Before the ink was dry on the signing of the law, the construction of five large hotel complexes had already been announced, including the Hilton.
While Washington recognised the Batista regime, there was a great deal of discomfort in Washington at recognising someone who had come to power in a coup d’état. They pressed Batista to legalise his position, however, and he called for presidential elections on 1 November 1954. Of course he won, because the army was in control. Meanwhile, Fidel Castro was in solitary confinement on a small, hot island off the coast of Cuba. Batista felt emboldened and suspended press censorship, abolished the curfew and allowed strikes as long as they complied with the law.
The Tropicana Club in the suburbs of Havana was synonymous with dance revues full of half-naked girls whose private parts were covered only by feathers. Anyone who was important in Havana had to appear there from time to time. That’s why the gangster elite was a frequent guest there. Batista also appeared in it, smiling and thanking the people who applauded him. After all, he was a kind and benevolent dictator. And it was during one of these moments that he decided to pardon some political prisoners. He can do this as proof that he is not afraid of anyone.
On 15 May, 20 prisoners, including Fidel and his younger brother Raul, left the prison on Isla de Pines for freedom. Batista could not have made a worse mistake.
Fidel Castro did not know how to dance the mambo, or the cha-cha-cha, let alone the tango. He associated Havana’s nightclubs, cabarets and parties with the life of the Cuban elite and considered them the last refuge of the bourgeoisie. Now he was free, but this freedom was precarious. He was not allowed to speak on the radio and the newspapers were not allowed to publish his writings. He was under constant surveillance by the police, so he moved many times and, in his distress, emigrated to Mexico with his brother Raul and a few associates. Exactly what he was doing there was never clear. It is known, however, that he met the Argentine Ernesto Che Guevara there and that together they planned a revolutionary takeover of Cuba. Of course, Castro knew of the link between the American mafia and the Batista regime, but he did not attack the mafia directly, because it was investing heavily in Cuba. He was going to get even with it, so he thought, when he dealt with Batista in a few years’ time.
But in October 1956, something happened to upset Castro’s planned order of events. In the early hours of the morning of 28 October 1956, Colonel Manuel Rico, head of SIM, the military intelligence service, was leaving the Lansky-owned casino, accompanied by friends. The group stopped in the lobby and waited for the elevator. Inside the casino, Mario Lanza was singing the popular Arrivederci Roma when two men entered the lobby, pulled out machine guns and pistols and opened fire. Panic ensued and people screamed for cover.
Manuel Rico was killed and many people injured. It was a bold political assassination, and it took place in the very lair of the mafia. The thing Lansky feared the most happened; revolutionaries stormed his casino and fired shots. The event provoked a strong reaction from Batista. Arrests followed, people disappeared and their bodies were then washed up in the sea. The attackers were former members of one of the factions in the Castro movement. Castro condemned the assassination, which came as a surprise. He was angry that someone had beaten him to it and was trying to disrupt his plans for a dramatic landing in Cuba at the end of this year.
Granma
Meanwhile, Meyer Lansky was working on his big project. He wanted to build the biggest and most beautiful hotel in Havana, with 21 floors and a casino. While he was busy looking for management staff, the Granma, a small ship with the Castro brothers and Che Guevara on board and 79 rebels from the movement now called the 26 July Movement, commemorating the failed attack on the Moncada barracks, was bobbing in the rough Caribbean sea. The ship was small, in need of repairs and designed to carry only 25 people. Everyone on board was sick, the men were pale-faced, holding their stomachs and vomiting.
The Granma sailed slowly and only on the fifth day approached the Cuban coast. The guerrillas had for some time been in contact with individual rebel groups in Cuba, in particular a group in the province of Oriente led by the young Frank Pais. Castro’s plan was to land on the coast and attack military targets, while at the same time Pais’s group was to launch a rebellion in the city of Santiago. Pais did not know that Granma was late and on 30 November 1956, with a group of 28 men, he attacked the police barracks in the city, where 400 policemen were stationed. The attack failed, of course, the attackers were mostly killed and Pais escaped.
On board, they listened to reports of the failed attack and were dejected. It was not until two days later, on 2 December 1956, that they saw the shore and disembarked, although they had no idea where they were. The next day, they headed for the Sierra Maestro, a rugged mountain range in the province of Oriente, where they could hide and rest. However, a farmer spotted them, rushed into town and informed the police that he had spotted an unknown group of armed men. While the guerrillas were resting, they were attacked by the police and a real massacre took place. Some tried to hide in a sugar cane field, but the police set fire to it and many of the guerrillas were burnt. Only 16 guerrillas managed to escape, including the Castro brothers and Guevara, who was wounded.
For Batista, the almost total destruction of the guerrilla group was a great success and the newspapers reported that the Castro brothers were dead. But the very arrival of the guerrillas in Cuba caused discontent with the regime to flare up. Bombs began to explode, trains were derailed and, as a result of sabotage, cities were without electricity for some time. The rebellion was disorganised and scattered, and confined mainly to the province of Oriente. However, in Havana, armed soldiers began to guard government buildings, bridges and important installations as a precaution.
New Year 1957 was approaching and the hotels, pubs and casinos were packed. The Tropicana Club was also packed. The popular Cuban singer Beny More entertained the guests with his singing. But one hour after the New Year, a powerful explosion went off inside. Panic ensued and everyone started running screaming. The revolution had moved to Havana. Soon there was no one left at the scene of the explosion, only a 17-year-old girl, attending her first New Year’s Eve party at the Tropicana, marching around as if stunned, one of her arms torn off by the blast.
The owner of the Tropicana was desperate. Why did this happen to him, who had done no harm to anyone? The next day, he rushed to the hospital and visited the injured girl, surrounded by weeping relatives. He promised to pay for his medical expenses and to get him the best prosthetic arms from America. The police never found out who planted the bomb. In the end, they suspected a girl without an arm. Could she have caused the premature explosion and thus paid for her revolutionary zeal with the loss of her arm? A few days later, the girl suddenly disappeared from the hospital and was never seen again.
But Batista has been fully vindicated by the claim that Fidel Castro is dead. In fact, in the last days of February 1957, the New York Times published an interview with Castro by its correspondent. The interview was Castro’s idea. His confidants in Havana asked the American correspondent whether he would like to have this interview. At first, the correspondent did not even want to believe that Castro was alive, but then he changed his mind. He was taken to Castro’s camp in Sierra Maestra and Castro told him stories for three hours straight. The correspondent, whose name was Matthews, was no sucker, having already reported on Mussolini’s invasion of North Africa and on the Spanish Civil War. At the end, they both smoked a real Havana cigar.
The correspondent then returned to Havana and travelled to New York, and the story, with a photo of a bearded Castro in uniform holding a rifle, was printed on the front page of the newspaper. Censorship in Cuba banned the distribution of the New York Times, but many American tourists brought the paper to Cuba.
The news that Castro had risen from the grave sparked an avalanche of revolutionary enthusiasm among the population. In the province of Oriente, bombs were bursting every few hours. On 13 March, barely a week after the New York Times article appeared, Batista heard gunshots in his presidential palace. He was informed that the palace had been attacked and quickly retreated to higher floors. The attackers, about 50 in number, arrived in a van, some of them on foot. Wild gunfire could be heard from all sides as the Presidential Guard defended itself vigorously.
The second attack, almost synchronised with the first, was directed against the popular radio station Relay. The two attacks were therefore coordinated. Batista was to be assassinated, announced on the radio and told that the government had resigned. But Batista knew, through spies in the revolutionary movement, that an attack was being prepared, although he did not know when. He doubled his guard and waited ready. As soon as the attack began, the army surrounded the presidential palace with tanks and vehicles. Only five of the attackers survived. Nevertheless, they managed to enter the radio station and announce over the radio that Batista was dead, rejoiced a little that the action had been successful and then left. At the exit, they were met by soldiers with machine guns and shot.
Santo Trafficante was very happy with his life in Cuba. He moved to Havana from Tampa, Florida, where he was godfather of his gambling and drug-running mafia family. The US Drug Enforcement Administration was never able to prove that he was involved in the drug trade. Trafficante was so happy with Cuba that he even declared his permanent residence there. He had a hotel and a casino and a lot of money. He was very fond of entertaining his American friends and also some businessmen and politicians.
One of the politicians who frequently visited Cuba in 1957 was John Kennedy, a young senator from Massachusetts and a rising star in American politics. He did not do well in the casino, but everyone noticed that he liked to look at pretty girls. So Trafficante thought it would be a good idea to give him a proper party with young girls at his hotel. “You never know, I might need it again,” Trafficante was convinced. JFK was having fun with three girls in his room, but he did not know that the mirror on the wall was double and allowed Trafficante to watch him.
For months, this party was a popular topic of conversation among the Cuban mafia. But the US Senator was not the only one to fall under the spell of the Cuban girls. Prostitution spread in Cuba after 1920, when Havana began to be besieged by the men of American tourists. At the top of the pyramid of desirable girls were the dancers of the most famous nightclubs, the Tropicana and Sans Souci. They were all excellent dancers and good singers, but the legendary Olga Chaviano was the most brilliant. Of course, the girls were inaccessible to ordinary tourists. They only went out with Italian counts, French rich men and American millionaires and politicians from various countries.
In addition to these elite nightclubs, there were five or six smaller nightclubs in Havana for the shallower, but not empty, pockets. None of these six clubs had a casino, but they did have slot machines. There were also a number of public houses in the suburbs. All the taxi drivers in Havana knew that American men from the south of the country only ever asked for black girls. Many were convinced that the American mafia also controlled prostitution in Cuba, but there was no proof that this was the case. In Havana, the police regularly received a percentage of the brothels’ earnings and prostitution was left to the Cubans.
Meanwhile, Fidel Castro was strengthening his movement. He had more and more supporters, and if the 26th of July movement had started as a movement of intellectuals and bourgeoisie, now the peasants were joining in; Che Guevara wrote that this was only the beginning of the real revolution. At the beginning of May 1957, the movement won another battle with the media. CBS television showed a documentary entitled The Story of the Cuban Jungle Fighters. The televised portrayal of Castro had enormous propaganda value, as the bearded leader was portrayed as a kind of Robin Hood of the tropics.
In July, the movement issued its first public manifesto, the Sierra Manifesto, together with two opposition leaders from Havana. It announced, among other things, that corruption and gambling would be driven out of Cuba. For the first time, it was publicly stated that the 26 July Movement was the mortal enemy of the Havana mafia. A life and death struggle began. Batista did not understand how it was possible that Cuba, which was experiencing its biggest economic boom in decades, could be in such political turmoil. The only answer he had to this was repression. Armed groups of police and army were roaming the country, terrorising the population and looking for guerrillas. People disappeared and their bodies, which showed signs of brutal torture, were later found in the fields by peasants. But all this was happening outside Havana, and the city was enjoying a precautionary calm before the storm.
But then something happened that shook the mafia world in America to its core, and it had its roots in Havana. Albert Anastasia was the godfather of the old guard mafia. He was highly respected and, formally, he was almost first among equals. However, something bothered him very much. He was convinced that his share of the Cuban cake was too small, and he was prepared to tell everyone. “We were warned about Anastasia and told to treat him with respect, but Lansky told us that as far as he was concerned, Anastasia was not welcome in Havana,” the Havana-based mafioso knew how to say years later.
Lansky certainly didn’t want a fight between the godparents, so after consulting others, he offered Anastasia the Hilton Hotel with a casino. Anastasio was seemingly happy with this, but was later dismayed to hear that he would have to share the profits from the casino with all those who had invested money in the construction of the hotel and casino. And there were 18 groups of them, as the employees, the cooks, the porters, the cleaners and the chambermaids, as well as the small entrepreneurs and even the gastronomy union, had also invested money. Why should he share the profits with them, he wondered.
After his visit to Havana, he went home to America in a huff. The dispute was supposed to have been smoothed over at a meeting in New York, where the godfathers demanded that he contribute more money to pay for the casino concession and a bribe for Batista. But no one knew, or even suspected, that Anastasio’s fate had been decided days before.
Two days after the meeting, Anastasia went to the hairdresser, as usual when he was in New York, and he didn’t even know what hit him. Two men with handkerchiefs over their faces entered the barber’s shop of the Park Sheraton Hotel, where he was sitting with a warm towel over his face, and fired six shots into his head and back. Fifty-five-year-old Anastasia was dead at the scene. He fell from the chair and lay down, but the attackers calmly left through a side exit.
The police arrived, covered the body with a white cloth, searched his clothes and found the key to room 1009 in the nearby Warwick Hotel. The detectives went to the hotel and started asking questions, and soon Anastasia’s murder began to taste of the tropics, of Cuba. The godfathers in America began to wonder who had dared to kill him. For the first time, the names Meyer Lansky, Santo Trafficante and others appeared in the press.
Socialism or Muerte?
On 10 December 1957, Lansky celebrated the opening of his luxury Riviera Hotel and Casino. It was a lavish opening, as the Riviera was his baby. Guests were entertained by famous singers and actors, including all-star Ginger Rogers, who Lansky did not like. “No matter how well he wiggles his ass, he can’t get a damn voice out.” Lansky was proud, because the Riviera was the first hotel to be completely owned by the American Mafia, and more were planned. It was all good, just no revolutionaries around. They were far away in the Sierra Maestra.
Meanwhile, Castro was consolidating his position in the eastern liberated part of the island and gaining more and more support in the international press, although at the beginning of 1958 he had only 300 fighters. At the end of February, he achieved one of his greatest propaganda successes. The Formula One Grand Premio was an event similar to the Monte Carlo car race, and was therefore followed by the entire world sporting public. It was also to feature the world’s most famous racing driver at the time, Juan Manuel Fangio.
Fangio was resting in the hotel restaurant when two men approached him with revolvers pointed at him, told him they were members of the 26 July Movement and ordered him to go with them. In front of the stunned guests, they pushed him into a car and drove off into the night. Within hours, all the world’s news agencies had published this almost unbelievable news.
All this added to the interest in the race and 150,000 spectators gathered along the Malecón. And the race was over in just half an hour. One of the drivers hit an oil slick on the track, lost control of his Ferrari and crashed into the crowd of spectators. Four spectators died and several others were injured. A few hours after the end of the race, the revolutionaries released Fangio. He said that they had treated him well, cooked him an excellent lunch, apologised for the inconvenience and explained to him the aims of the 26 July movement. At the end, he even referred to his captors as “my friends the kidnappers”.
Castro has now turned to another weapon. Cuba’s sugar cane fields used to account for more than a third of the country’s income, and now they are on fire. The headquarters of the National Bank of Cuba were also attacked, but they did not take the money, they just burned the cheques and the paperwork. All this was proof of the powerlessness of the Batista regime, and the number of those who supported his regime was rapidly dwindling.
But for the elite, the American mafia and the masses of American tourists, life in Havana went on as if nothing had happened. Lansky was treated like a king in Havana, but it was a completely different story in New York, where he sought medical attention for a stomach virus. He was arrested and asked if he knew anything about the murder of Alberto Anastasia. Wherever he went, a pack of plain-clothes detectives followed him.
Articles and photographs in the US press showing Lansky, Batista and other gangsters together forced the US government to put pressure on Batista. “Can you really do nothing about the gangster syndicate in your country?” Lansky complained about the greedy Batista: “He’s insatiable, he wants to have more and more.” Every Monday at noon sharp, Lansky’s courier entered the presidential palace through a side door. In his bag was $300 000 in cash, the weekly payment to Batista. He never accepted this money himself; his assistant did.
In March 1958, the Hilton was finally completed, but Batista did not attend the opening ceremony. Of course, the Hilton also had its own casino, El Caribe, and that’s where the problem began. Havana became a serious competitor to Las Vegas, where the six newly opened large hotels with casinos were facing a marked decline in guests and, of course, in revenues. The American Gangster Syndicate in Las Vegas knew that action had to be taken. Just a few weeks after the Havana Hilton opened its doors, the joint board of directors of the Las Vegas casinos took the decision that whoever has a gaming licence in Nevada and a casino in Havana will have to decide which licence to keep. He will no longer be able to hold both. There were protests and court cases, and in the end most of the casino owners who held both licences sold their ownership stakes in Havana. Given the events of the following years, this was a stroke of genius for them.
But Batista did not back down either. Emboldened, he launched a major military offensive in the Oriente region with aerial bombardment. But in the meantime, Raul Castro and a group of fighters invaded the mining village of Moa Bay, where the Americans were extracting the strategically important nickel, and took 28 American citizens hostage. There was a hue and cry in America, and Batista had to watch in shame as the American ambassador negotiated with Castro for the release of the hostages. Even minor direct confrontations were a victory for Castro, who thus decided to make another courageous move. A larger group of fighters bypassed Havana from Oriente province and took up anchorage in the westernmost province of Pinar del Rio. This could have put Havana under siege. “That’s when we sensed victory”, Castro later recounted.
As the new tourist season approaches, bookings for hotels in Havana drop for the first time. Meyer Lansky felt he had to find other options if Batista was not going to last. Mafia syndicate representatives therefore started to visit suitable places near Cuba in case Batista left power. Puerto Rico, Barbados, the Bahamas, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic were the destinations of these trips.
All this has resonated strongly among casino owners in Cuba. They generally felt that it was better to be friendly with the 26th of July movement than to bet everything on Batista. Santo Trafficante was convinced that whoever was going to rule Cuba in the future – and it was unlikely to be Batista – would need the money coming from the casinos. So he started secretly sending money and also weapons to Sierra Maestro. He was convinced that Lansky no longer had a good understanding of what was going on in Cuba.
It is hard to believe, but it is true that the CIA also wanted to ingratiate itself with the future rulers of Cuba, giving them USD 50 000 and participating in the smuggling of arms to the island, despite the fact that the US government had stopped all arms deliveries to Batista at the time. In the days of December, as the waves began to crash against the Malecón coast, there were rumours in Havana that Batista’s days were numbered. Communications with the rest of the island were cut and power cuts became more frequent. Casinos were operating as usual, but with much smaller profits. At night, police cars and SIM security cars circled the roads. Restaurants were cutting their opening hours as they could no longer get fresh vegetables and meat from the surrounding area. But most of all, Batista was disturbed by the news that town after town was falling into the hands of the rebels, and without too much bloodshed.
Before the end of the year, US Ambassador Smith visited Batista and made it clear that his government wanted him to leave Cuba. Batista nodded and then asked quietly, “Can I settle in the United States?” The Ambassador replied that he feared that this would not be possible. New Year’s Eve was apparently peaceful, but there was a certain tension in the air. The bodyguards, who were seated at tables and keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings, did not have their revolvers holstered at their waists as usual, but laid on the table and covered with handkerchiefs.
At the time, Meyer Lansky was sitting with a few friends in the less prestigious Plaza Hotel. Around midnight, someone approached him and whispered something in his ear. “He’s gone. The beards have won.” Batista took advantage of the New Year’s mood and fled the island by plane. Lansky remained perfectly calm and knew what he had to do. He drove to the Tropicana Club, found Trafficante, told him the news and said, “Collect all the cash in dollars, including cheques and deposits, inform all the casinos to do the same, and bring the money to me. All casinos are to cease operations immediately.”
As soon as people found out what had happened at around 4am, they started to come out onto the streets. At first they were just talking, but then they started banging and drumming and singing their favourite songs. The first of Castro’s troops began to arrive in the city, there were a few small clashes with the police and the secret services, and then the people gave vent to their long-standing discontent. They started smashing the hated parking meters with hammers, iron bars and baseball bats, as the tolls poured directly into the pockets of Batista’s father-in-law. They then took on the slot machines in cafés, restaurants and bars in the same way, and finally headed for the casinos. Soon, the first troops of Castro’s fighters joined them.
“The bandits are coming, hide!” shouted employees as hundreds of people stormed the casinos and started destroying them. Automatic weapons were fired and bullets smashed rows of liquor bottles. Bearded gunmen filled the receptions of elite hotels, smashing bottles and taunting staff. Within hours, crowds of citizens were marching through the streets of Havana, waving the red and black flags of the 26th of July Movement. All those who collaborated with the fallen regime were hiding behind closed doors. The gangster world gathered at the Villa Lansky in the suburbs, greeted by bodyguards. In the living room, where piles of money were on the table, millions of dollars were hastily distributed among the heads of the gangster families. Lansky was perfectly calm, carrying a small suitcase now full of thousand dollar bills.
Then everyone waited to see what would happen. Castro had not yet arrived in Havana, and US officials and tourists were gathering at the airport and the port, waiting to escape home. Batista’s closest associates were the first to escape, and some did not have enough time to empty their bank accounts of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lansky had not yet escaped and was waiting for Fidel Castro to arrive in Havana. He did not believe that he would close the casinos and be left without cash.
Castro arrived in Havana on 8 January and a few days later the arrests of those who had beaten and tortured people began. They were lined up in front of the wall of the La Coruna fortress and several hundred were shot. The executions without trial provoked a great deal of criticism in America. American newspapers also reported that the gangsters had chartered three planes and fled Cuba. Lansky and Trafficante immediately denied this and claimed that they were still in Cuba. Castro did indeed close the casinos and ban the lotto, but his advisers warned him that without the casinos there would be no money in the state coffers either. So the casinos reopened, but there were no tourists and soon they were in the red.
As the new Minister of Finance, Che Guevara ordered his men to count the money in casinos because the casino managements were allegedly hiding it. “The beards are counting our money”, the gangsters were outraged.
Arrests followed. Among the many arrested was Santo Trafficante. Meyer Lansky was already out of Cuba at the time, otherwise he would have been behind bars too. Finally, after a conversation with Raul Castro, who had become Minister of Defence, Santo Trafficante was allowed to leave Cuba. Some claimed that he had to pay $100,000 for his freedom.
Meyer Lansky came to Cuba again to see if he could reach some kind of agreement with Castro on the gaming industry, but soon realised that all his efforts were in vain and after a month he went back to America. In October 1960, the Cuban Official Gazette announced the nationalisation of hotels and casinos and 165 American companies in Cuba. Shortly afterwards, the young American President, who was enjoying the orgies in Cuba, announced an economic blockade of Cuba. The gangsters had the most to lose in Cuba. Before the fall, however, Batista had managed to put some $300 million into Swiss and other accounts. The Malecon, where gangsters once roamed, was now lined with bearded revolutionaries shouting: ‘Viva Fidel! Viva la Patria! Socialismo o muerte!”
