The golden era of the Mafia in Havana
There was a time in which the gangster Albert Anastasia Business fantasized control dominated the American Mafia in Cuba last half century. Their aspirations ended October 1 of 1957, when he entered the barbershop grooming in hotel Park Sheraton New York and left the room with his feet and body ahead bored. Not fared much better Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, who the mobster Charlie "Lucky" Luciano said Meyer Lansky, the king of organized crime in Cuba, gave the order to rid of him.
That happened at the conference of the American mafia held in the National Hotel Caribbean capital in 1946, when Lansky sentenced: "Benny must be eliminated". Seven months after, Siegel finished with a shot in the left eye and the eyeball to four meters from his body lying on the floor. Siegel was in charge of raising the Flamingo in Las Vegas and the budget gap grew over time. This was a bottomless pit where the cost continuously swelled, so the suspicion that stayed with mob money filled the paciencias. The famous summit that decided the fate of the gangster and attended by nearly 500 People, was the context in which they discussed the hot topics of the moment, as the business of the game in Cuba and Las Vegas.
In the large convention mafia 1946 held in Havana discussed the gambling racket in Cuba and Las Vegas
It's no secret the presence of American mobsters in Havana the years 40 and 50, with Lansky as supreme commander of a vast conglomerate of play, hotels and bribery in a system in which the Mafia was cast to the very central core of the Government. So much so that the huge commissions to President Fulgencio Batista, who left the island on a plane with the evening dress of the year New Year's Eve 1959 and a "tip" in his study of several million dollars, were part of a script that left a free hand to turn the city into a trail of casinos, horse racing, Millionaires, Live sex shows and beachfront hotels, while much of the population was excluded from the bustle of dollars that bathed the island.
T. J. Inglés He tells it entertainingly in "Nocturno de La Habana", Enrique Cirules he analyzes it in "The Empire of Havana" and the buildings (month, if they spoke) are witnesses of a past where neither Frank Sinatra or a young senator Kennedy, Orgy with, renounced the pleasures Caribbean. The list is long temples: National hotels, Capri, Riviera, Sevilla, Hilton and Plaza with their casinos (among others); Cabaret Tropicana and Sans Souci or National Racetrack ... stored within its walls the stories of a few years, some, few inches months- in which Las Vegas, a project started by the time, was the poor little sister and this other project, haven for criminals covered by a corrupt and corrupting political system (not me, but the books mentioned) which sharpened exaggeration as it drew to a close.
The list of the Temples of the mafia is long: National hotels, Capri, Riviera, Sevilla, Hilton and Plaza with their casinos
Although the first stirrings of this system favors began in 1933, during the first government of Batista and a network of four American families gangsters, was in the death throes of the fifties where the stories and vanity embodied in hotel projects were more delusional. There is an objective party, as was the opening of a pair of iconic hotels in 1958: Hilton, today Habana Libre; and Riviera, Cuba's first building with central air. And there's also a part where imagination soars and results in neon lights, but I have come to the conclusion that my musings are not far short.
The impression I have of the whole thing is really exaggerated. Very exaggerated. There are several anecdotes ironic: from a law exempting from income tax the dealers (were considered "technical" ...) to, I do not know, Lansky expulsion from the island to certain U.S. ambassador pressures. Lansky himself summed it up years later: "I played a joke Batista. When I returned to Cuba, he and I had a good laugh about the whole thing ". Of course, such actions were not uncommon in the history of the underworld. Luciano same, who convened the conference 46 of Havana from his exile in his native Sicily, was expelled from the United States after leaving prison following an agreement with the intelligence services in the context of World War II.
Perhaps the most prominent landmark is the Hotel Nacional, Lansky himself where he lived and where, at least I, perceive the ghost of that convention
Today perhaps the most emblematic is the National Hotel, Lansky himself where he lived and where, at least I, perceive the ghost of that convention, which is referred to in the second part of «The Godfather". But this time the connection is extended much more and is a parade of sensations that come to mind whenever one passes in front of one of the most obvious symbols of that organization in the United States pursued.
Thus spoke Senator Estes Kefauver in the commission of inquiry known by his surname in 1951: "Behind the local bands that form the national crime syndicate is a international organization that remains in the shadow known as the Mafia, so fantastic that many Americans find it difficult to believe in reality ".
The adventures in the pearl of the Antilles finalized soon. Is said to, shortly before leaving the island, Batista took his accumulated treasure: 300 billion. At the end of the day, it was all about money. As he himself said Lansky his driver after a meeting with President, "This guy wants more and more pasta".
