On 2 January 1959 Che Guevara conquered Havana, establishing rebel control of Cuba. Fidel Castro was six days behind, rallying support in the major towns before arriving triumphantly in Havana on 8 January.
Even before he reached the capital, Castro started to govern Cuba. One of his first directives was to close down the casinos and all other activities that had been controlled by the Mafia.†
Meyer Lansky, the head of the Mafia’s operations in Cuba, had escaped with Batista on 1 January, but Santo Trafficante stayed on, expecting favours from Castro because of his donations to the fighting fund. It was an easy mistake for a Mafia godfather to make: everyone, after all, could be bought. He was arrested by the Cuban National Police on 3 January and sent to Tiscornia Prison along with other top Mafia men who had not been as nimble as Lansky.
Trafficante had been operating the Sans Souci and the Casino International gambling establishments in Havana and also had interests in other syndicate-owned Cuban casinos. He did not look like a Mafia godfather nor, when it suited him, did he talk or act like one. At forty-four he still looked slim and healthy. His hair was beginning to recede but it remained dark and always well groomed. His conventional clothes were expensive. Well educated, he spoke fluent Spanish. Trafficante was a thinker, almost an intellectual, and a meticulous planner. Had he not been born into his father’s Sicilian family he might have become a doctor, politician, diplomat, or the director of a successful legitimate business corporation.
He used these abilities to gain access to the prison governor, with whom he negotiated a more civilised routine than that afforded to the other prisoners. He was given a single cell and allowed to receive visitors. Soon, he was having regular meetings with his beautiful wife, Josephine, in the prison gardens. On one occasion he was permitted to leave the prison to attend his daughter’s wedding in Havana.
Trafficante was under no illusions: he knew he could be tried, found guilty of giving large sums of money to Batista, and executed. It had already happened to others. Guevara was responsible for the trial of senior military personnel in Batista’s armed forces and ordered hundreds of them executed. In nonmilitary courts, pimps, thieves, drug dealers and people involved in illegal gambling operations were sentenced to long prison sentences with hard labour. There were rumours that the leaders of major illegal operations might be executed.
One of Trafficante’s visitors was his lawyer, whom he instructed to contact Castro’s office to see if there was any way he could be released, bearing in mind that he had contributed so generously to Castro’s fighting fund.
‡
The Soviet Union had shown little interest in Cuba until Castro came to power. Now, there were opportunities to do business with a country right on America’s doorstep. But there was a problem: Fidel Castro still insisted his government was not Communist. Castro’s foreign policy was that of a non-aligned nation.
On 12 June, Castro sent Guevara on a three-month tour of fourteen countries. They were mostly countries that had attended the Bandung Conference in 1955; nations such as Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan and Burma. The aims of that conference had been to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neo-colonialism, whether by the United States, the Soviet Union or any other imperialistic nation. He would also be visiting Yugoslavia and Greece, but not the Soviet Union.
Castro saw the Soviet Union as a nation that dominated and oppressed the other Communist countries in Eastern Europe and was itself a forced union of republics that should have retained their own independence. On the other hand, he had no illusions about the dangers of Cuba’s proximity to the United States and its distance from other friendly Communist and non-aligned countries. He had to be pragmatic. He knew he would have to come to some sort of an accommodation with the Soviet Union in the short term, until Cuba had the international stature and economic capability to stand on its own feet.
Castro had another motive for sending Guevara on the lengthy tour of foreign countries: it gave him the opportunity to press ahead with some aspects of internal policy on which they did not agree. Castro did not support the manner in which Guevara summarily meted out heavy punishment to people found guilty of working for the Batista regime. Many of these people would have been prepared to work equally hard for the new Castro government, but they were not given the chance. Castro thought Guevara was interpreting some of Karl Marx’s teachings much too harshly, in much the same way that Stalin had. Stalinism was an abomination to him and he did not want it to have any part in Cuba.
‡
According to an article in the Miami News dated 8 June 1959, the government of Cuba approved the expulsion of Santo Trafficante as an undesirable alien. This action may have been taken on direct orders from Castro, who was taking advantage of Guevara’s preoccupation with his long overseas trip. Guevara would have wanted to punish Trafficante, possibly even execute him.
In the light of subsequent events, Trafficante’s release might well have been conditional upon him spying for Castro. Castro would have been keen to gather intelligence on the United States’ policy towards Cuba, possible military action against his government, and about any plans to kill or capture him. Trafficante would have been well placed, with his position in the Mafia, to spy for Castro. However, there would be no doubt about his fate should any of the other godfathers discover his treachery.
After his expulsion, Trafficante returned to Tampa, Florida, where he had interests in the Columbia Restaurant, the Nebraska, Tangerine and Sands Bars. He quickly resumed contact with his Mafia associates and befriended leaders of the Cuban exile community who were plotting to overthrow Castro and take back their ‘nationalised’ casinos.
† The casinos reopened a few weeks later under Cuban government control, but only for the use of foreigners. They were closed again in September 1961.