CHAPTER 3:
BATISTA’S SECOND COUP D’ETAT
News of General Fulgencio Batista’s coup d’etat (strike against the state) on March 10, 1952, was reported almost casually in the United States. Time magazine’s coverage was emblematic of the U. S. reaction.
“Batista is back,” Time reported. “The tough, smiling ex-sergeant who bossed Cuba for years of ‘disciplined democracy,’ this week toppled President Carlos Prío’s constitutional regime from power in an almost bloodless army revolution…. In noisy, politically turbulent Havana, all was calm and quiet as the Strong Man’s tanks once again brought ‘disciplined democracy’ to the streets.”
In a radio broadcast, Batista said that he acted “to save the country from chaotic conditions.” A more likely explanation is that Batista wanted to return to power, but concluded that he could not do so by legal means. In 1948, he returned to Cuba from exile in Florida and was elected to the Cuban Senate. He was a candidate in the presidential election, scheduled for June 1952, but was stuck in third place, according to public opinion polls.64
The ease with which the Cuban army drove Carlos Prío Socarrás from power revealed the degree to which corruption had sapped the vitality of the Partido Revolucionario Cubano-Auténtico. When Prío first learned that a coup d’etat was underway, he made no effort to resist. He fled into exile in such a hurry he forgot his cocaine stash in the Palacio Presidencial. His brother Antonio danced the night away at the Sans Souci nightclub.65
Historian Hugh Thomas concludes, “The Auténtico Revolutionary Movement was neither authentic nor revolutionary. It was a democratic party but most of the leaders were anxious to enjoy the fruits of power more than to press through such reforms as needed by Cuban society.” Thomas adds, “Their program turned out to be words.”66 In 1952, the United States was not complicit in Batista’s coup d’etat, as it had been in 1933–1934. From Washington’s vantage point, however, Batista’s usefulness as a Cold War ally outweighed the illegitimate nature of his rule.
The Truman Administration did not immediately offer diplomatic recognition to Batista’s illegitimate regime. Cuban Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel de la Campa told U.S. Ambassador Willard Beaulac that Batista would restore political order, as he had two decades earlier. Beaulac wrote in a March 22, 1952, memorandum, “He [Campa] said that an intolerable situation had developed in Cuba. Graft, gangsterism, and favoritism had made a travesty of democracy.” Beaulac added, “Batista once before had brought order out of chaos and Dr. Campa thought he was going to do it again.”
In Washington, there were concerns about Batista’s ties to the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP), the Cuban communist party. Two Cuban communists—Juan Marinello and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez —had held posts in Batista’s Cabinet in the late 1930s and early 1940s. And U.S. policymakers had qualms about the way Batista attained power: in a March 24, 1952 memorandum, Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote to President Harry S. Truman, “The Department of State naturally deplores the way in which the Batista coup was brought about…” But, Acheson said, Batista promised that Cuba would continue to be a safe environment for “private capital” and would “curtail international communist activities in Cuba.”
Acheson concluded, “Under these circumstances I believe it would be detrimental to the special relations that this country has with Cuba to hold up [diplomatic] recognition any longer.” Acheson took note of “our very special position in Cuba which includes heavy capital investment, enormous international trade, the Nicaro nickel plant operation, the Guantánamo Naval Base, three armed services missions and the recent signing of a bilateral military assistance agreement which requires implementation.” On March 27, 1952, the United States recognized the Batista regime.67
In the meantime, Batista played his cards skillfully. Cuba broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1952. The next year he outlawed the Cuban communist party, which made the Cuban dictator a perfect fit for President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Cold War policy of anticommunism in Latin America.
Historian Stephen Rabe writes, “The United States needed Latin America’s support in the struggle with the Soviet Union, and it wanted to eliminate internal Communist subversion from the hemisphere. In pursuit of hemispheric solidarity, the Eisenhower Administration would, in 1953 and 1954, offer money, medals, and military support to Latin American leaders who were anti-Communists, including those who were dictators.”
Batista was one of the Eisenhower Administration’s best allies against “communist subversion” in the Western Hemisphere. U.S. economic and military assistance to Cuba increased steadily during the 1950s. U.S. military aid to Cuba for “hemispheric defense” went from $400,000 in 1953 to $3 million in 1958. A U. S. Military Assistance Advisory Group, including Army, Air Force and Navy advisors, was set up in 1955. The CIA established a station in Cuba, placing intelligence officers in the U.S. Embassy in Havana and the Consulate in Santiago de Cuba.68
In February 1955, Batista got at least some part of the legitimacy he sought when Vice President Richard Nixon visited Cuba to attend Batista’s inauguration. Nixon was photographed raising his glass in a toast to Batista, comparing his Cuban host to Abraham Lincoln. (Batista had declared himself the winner of a presidential election in November 1954, although Cuban opposition parties boycotted the balloting.)
When Nixon returned to Washington, he told Eisenhower’s Cabinet that Batista “will give stability to Cuba.” Nixon assured the Cabinet that Batista was “more desirous this time of doing a job for Cuba than for Batista,” a subtle reference to Batista’s self-enrichment during his earlier rule from 1934 to 1944.69 One of Nixon’s main priorities was to urge Batista to crack down on Cuban communists. Nixon’s briefing notes stated, “U.S. wants Batista to follow through on drive against communism by enforcing existing adequate anti-communist laws.”70
While Nixon was in Havana, he met with the leaders of Cuba’s security forces, including Colonel Antonio Blanco Rico, chief of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM), Brigadier General Eulogio Cantillo, adjutant general of the Cuban Army, General Francisco Tabernilla, chief of staff of the Cuban army, and Rafael Salas Cañizares, chief of the Cuban National Police.71 In May 1955, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen W. Dulles met with Batista in Havana to discuss the establishment of the Buro de Represión a las Actividades Comunista (BRAC) (Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities). The U.S. Embassy pressed BRAC to share information on “subversive activities” with the United States.
At the same time, the Eisenhower Administration turned a blind eye to Batista’s periodic imposition of news-media censorship, suspension of civil liberties, and harsh repression of his political opposition.72 As the Eisenhower Administration drew closer to Cuba in a Cold War alliance of convenience, Batista formalized his partnership with the Mafia gamblers.
Upon his return to power, Batista made a formal arrangement with Mafia gambling impresario Meyer Lansky to expand and upgrade the Mafia’s colony of casinos, hotels, and nightclubs in Havana. By the early 1950s, Havana’s attractions had lost their luster. Cuba was losing tourists to Acapulco, a new vacation destination on Mexico’s Pacific coast, and other resorts in the Caribbean. No new hotel had been built in Havana since the mid-1930s. A U.S. Embassy report stated that Cubans were more eager to invest in “hotels and apartments” in Florida than they were to put money into real estate in Cuba. A United Nations mission even recommended that Cuba build more hotels, beaches, and other tourist attractions.
To compensate for falling casino revenues, a new game of chance called “razzle-dazzle” was introduced in Havana in the 1952–1953 winter season. Cabaret Quarterly reported, “Several Havana nightclubs installed razzle-dazzle, a tricky dice game in which customers have virtually no chance of winning—but can, and usually do, lose heavily.” The Miami-based quarterly added, “With this game the nightclubs were milking tourists of hundreds of thousands of dollars weekly until finally the Cuban government banned the game.”73
Batista worried Cuba’s reputation would suffer for “clean” gambling as news about the crooked razzle-dazzle game spread among tourists. He declared razzle-dazzle illegal and ordered the Cuban police to protect tourists from unfair gambling practices.74 Batista hired Lansky as a consultant to reform gambling in Cuba, as he had in the 1930s.
A Saturday Evening Post article, “Suckers in Paradise,” exposed the rigged games of chance in Havana in March 1953. The popular magazine reported that Mafia gamblers Sam Mannarino and David Yaras, owners of the Sans Souci casino, were running crooked razzle-dazzle games. Soon Batista’s Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (SIM) (Military Intelligence Service) took action against the operators of gambling scams.
Organized crime writer T. J. English writes, “It had been beautifully played by Batista’s adviser on gambling.” English notes, “Lansky did not have to kick out the mobster-sponsored card cheats and razzle artists. He let Cuban military intelligence do it for him, but only after the cheater’s actions had been exposed in the pages of a major U.S. magazine. This way their mobster sponsors could not object.”75
The FBI reported that Batista asked Lansky to bring “his men into Cuba to operate gambling.” According to Lansky, “Batista wanted American tourists in Havana and was concerned over the strong possibility that ‘bust-out operations’ [like razzle-dazzle] would keep the American trade away.”76 Batista’s friendship with Lansky had grown closer during his exile in Florida. Batista had settled in Daytona Beach, not far from Hollywood, Florida, where Lansky lived. Lansky operated a number of “carpet joints” and other gambling establishments in Broward County, Florida, during World War II. The two men continued to share ideas about gambling.77
With Batista’s return to power in Cuba, Lansky had a unique opportunity to experiment with new concepts of gambling. He would attract more tourists to Cuba by building luxurious hotel-casino complexes with good restaurants. He would also upgrade the Montmartre, Sans Souci, and Tropicana, the Mafia’s flagship nightclubs.
Lansky drew on the experience of the Mafia gamblers in Las Vegas. After the initial failure of Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel and Casino, the Mafia built big hotel-casino complexes in Las Vegas. Within a few years, millions of visitors a year were streaming in, lured both by gambling and first-rate entertainment: Abbott and Costello, Harry Belafonte, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, and Frank Sinatra and the “Rat Pack” were among the headliners.78 Meanwhile, Batista laid the foundation for Lansky’s new gambling business model with Hotel Law 2074, which offered financial incentives, underwritten by the Cuban treasury, to the Mafia to build new hotels and casinos.
The law made casino licenses available for $25,000. Nightclubs, with $200,000 worth of upgrades, were eligible for casino licenses. In return, licensees were required to make a $2,000 graft payment to the Batistianos.
Hotels and casinos were exempted from paying corporate taxes in Cuba. Customs duties were eliminated for imported gaming equipment and building materials. Visa restrictions for pit bosses, stickmen, and dealers were eased.79 All this spurred a hotel-construction boom in Havana in the mid-1950s.
Four new hotels with casinos opened between 1955 and 1958: the Capri, the Hilton, and the Riviera in Havana, and the Comodoro in suburban Miramar. The number of hotel rooms in Havana increased from 3,000 in 1952 to 5,500 in 1958. A new casino also opened at the Sevilla-Biltmore Hotel.80
Lansky set up a headquarters in the Montmartre Club, where he met with Mafia-linked businessmen and gangsters from the United States. His goal was to raise $100 million in cash for new hotel and casino refurbishing projects. He hired executives to run his hotels and casinos from among his associates—Clifford A. Jones, Eddie Levine, and Irving Devine. He selected gamblers with technical expertise like brothers Dino and Eddie Cellini to manage day-to-day operations of the casinos.
In November 1955, tourism in Cuba got a boost when the New York Times published a detailed report on Batista’s plan to upgrade Havana’s casinos and hotels in its Sunday travel section. The Times wrote, “Havana [is] now making a bid for the title of the ‘Las Vegas of the tropics.’”81 When the Hotel Nacional reopened under Lansky’s management in December 1956, it featured a new casino and luxury suites for high-stakes professional gamblers. Lansky’s brother Jake was the floor manager of the new casino. Lansky associates Wilbur Clark and Moe Dalitz invested in the casino. Singer Eartha Kitt was the star attraction on opening night at the Hotel Nacional, a preview of the Mafia gamblers’ new emphasis on top-notch entertainers.82
With its grand view of the Straits of Florida, the Hotel Riviera was the crown jewel of Lansky’s new paradigm for gambling in Cuba. Cuban development banks subsidized one-half of the cost of the $14 million project; the rest of the funds came from investors linked to the Mafia. The Riviera, the largest Mafia-owned hotel-casino outside of Las Vegas, was an immediate success when it opened its doors in December 1957. The hotel’s 440 double rooms were occupied for the entire winter season of 1957–1958. The Riviera’s Copa Room casino quickly became a favorite of professional gamblers.83
One of Lucky Luciano’s most ardent Cuban backers in 1946–1947, Senator Eduardo Suárez Rivas, brother of Batista’s Minister of Labor José Suárez Rivas, was secretary of the Compañía de Hoteles La Riviera de Cuba, which operated the Riviera hotel and casino. In the mid-1950s, North American tourists vacationed in Cuba in record numbers, drawn by gambling, the mambo, and cha cha cha. Nearly 300,000 tourists from the United States visited Cuba each year in the late 1950s.84
There was glamour galore in Havana in the 1950s. Celebrities from the United States liked to be seen in Cuba. Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner honeymooned in Havana in November 1951. Actors Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, Johnny Weismuller, William Holden, and Stewart Granger; boxing champions Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis; and baseball legend Ted Williams enjoyed visiting Cuba.85
The Tropicana, with its award-winning modernist architectural design, stands out on an island famous for its Spanish colonial architecture. Its signature performance space, which featured top musical stars from the United States and Cuba, is under the Arcos de Cristal (glass arches), with live tropical trees enclosed by walls of glass. The Tropicana orchestra was known for its big band mambo arrangements and great jazz musicians. The nightclub also has two other circular dance floors with orchestra stages. The music was continuous from 8 pm to 4 am. And so was the gambling.
Cuban jazz writer Leonardo Acosta observes, “Many American jazz musicians passed through the Tropicana, either to play there or simply as tourists…. It wasn’t unusual to see Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, or Tito Puente at one of the tables.” Sunday descargas (jam sessions) were special occasions at the Tropicana. But for many tourists it was the sexually charged floorshows that made a visit to the “Paraiso Bajo las Estrellas” (“Paradise Under the Stars”) memorable.
For fifteen years, Roderico Neyra, better known as “Rodney,” choreographed the Tropicana’s floorshows. He had his first big hit with his rumba troupe Las Mulatas de Fuego (The Fiery Mulattas). Las Mulatas included six dancers and three singers led by Celia Cruz, a rising young star with an extraordinary alto voice. Cuban music historian Ned Sublette writes, “The group’s dancers wore bikinis on stage, which was the height of both chic and daring. It was also daring to put so many dark-skinned girls out there at once; there was still a color bar.”86
Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts was a big fan. Senator George Smathers, a Democrat from Florida, recalled a memorable evening with Kennedy. “Kennedy wasn’t a great casino man,” Smathers said. “But the Tropicana nightclub had a floor show that you wouldn’t believe.”87
In the 1950s, Cuba’s “nuevo ritmos” (“new rhythms’), the mambo and cha cha cha, were popular with North American tourists. The cha cha cha got its name one night as Orquesta América played Enrique Jorrín’s hit-song “Silver Star.” The muscians improvised new lyrics, singing “The cha-cha, the cha-cha is a brand new dance.” To the musicians, the feet of dancers shuffling on the floor sounded like “cha cha cha.” The cha cha cha’s slow beat and recognizable one-two-three accent at the end of each musical phrase made the music a big-hit with North American tourists, who found it difficult to dance to the up-tempo, syncopated mambo. Like the mambo, Jorrín’s catchy new rhythm sparked a dance craze in the United States.88
However, it was Benny Moré and his Banda Gigante (Big Band) who won the hearts of Cubans in a way no other musician has before or since. Moré, a charismatic performer, cut a dramatic figure on stage with his signature hat, oversized suit, and a Congo cane, like those used by rumba dancers and diablitos. He had a distinctive voice and exquisite timing, sometimes shrieking like a tropical bird to punctuate a musical phrase. He was known affectionately as the “bárbaro del ritmo” (wild man of rhythm).
Moré formed his Banda Gigante, when he returned to Cuba after touring abroad with Dámaso Pérez Prado’s big mambo band in 1953. Moré augmented his metales (horn section) to include four trumpets, three trombones, and four saxophones. His metales featured legendary musicians and musical arrangers like trombonist Generoso Jímenez and trumpeter Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros.
Benny Moré biographer John Radanovich writes, “Moré’s legacy is taking African polyrhythms and transferring them to a big-band format without losing the original vitality and uniqueness of the drum sessions where he learned his rhythms.” Moré spent his boyhood in Santa Isabel de las Lajas, a rural village near Cienfuegos. Three of his grandparents had been slaves. The center of Moré’s life was the Casino de los Congos, a church and cultural center, where he studied African musical traditions from rumba to the sacred dancing and drumming rituals of Palo Monte and Santeria.89
According to Isabel Leymarie, a historian of Cuban music, Havana was an “enchanted city” in the 1950s. “There are, in the history of mankind, privileged moments when the genius of a people and exceptional circumstances combine to turn certain cities—Athens, Peking, Alexandria, Venice, Paris, New York—into incomparable cultural centers,” Leymarie writes. “Few places on earth have been as exciting as Havana in the 1950s.”90
At the same time, however, gangsterismo’s grip on Cuba tightened with Batista’s return to power.
Santo Trafficante, Jr.’s gambling interests grew rapidly after Batista’s golpe de estado in March 1952. Trafficante’s attorney Frank Ragano writes, “He either owned or was the head of syndicates that controlled five casinos.” Ragano adds, “One was in a nightclub, the Sans Souci, and the remainder in the Capri, Comodoro, Deauville, and Sevilla-Biltmore hotels.”91
FBI reports indicate Trafficante also had financial interests in other hotels and casinos. One FBI report noted that Trafficante had investments in the Tropicana casino, Havana Hilton Hotel, and the Hotel St. John Casino.92 With his investment in the Tropicana, Trafficante deepened his ties to Cuban gangsters with close ties to Batista and his inner circle. The principal owners of the Tropicana were Cuban gangsters: the Fox brothers Martin and Pedro, Alberto Adura, and Oscar Echemendia. Martin Fox and Echemendia got their start running bolita numbers and sponsoring roving casinos in Havana in the 1930s. Ardura was a close friend of General Roberto Fernandez Miranda, Batista’s brother-in-law. Martin was a good friend of Santiago Rey, Batista’s defense and interior minister. Batista, his wife Marta, his son Papo, Fernandez Miranda, and Rey were known to frequent the Tropicana.93
The Tropicana was an epicenter of gangsterismo. According to CIA and FBI reports, Santiago Rey granted a “concession” to Martin Fox and Ardura “to bring slot machines to Cuba.” Mafia gambler Norman Rothman supervised the transfer of slot machines from the United States to Cuba. Ardura managed the slot machine concession in Cuba, while Fernandez Miranda got fifty percent of the “take.”94
Trafficante had operated in Cuba since 1946 as an “emissary” for his father, Santo Trafficante, Sr., the organized crime boss of Tampa, Florida. When his father died in 1954, Santo Jr. took over the family in Tampa and inherited his father’s financial interests in Cuba. The next year Trafficante moved to Cuba, where he ingratiated himself with Batista and his security forces. Santo Trafficante and Meyer Lansky were the top two gamblers in the Mafia gambling colony in the 1950s. But Lansky, who was not a ‘made man,’ was a junior partner in the Mafia power structure to Trafficante, who was a godfather.95
According to FBI reports, Trafficante gained a controlling interest in the Sans Souci nightclub in the mid-1950s. Trafficante kept a small apartment at the Sans Souci, which was owned previously by the Gabriel and Sam Mannarino crime family of Kensington, Pennsylvania, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Norman Rothman managed the Sans Souci for the Mannarinos. When the Sans Souci reopened after renovations on December 31, 1954, Trafficante put Eddie Cellini in charge of the casino. Cellini’s brother Dino managed the casino at the Tropicana. An FBI report stated Dino Cellini was a “longtime associate of Trafficante.”96
Like the Tropicana, the Sans Souci, with its close ties to Cuba’s security forces, was a nexus of gangsterismo. The Legal Attaché at the U.S. Embassy reported that Eufemio Fernández, chief of the Policía Secreta Nacional (Secret National Police) under President Prío, “owned an interest in the Sans Souci nightclub and casino.” Fernández was the former head of Guiteras Revolutionary Action, an armed action group tied to the Auténticos. According to FBI records, Colonel Manuel Ugalde Camilo, head of the Military Intelligence Service in the early 1950s, was “close” to the “group operating the San Souci.”97
Meanwhile, Trafficante deepened his role in the “numbers” racket in Cuba, when he gained control of the casino at the Sevilla-Biltmore Hotel. The Sevilla-Biltmore, with its Moorish-influenced architecture, was gangster Al Capone’s favorite hotel in Cuba in the 1920s. It was owned by Amleto Battisti y Lora, a Uruguayan businessman of Italian descent who also had close ties to Meyer Lansky, who used Battisti’s Banco de Créditos e Inversiones to launder casino profits. In addition to his involvement in the Mafia’s Cuban heroin distribution network, Battisti became known as the “numbers King of Havana.”98
According to FBI records, Trafficante ran “a numbers organization” out of the Sevilla-Biltmore in the 1950s with the backing of General Eulogio Cantillo, commander of the Cuban army headquarters in Havana in 1957. Trafficante also had a financial stake in the Hotel Capri. The Capri featured the Salon Rojo, a casino with red damask walls and chandeliers, and a rooftop swimming pool. George Raft, a Hollywood actor famous for his gangster roles, was a “greeter” at the casino. Raft had grown up on the Lower East Side with Meyer Lansky and Ben Siegel.
FBI records indicate Charles “The Blade” Tourine, a friend of Cuban Congressman Ramón Granda y Fuentes, had a “substantial interest” in the Capri Hotel. Tourine and Nicholas di Costanza managed the Capri’s Salon Rojo casino. There, Tourine met frequently with Trafficante for long discussions. Meyer Lansky was another stakeholder in the Salon Rojo.99 The Mafia gamblers’ business deals with corrupt Cuban politicians was another defining characteristic of gangsterismo.
The Hilton Hotel was pure gangsterismo. The Hilton was a joint venture of Batista and the Mafia gamblers. Batista financed the $32 million hotel by dipping into the Cuban treasury and the Cuban Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union’s pension fund. The Havana Hilton, with 630 rooms, was the largest hotel on the island. Roberto “Chiri” Mendoza, whose construction company built the hotel, was the principal owner of the casino at the Havana Hilton. Mendoza was a business associate of Batista and Trafficante.
The FBI reported, “Mendoza, in combination with a group from Las Vegas… offered President Fulgencio Batista directly a flat million dollars per year in return for the complete concession in the gambling casino at the Havana Hilton.” At the same time, Mendoza was involved in several other business ventures with Batista. Mendoza’s brother Mario, a prominent Havana attorney, was Batista’s “legal advisor.”100
A struggle over the ownership of the Havana Hilton casino may have figured in the murder of gangster Albert Anastasia. Anastasia’s bullet-riddled body was found lying in a pool of blood on the floor of the barbershop at the Sheraton Park Hotel in New York on October 25, 1957. At the time of his murder, Anastasia was negotiating aggressively to buy a sizeable share of the Havana Hilton casino from Mendoza in a move to expand his presence in Havana. Trafficante and Mendoza traveled to New York to meet with Anastasia on October 24. According to a police report obtained by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, “It was rumored that Anastasia had attempted to move in on Trafficante’s operations in Cuba and this was one of the reasons that he was killed.”101
The Mafia gambling colony was the cornerstone of gangsterismo in Cuba. The gangsters’ graft bound Batista, his inner circle, leaders of Cuba’s security services, and his business associates together in defense of a repressive, but for them profitable, political status quo on the island.
A CIA report stated, “In return for the loyalty they gave him, Batista always backed his security services. In times of crisis, he often suspended civil guarantees… and gave the services a free hand.” The report added, “Even when civil guarantees were in effect, the services had great freedom… especially in political cases. They frequently made arrests without warrants and were never rebuked for any sort of severity of treatment, third degree methods, or even killing of suspects.”102 As gangsterismo flourished in Cuba, Meyer Lansky earned the respect of North American crime families by fairly distributing the profits from the Mafia casinos in Cuba.
Under Lansky’s profit-sharing plan, “connected” members of organized crime were eligible to buy “points” (stock-like investments) in Mafia casinos in Cuba. “Point owners” were required to spend time in Cuba, often as “watchers,” who monitored dealers from the casino floor to make sure the house was not cheated. The revenue stream from the Mafia’s gambling colony in Cuba became an important source of income for organized crime families in the United States.103
Mafioso Johnny Rosselli spent time in Cuba representing Chicago Godfather Sam Giancana’s “hidden interests” in the 1950s. Rosselli worked as a manager at the Sans Souci, where Chicago gangsters, including Lenny Patrick and Dave Yaras, had financial interests. He also organized gambling junkets to Cuba for wealthy North Americans.104
Mafia gamblers rolled out a red carpet for Rosselli at the Hotel Nacional. When Rosselli walked into the casino, he was often accompanied by Lansky associates Charlie Baron or Moe Dalitz. Refugio Cruz, floor manager of the hotel’s casino, recalled, “It was as if royalty was visiting.” Baron, a former Chicago gambler, was manager of the Hotel Riviera and Dalitz, head of the Cleveland Syndicate, was an owner of the Hotel Nacional casino.105 Rosselli also visited Cuba several times with Sam Giancana.106
“Confidential sources” told the FBI Chicago field office that “Sam Giancana… has had interest in gambling in Havana, Cuba and… in Las Vegas, Nevada.” Another FBI memorandum stated Giancana derived “the bulk” of his “income from gambling in its various forms.”107
Rosselli was Sam Giancana’s man in Las Vegas. Giancana rose in power in the Chicago Mafia as the Outfit’s revenues from gambling in Las Vegas grew steadily in the 1950s. According to FBI records, Rosselli represented Giancana’s hidden interests in the Desert Inn, the Riviera Hotel, and the Stardust Hotel and Casino.108
Luis M. González-Mata asserted that Rosselli was “a friend” of Batista. González-Mata was chief of security for Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic.109
Meanwhile, FBI records indicate Mafia families from New Jersey, New York City, and Philadelphia were also well represented in Cuba. Charles Tourine “secured a gambling license” for a group of Mafia investors from New Jersey and Philadelphia. A group led by Angelo Bruno and Carl “Poppy” Ippolito, bought an interest in the casino at the Plaza Hotel, a few blocks from the Capitolio.110
An FBI report noted that Philadelphia-based Bruno “spent a great deal of time in Miami, Fla., and Havana, Cuba [in 1957–1958.]” Bruno was a member of the Mafia Commission.111
Another FBI report described Salvatore Granello’s interests in Cuba, calling him “a rising hoodlum power” in New York. Granello and George Levine purchased the Oriental Park racetrack and “held the gambling concession” at the nearby Jockey Club casino in 1953–1954. Granello and Levine ran the bar and restaurant at the Sevilla-Biltmore Hotel. Granello and Levine lived in Miami but “traveled back and forth to Cuba approximately once a week.”112
Meanwhile, Batista and the Mafia gamblers got a public-relations gift when comedian Steve Allen broadcast his popular Sunday night variety show from the Hotel Riviera’s Copa Room casino in January 1958, featuring Skitch Henderson’s orchestra and ventriloquist Edgar Bergman and Charlie McCarthy. Allen was the first North American entertainer to telecast a show from Cuba to the United States. The Times of Havana was ecstatic: “The show, a strong plug for Cuban tourism throughout the United States, contained many references to gambling and casinos in which this city abounds.”113
In the short term, Batista’s partnership with the North American gangsters strengthened his hold on power. But Batista’s corrupt and repressive rule also created the political conditions that would lead to his downfall.
Ambassador Philip Bonsal described the political culture of Batista’s brand of gangsterismo in a closed-door session of the House Committee on Foreign Relations in May 1959. “The corruption and the sadism of many Batista henchmen united most Cubans against the regime.” Bonsal said thousands of Cubans had been killed by Batista’s security forces, and “many, many more were arrested on no charges and kept in jail for indefinite periods.”114
Batista’s coup d’etat had created a political vacuum in Cuba. The Auténticos were discredited and ineffective. Eddy Chibás, leader of the Partido del Pueblo Cubano-Ortodoxo, was dead. Young Fidel Castro, a recent graduate of the University of Havana Law School, who had been a candidate for the Cuban House of Representatives on the Ortodoxo ticket in the aborted elections in 1952, soon emerged as the leader of the Cuban resistance. In a speech Castro declared, “The coup was not against Prío but against the people.” He asserted, “It was right to remove from office a government of murderers and thieves, and we were trying to do so peacefully with the support of public opinion and the aid of the people. But by what right do the military do so, they who have murdered and stolen without limit in the past?”115
Castro grew impatient with the Ortodoxo’s electoral focus. On July 26, 1953, he led a daring, but ineptly executed, assault on the Cuban army’s Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The 400 Cuban army troops based at the barracks inflicted a decisive defeat on the 120-member rebel attack force. Seventy of the rebels were killed in the fighting or executed as prisoners of war. More than thirty others were captured, including Castro. He later conceded, “We were a little too confident…. We underestimated the enemy.”
But he was defiant in the courtroom when he and twenty-nine other Moncadistas were put on trial: “We have incited a rebellion against a[n] illegitimate power…” Asked if he were the “intellectual author” of the Moncada assault, he replied, “The only intellectual author of this revolution is José Martí, the Apostle of our Independence.”
“Condemn me. It does not matter,” Castro declared. “History will absolve me!” Castro and his fellow Moncadistas were found guilty. Castro was sentenced to fifteen years in prison on the Isle of Pines off the southwest coast of Cuba. However, he managed to turn the disastrous assault on the Moncada Barracks into a political asset. Historian Thomas Paterson observes, “The brutalities suffered by the brash insurrectionists and the publicity generated by the attack soon elevated Fidel Castro and his movement to near folk-hero status among Cubans.”116
Pressure mounted on Batista to grant amnesty to Castro and the Moncadistas. Castro was released from prison in May 1955. The next month he took part in the founding of the Movimiento de Julio 26 (July 26th Movement), a group named for the date of the attack on the Moncada barracks, which had marked the start of open insurrection against Batista. Cuban youth were inspired and radicalized. They would increasingly organize protest marches, engage in clashes with the police with sticks and stones, and carry out bombings of targets associated with the Batista dictatorship.117
In the meantime, Castro went into exile in Mexico, promising to return with a guerrilla army to drive Batista from power. More than 100 Cubans joined Castro in Mexico for military training, including Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a young Argentine medical doctor. Guevara had heard about Castro’s plan for revolution in Cuba from Moncadistas exiled in Guatemala, where Guevara lived in the mid-1950s.118
On November 25, 1956, Castro and eighty-one others crowded onto the yacht Granma, docked in Tuxpan on Mexico’s Gulf coast. According to Castro’s battle plan, the Granma would arrive in Oriente on November 30. To divert the Cuban army from the Granma’s landing, the July 26th Movement urban underground would launch sabotage raids in Santiago de Cuba on November 30.
But the Fidelistas did not arrive in Oriente until December 2, when the Granma ran aground on a sandbar 100 yards off Alegría de Pio. The July 26th Movement guerrillas had to wade ashore with small arms only, leaving behind equipment, food, and medical supplies. By this time, the Cuban army had already hit back hard against the July 26th Movement underground in Santiago de Cuba.
The Cuban coast guard spotted the Granma, air force planes and naval vessels converged around Alegría de Pio, and the July 26th Movement guerrillas spent the next several days hiding from surveillance planes and dodging Cuban army patrols as they made their way to the Sierra Maestra mountains.
On December 5, near-disaster struck. A Cuban army patrol took the Fidelistas by surprise and inflicted heavy casualties. Guevara was hit in the neck, but he, Castro, and several others escaped into the jungle. Of the eighty-two July 26th Movement guerrillas onboard the Granma, only twelve survived the first week of combat in Cuba.119
The opposing forces could not have been more mismatched. Batista had a combined army, navy, and air force of 40,000 men at his command. The United States had supplied Cuba with artillery, hand grenades, machine guns, tanks, and T-33 jet trainer aircraft, which could be used in combat. The July 26th Movement guerrillas merely had a few light arms. When Castro and other survivors reached the Sierra Maestra in early January 1957, they got rid of their uniforms and took refuge in the homes of the mountain guajiros (peasants). Castro biographer Tad Szulc wrote, “The story of how Castro was able to recover from a terrible initial defeat, regroup, fight, start winning against Batista units, and form an ultimately victorious Rebel Army is the story of the extraordinary support he received from the Sierra Maestra peasants.”120
From their mountain outposts, the July 26th Movement guerrillas staged ambushes on Cuban army patrols. July 26th Movement urban underground cells also conducted sabotage operations in Camaguey, Havana, Oriente, and Las Villas provinces against bridges, railroads, and industrial properties owned by Batistianos.
According to a study by the U.S. Army-funded Special Operations Research Office, the Fidelistas “shifted into full-scale revolutionary warfare” in 1958. They conducted increasingly bold surprise attacks on the Cuban army. They also lured army patrols into remote mountain valleys and opened fire on the trapped soldiers. They had become “a formidable military threat” to Batista.121
Carlos Prío Socarrás, who had helped finance the Fidelistas’ return voyage to Cuba on the Granma from his exile in Miami became “resentful” of the July 26th Movement’s military success in the Sierra Maestra, according to an FBI report. Prío took steps to develop an anti-Batista rebel alternative to counterbalance the July 26th Movement. He funneled funds to the Directorio Revolucionario (DR) (Revolutionary Directorate) and the Organización Auténtico (OA) (Authentic Organization), the armed action group of the Auténtico party. The Directorio, founded in 1955, grew out of the University Student Federation at the University of Havana.
Szulc explained, “Prío wanted his fingers in every pie.”
On March 13, 1957, the Directorio Revolucionario launched a bold assault on the Palacio Presidencial, intending to “hit at the top,” to kill Batista and call on the people of Cuba to rise up in revolt against the illegitimate regime.
Directorio commandos penetrated the security perimeter of the Palacio Presidencial and burst into Batista’s office with guns blazing. But Batista was not there. The palace security force returned fire, causing casualties, and the DR commandos beat a retreat from the palace.
To make matters worse, the DR’s charismatic leader José Antonio Echeverria was killed in a failed attempt to take over CMQ radio station. By the end of the day, forty DR combatants had been killed. Over the next several weeks, Batista’s security forces exacted revenge, killing and jailing DR leaders and rank-and-file cadre. A few survivors took refuge in the Sierra del Escambray.
Two months later, a joint Directorio Revolucionario–Organización Auténtico expeditionary force left Miami onboard the yacht Corinthia bound for Cuba. On May 24, the Corinthia landed on the northern coast of Oriente in an ill-fated attempt to open a second guerrilla front against Batista. On May 28, the Cuban army captured the Prío-funded force. All but three of the guerrillas were executed on the spot.122
In the meantime, Batista’s aggressive strikes against the rebel guerrillas and urban underground stirred controversy in Washington. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles criticized “Batista’s strong arm tactics.”
In March 1958, Foster Dulles approved an embargo of U.S. arms to Cuba. He concluded that Cuba had used U.S.-supplied weapons against July 26th guerrillas and peasants in the Sierra Maestra in violation of the Mutual Defense Act (MDA). U.S. arms provided under the MDA were designated for “hemispheric defense,” not for use in “civil strife.”
To soften the blow to Batista’s prestige, the Eisenhower Administration kept the U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group in Cuba. But a memorandum from Department of State official William P. Snow to Dulles predicted the U.S. arms embargo would “accelerate the downfall of the Batista regime.”123
In May 1958, Trafficante’s supporter General Eulogio Cantillo launched Operación Fin de Fidel (Operation End of Fidel) with great fanfare. With 10,000 soldiers under his command, Cantillo enjoyed overwhelming military superiority over the July 26th Movement. Cantillo had planned to surround the Sierra Maestra, close in on the rebels, and annihilate them in a decisive battle. But Cantillo’s troops got bogged down in the Sierra Maestra as the July 26th Movement countered the Cuban army’s conventional military advantage with guerrilla tactics. By mid-August, Operación Fin de Fidel had collapsed, presaging Batista’s rapidly eroding power.124
Che Guevara recalled, “Batista’s army came out of that last offensive in the Sierra Maestra with its spine broken, but it had not yet been defeated.” Castro seized the opportunity. He ordered Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, his two best commanders, to lead their “columns” down from the Sierra Maestra to Cuba’s llano (plains). He instructed them to “strike relentlessly” at the Cuban army as they marched west toward Havana.
Guevara biographer Jon Lee Anderson writes, “For the next six weeks, through the unceasing downpours of the Cuban rainy season, Che and Camilo’s columns waded through the rice fields and swamps of the llano, forded swollen rivers, dodged the army and came under frequent aerial attacks.”125
As Guevara and Cienfuego’s troops marched across the island, the tide of the war turned in favor of the July 26th Movement. Local peasants joined their ranks, swelling Castro’s guerrilla army to 3,000 by the end of 1958. The Cuban army command at Santiago de Cuba estimated that 90 percent of the population in Oriente supported the July 26th guerrillas.126
At the same time, Cuban army morale plummeted, and conscripts lost their will to fight, according to UPI reporter Jack Skelly. In August 1958, Skelly informed the Department of State, “The average soldier in Oriente… has absolutely no will to fight and in fact has no fighting capacity.”127 The July 26th Movement seized on the corruption of senior Cuban army officers in political appeals to low-ranking soldiers. The July 26th Movement dropped leaflets from small planes over Cuban army units in Oriente. The leaflets included photographs of Cuban army commanders indulging themselves in the commercialized vices of gangsterismo available in Havana’s nightclubs and houses of prostitution. A September 1958 FBI report noted that even soldiers “loyal” to Batista were “disgusted” with the “lack of leadership and graft on the part of commanding officers.”
An American University Foreign Area Study analysis of Cuba concluded, “Repression, corruption and violence characterized political life and led some sectors of the military to withdraw support for the dictator.” The study added, “Paralleling the final days of the Machado dictatorship, the armed forces began to sense not only the absence of popular support for Batista but also growing antimilitary sentiment among the general population.”128
In October 1958, Guevara and Cienfuegos arrived in the Sierra del Escambray. Other anti-Batista rebel groups had already initiated guerrilla operations against the Cuban army in the isolated mountains of central Cuba.
Faure Chomón Mediavilla and Rolando Cubela Secades commanded the Directorio Revolucionario’s two columns. The DR regrouped in the Escambray after its botched attempt to assassinate Batista in March 1957.
Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo commanded the Segundo Frente Nacional del Escambray (SFNE) (Second National Front of the Escambray). Menoyo’s brother Carlos Gutiérrez Menoyo was killed leading the DR assault on the Palacio Presidencial. The SFNE was based near Trinidad on Cuba’s south-central coast. Victor Bordón Machado’s July 26th Movement guerrilla force, and a column of the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP) also operated in the Escambray mountains.
Carlos Prío and arms dealers tied to the Mafia gamblers supplied the DR and SFNE with weapons and ammunition. In December 1958, the Eisenhower Administration discussed “getting arms” to the DR and SFNE as a move to contain to the July 26th Movement, according to a Department of State memorandum.
Guevara and Cienfuegos proposed a coordinated military campaign against the Cuban army in the Escambray to the other rebel commanders. But no agreement was reached as the rival commanders squabbled with each other. But Guevara won their respect, when his July 26th guerrillas seized an armored train carrying arms and ammunition to the Cuban army in Santa Clara in December 1958. Time was running out for Batista.129