Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba, and the Mafia: 1933 to 1966

CHAPTER 1:
PAST AS PROLOGUE

By early 1898, Cuba’s long anticolonial insurgency against Spain had reached a turning point. The Ejército Libertador de Cuba (Cuban Liberation Army) had gained the strategic advantage. Madrid and Washington had come to a similar assessment: Spain would not be able to regain control of its rebellious colony by military means.

The Cuban mambises (guerrillas), who had been fighting off and on since 1868, appeared to be on the road to victory when the United States intervened against Spain in mid-1898. The intervention struck like a bolt from the blue—and left a wound in the Cuban body politic that would define Cuban politics for decades to come.

With U.S. intervention, the Guerra de la Independencia de Cuba (Cuban War of Independence) became the “Spanish-American War.” With the defeat of Spain, the United States replaced Spain as the dominant power on the island. Cuba went from being a colony of Spain to a neocolony of the United States. For the United States, the Spanish-American War was a brief but exhilarating experience. “It’s been a splendid little war,” Secretary of State John Hay remarked, not long after the U.S. defeat of Spain at Santiago de Cuba in July 1898.⁸

For four years, U.S. military governors-general ruled Cuba as the U.S. Army remained on the island as an occupation force. When Cuba elected its first president in 1902, the pro-U.S. Tomás Estrada Palma, the U.S. Army withdrew from the island. Two years later Cuba elected a Congress. The Republic of Cuba was an electoral democracy. But the seat of power was in the United States.

As a condition of the end of official U.S. occupation, the Republic of Cuba was forced to substitute the trappings of self-government for real sovereignty. The Platt Amendment (crafted by Senator Orville Platt, a Republican from Connecticut) institutionalized the inequitable neocolonial relationship between the United States and Cuba. The United States had the legal authority to intervene militarily in Cuba, if Washington believed life, property, or public order were in jeopardy on the island. The amendment also gave the United States the right to a naval base at Guantánamo Bay, and barred Cuba from negotiating treaties with other countries.⁹

In his State of the Union message in December 1899, President William McKinley celebrated the new relationship between the United States and Cuba. “The new Cuba yet to arise from the ashes of the past must be bound to us by ties of singular intimacy and strength if its enduring welfare is to be assured,” McKinley stated. “The destinies of Cuba are in some rightful form and manner irrevocably linked with our own, but how far is for the future to determine in the ripeness of events.”¹⁰

The U.S. flag was raised over Santiago de Cuba in July 1898, and the island’s economic and political systems were reconfigured to accommodate U.S. power and influence. Former U.S. Ambassador Philip Bonsal (1959-1960) remarked on the rapid transformation of the Cuban economy after 1898. Bonsal wrote, “From only $50 million when the Spaniards departed to over $1.25 billion by 1925, Americans controlled the more modern sugar mills, half the railways… and the major utilities plus an impressive list of miscellaneous assets.”

By the middle of the 20^th century, Cuba had become a virtual economic appendage of the United States. In 1958, fifty-eight percent of Cuba’s sugar and two-thirds of its other exports were sold in U.S. markets, and three-fourths of Cuba’s imports came from the United States. The brand names of U.S. companies—Goodyear, Procter and Gamble, Swift, and Texaco, for example—were well known in Cuba. Ford Motor Company had thirty-five dealerships on the island.

In the Republic of Cuba, leading Cuban politicians sat on boards of directors of U.S. companies operating in Cuba and bought stock in them. Legal and political structures were developed to promote the interests of the United States. The children of well-to-do Cubans were educated in the United States, and returned to Cuba to work for U.S. businesses.

The widespread availability of U.S. capital left few opportunities for Cuban entrepreneurs. As historian Louis A. Pérez, Jr. points out, ambitious Cubans turned to politics, instead of business, to accumulate wealth and power. “Public office symbolized opportunity in an economy where opportunity was limited to outsiders with capital or insiders with power,” Pérez writes.¹¹ Not surprisingly, corruption began with Cuba’s first president Tomás Estrada Palma.

Initially, Estrada Palama drew on Cubans from across the political spectrum to form his government, but when he prepared to run for reelection in 1905, he declared himself a member of the Moderate party, and purged members of other parties from the government. He also rigged the electoral process. In 1906, an armed rebellion broke out against Estrada Palma, and U.S. troops were deployed to Cuba to restore order. They stayed in Cuba until 1909.

Corruption was institutionalized during the term of José Miguel Gómez (1909–1913), the second president of the Republic of Cuba. When he took the oath of office, Gómez was not a wealthy man, but he left the presidency a millionaire. Cuban politicians, from the president and cabinet ministers down to local officials, made money on Cuban government contracts. Between fifteen to twenty percent of Cuban customs revenue was lost to corruption.

Historian Hugh Thomas observed, of the Department of Public Works, “Plans and estimates were made for innumerable imaginary roads and mythical bridges over nonexistent rivers. Congressmen were corrupted wholesale by the appointment of lottery collectorships.” Corruption continued to flourish under President Mario García Menocal (1913–1921). Menocal was already worth $1 million when he became president, but when he left the Palacio Presidencial he had assets of $40 million.¹²

In the late 1920s, the Republic of Cuba descended into a prolonged period of authoritarian rule by strongmen with backing from the Cuban army. President Gerardo Machado (1925–1933) veered into authoritarianism when he staged a fraudulent election in 1928 to remain in power. The Cuban sugar export market collapsed in 1929, and when the unemployed took to the streets to protest their plight, Machado ordered the army and police to shoot. Cuba was convulsed by gun battles between the Cuban security forces and armed anti-Machado political groups. But Machado was unable to restore order. In August 1933, Machado fled into exile in the Bahamas with seven bags of gold and five pistols.

With Machado’s exit, Sergeant Fulgencio Batista, the new commander of the Cuban army, rose to power. From behind the facade of the Palacio Presidencial, he ruled Cuba with an iron fist. To the traditional mix of corruption and violence, Batista added a new form of neocolonial corruption called gangsterismo: Batista would partner with North American gangsters and share the profits from their colony of casinos, hotels, and nightclubs.¹³

Out of this environment of political decay grew a new Cuban nationalist movement led by Fidel Castro in the 1950s. Castro did battle with Batista, drawing on the legacy of Cuban independence leader José Martí. The past would be prologue in neocolonial Cuba.