Havana Nocturne

by T. J. English

  The years of frustration were bubbling over now, anger mounting and being directed at anything and everything that symbolized the Batista regime. Among the first things to go were the parking meters.

  The meters were associated with Batista’s brother-in-law, Roberto Fernández Miranda. Along with the ubiquitous slot machines, Fernández Miranda’s other profitable patronage plum was the meters that soaked up the centavos of the Cuban people. It was common knowledge that this money went directly into the pockets of Batista’s brother-in-law. With hammers, lead pipes, and baseball bats, the Cuban rabble went after them, whacking them until they were separated from the metal poles that held them aloft. Some sought to crack open the meters and steal the coins, but this was, for the most part, not an act of robbery; it was an act of revenge against one of the city’s most obvious symbols of corruption.

  Next came the slot machines. People stormed into the corner bodegas, cafés, and bars, uprooted the machines, and dragged them into the street. They were beaten with clubs and sledgehammers. Most of the slot machines were in the casinos, and so the crowd separated into smaller groups and each made its way by car or on foot toward the greatest symbols of all, the hotel-casinos that had sustained the Batista dictatorship for all these years.

  Movie star George Raft was on duty at the Capri. That night he had circulated in the casino greeting people, as he was hired to do. Accompanied by a girl who had recently won the Miss Cuba contest, he was in the casino until the New Year’s Eve festivities seemed to be winding down. He gave his date the key to his suite and told her he’d be there shortly.

  By the time Raft returned to his room, Miss Cuba was ready and waiting. According to the movie star:

  There she was, asleep in my bed, but I noticed how she opened one eye when I came in the room. Now she’s half awake and amorous. “Feliz año nuevo,” I said as I got between my silk sheets, alongside this fantastic girl. In the middle of this beautiful scene—suddenly—machine-gun fire! And what sounds like cannons! I phoned down to the desk. “This is Mr. Raft,” I said. “What’s going on down there?” The operator answered, but I could hardly hear her—there was so much commotion. Finally, I made out what she was saying. “Mr. Raft, the Revolution is here. Fidel Castro has taken over everything. He’s in Havana! Batista has left the country!”

  Raft bolted out of bed and left his Cuban honey. Down in the lobby, it seemed as though all hell had broken loose:

  Everybody working the hotel is yelling and screaming, “Bandits are coming! Hide everything!” It was mass confusion. People running back and forth. I realize no one’s in charge at this time except maybe me, since people are asking me what to do. Then I remembered the old gag about how to be a weatherman—first look out the window. Which is what I do—to see the people running, soldiers shooting in the streets. I actually saw people being killed! But along with this—there are all these civilian kids—mostly teenagers, throwing rocks and bottles through store windows and houses. Then some of them began to aim at the hotel.

  A group of revolutionaries charged the Capri. According to Raft, there were more than a hundred hoodlums yelling and screaming in Spanish. They began to demolish the casino. One of the rebels sprayed the bar with machine-gun fire, shattering bottles and sending splinters of wood and shards of glass flying everywhere.

  I wasn’t sure what to do…so I got on this table—in the middle of all this mayhem—and began to shout something like “Calm down! For chrissake, calm down!”…The leader of these armed hoods, this girl, pointed and yelled in English, “It’s George Raft, the movie star!” Now I had their attention, but I didn’t really know what the hell to say. I had no script, no lines, but I managed some kind of speech about how I was an American citizen and neutral. That if they cooperated they could have food and things like that. It worked! They calmed down, did some lightweight looting, then most of them left…But we [still] couldn’t get out of the hotel. It was dangerous to go into the streets…So while the shooting and all that continued in the streets, the Capri was saved, at least for the moment.

  Other holdings of the Havana Mob were not so fortunate. The casino that suffered the worst vandalism was the Plaza, the very place where Lansky had dined earlier that night with his mistress and driver. The raging gun battle across the street from the hotel in Parque Central continued into the wee hours. Slot machines and gambling equipment were dragged out of the Plaza casino and into the street, where they were tossed atop smoldering bonfires. A similar scene took place at the Sans Souci, with parts of the casino doused with kerosene and torched. At the Deauville, the front windows of the hotel were shattered as the crowd tried to penetrate the casino with bad intentions. At the Sevilla Biltmore, the casino was destroyed. Amletto Battisti, the owner, immediately sought refuge at the Uruguayan embassy, where, as at most embassies in Havana, armed soldiers nervously stood guard.

  The greatest indignity of all was saved for the Riviera. In an act of revolutionary audacity, campesinos brought into the city a truckload of pigs and set them loose in the lobby of the hotel and casino, squealing, tracking mud across the floors, shitting and peeing all over Lansky’s pride and joy, one of the most famous mobster gambling emporiums in all the world.

  For some, the rage against the casinos came as a surprise. Batista might have been hated by many, but not everyone made the link between the so-called president and the city’s gambling empire. They preferred to live in a dream world, where commercial development in Havana was separate from the repression and social inequality that festered elsewhere on the island. But as the Revolution progressed, this disparity created an internal pressure that built up like the insides of an active volcano. There were many reasons to dislike Batista—his shameless coup, violent repression, censorship, corruption, obsequious relationship with gangsters and embezzlers—but in the end the hotel-casinos came to symbolize all of the above. Emotionally, the revolutionaries and ultimately the Cuban people had come to identify the Havana Mob with everything they despised about the Batista regime. And so they attacked the fruits of their rule in Cuba with a kind of savagery usually reserved for bullies, wife-beaters, and child molesters. Death to Batista! Death to the collaborators! Death to the American gangsters!

  THERE WERE GUNS ALL OVER the room, on tabletops, on the floor, in shoulder holsters, and tucked into the waistbands of the well-fed American mobsters and their bodyguards. Armando Jaime kept his .45-caliber pistol tucked in the small of his back, for easy access.

  It was 9:00 P.M. on the evening of January 1. After a day of destruction around the city, the crowds had become more organized. There was no more shooting and looting, but the demonstrations were, if anything, more formidable. Huge waves of people marched through the streets, many carrying the black-and-red flags of the 26th of July Movement. Cars filled with armed revolutionaries motored around the city to signify that they were in charge now. Anyone associated with the Batista regime retreated behind closed doors and went into hiding. Soon there would be a mass exodus of Batistianos and tourists from the island.

  The mobsters gathered at Joe Stassi’s mansion in Miramar, surrounded by palm trees and with a view overlooking the Almendares River. Stassi was there, as were Lansky, Trafficante, Norman Rothman, and Charles White. Others also came and went. Jaime, along with other bodyguards and helpers of the Havana Mob, stood in the background as the mobsters plotted strategy.

  There were mounds of cash in the living room of Stassi’s estate. Money was being divided into equal denominations and distributed among the mobsters. Jaime had no idea how much cash was there, but he figured it had to be in the millions.

  Joe Stassi was dressed in a short-sleeved shirt. He seemed nervous and was sweating profusely even though the temperature was, if anything, on the cool side. Lansky, as always, was calm. He had brought along a small suitcase, which he now filled with neat stacks of one-thousand-dollar bills. Jaime watched but did not even try to count the money; it was too much. Days later, while Jaime was driving his
boss to the Rancho Boyeros airport to leave the country, Lansky told him that there were “several millions of dollars” in the suitcase.

  Through the first week of January, the revolutionaries celebrated and the mobsters tried to figure out what was going to happen. For the time being, the casinos were closed, though some of the nightclubs stayed open. Fidel Castro had not yet arrived in the city. He was traveling in a caravan across the island, stopping in cities and small towns in a kind of victory march. Meanwhile, American government personnel, tourists, and others flooded to the airports and cruise ships in an attempt to get off the island.

  Wayne S. Smith was a young U.S. consular officer who had arrived in Havana earlier that summer. Smith and others in the consulate spent the week trying to help American tourists and well-connected Cubans get off the island. “It was hectic,” Smith remembered years later. “There were more people wanting to leave than there were seats on the planes and boats. Obviously, if you were in any way connected to the Batista government, there was a sense of urgency about wanting to get off the island.”

  Cynthia Schwartz, Lansky’s eight-year-old granddaughter, was able to leave with a group that included her grandmother Teddy, Meyer’s wife. Leaving the Focsa building where she had lived, Cynthia saw armed soldiers in green khaki uniforms. Many people were leaving and there was a great deal of turmoil. Cynthia had been told by her grandmother that they couldn’t take much with them. “We had been warned,” remembered Lansky’s granddaughter. “It was time to go.”

  Ralph Rubio had only recently moved with his wife and kids to Playa Estes, a beautiful spot near the beach in East Havana. With great reluctance, he packed up as much as he could on short notice and got his family out of Cuba. Many other casino employees did the same, feeling that as visible benefactors of the Batista regime their lives were in danger.

  Those closest to the president had been tipped off. Interior Minister Santiago Rey—described by Armando Jaime as “Batista’s lapdog”—had escaped the night before with the president. Eduardo Suarez Rivas, whose connections to the mobsters in Cuba went all the way back to the days of Luciano, escaped on a private flight, though he had to leave behind $780,000 in a bank account that would be seized by the new government. The home of Lt. Col. Esteban Ventura was vandalized by an angry mob, but he was also able to escape by plane. Rolando Masferrer was not given the courtesy of being tipped off by Batista’s inner circle; he was forced to hide out in Cuba for a few days before finally securing passage by boat to Miami.

  Meyer Lansky did not immediately leave the island. Out of curiosity, he waited until Castro entered the city on January 8. Castro had given many interviews during his celebratory march across the island, and Lansky most likely examined El Comandante’s words closely to determine what the new revolutionary government’s position on the casinos would be. Fidel equivocated on the subject, preferring instead to reassure the Cuban people that the 26th of July Movement was in charge now and Cuba would be entering a new era of peace and prosperity. Lansky, Trafficante, and the other gangsters were convinced that, no matter what Castro said, he would have to allow the casinos to stay open if he hoped to keep the island’s economy afloat.

  When Fidel and his entourage finally arrived in Havana, the crowds along the Malecón were staggering. To the throng, Fidel announced: “The people won this war. I say that just in case some individual believes he won it, or some troops believe that they won it. Before anything, there is the people.” Later, Fidel appeared at Camp Columbia, seat of the country’s military power, to reassure the army that he had never considered them the enemy. It was there that a famous moment of political theater took place: as Fidel stood on a platform before another throng of celebrants, two white doves were let loose by a member of the 26th of July Movement. One of the “peace doves” fluttered about and then landed on Castro’s shoulder as he spoke. The crowd was stunned by the symbolism. Fidel had gone from being a tropical Robin Hood and revolutionary leader to a full-blown Christ figure.

  It did not take long for the mood to change; Fidel’s new saintly persona did not embrace the concept of unconditional forgiveness. The executions began almost immediately, mostly of men who were deemed to deserve it: the worst torturers and assassins of the Batista regime, betrayers of the Revolution, or anyone who had engaged in “counterrevolutionary activity.” They were put up against a wall at La Cabaña fortress and gunned down by firing squad.

  The executions without trial brought criticism from the United States and other quarters. Wasn’t the 26th of July Movement now engaged in the same kind of blood vengeance that typified the previous regime?

  Castro not only defended “the people’s right” to exact revenge on their enemies and oppressors, he became agitated whenever the question came up. Standing in the massive lobby of the Hilton Hotel, which the revolutionary leadership had commandeered as their new headquarters in Havana, Castro was asked by a reporter if he was worried that the United States might intervene. He responded by saying that if the U.S. Army attempted to invade the island, there would be “two hundred thousand dead gringos” in the streets of Cuba’s cities. Castro later apologized for the intemperate remark, but the damage was done.

  For anyone even remotely connected to the deposed regime, a mood of paranoia set in. Few had a better reason to be concerned than the American mobsters who operated the casinos. In a quote that was widely circulated in Cuba and the United States, when asked about the casino owners Castro declared, “We are not only disposed to deport the gangsters, but to shoot them.”

  Initially, the mobsters dismissed Castro’s statements as mere bravado. Lansky, Trafficante, and the others wanted it known that they had not fled Cuba in fear, as was reported in some newspapers. “The gamblers took their cue from their benefactor and protector, President Fulgencio Batista, and fled the country in three chartered planes,” the New York Daily News had reported. A Lansky spokesperson immediately telephoned the U.S. embassy in Havana to say that the casino boss had not run away from Cuba. He was at the Hotel Riviera, “taking care of personnel there, even though he is very sick and should be in the hospital.”

  Nor was Santo Trafficante inclined to flee. In a phone conversation with his attorney, he declared, “Castro is a complete nut! He’s not going to be in power or office for long. Either Batista will return or someone else will replace this guy because there’s no way the economy can continue without tourists, and this guy is closing all the hotels and casinos. This is a temporary storm. It’ll blow over.”

  Castro had indeed shut down the casinos, canceled the national lottery, and declared in one of his first decrees that cleaning up “vice, corruption, and gambling” was among the highest priorities of the new government. Nonetheless, it was only a matter of weeks before Fidel relented. The Sindicato Gastronómico complained to Castro that his edict was costing their membership some six hundred jobs. Economic advisers gave Fidel the bad news that the economy would collapse unless he reopened the casinos.

  As his governmental liaison with the casino industry Castro appointed Frank Sturgis, better known to the 26th of July Movement as Frank Fiorini. At thirty-four years of age, Sturgis was a U.S.-born Second World War veteran and former nightclub manager from Virginia Beach who had become a soldier of fortune. In late 1957 and on into 1958, he aided the 26th of July Movement by smuggling arms to the Sierra Maestra from the United States, Mexico, and elsewhere around South America. On July 30, 1958, Sturgis was arrested on illegal gun possession charges in the United States but was released for lack of evidence. For his role as an important arms supplier for the movement, Sturgis was named chief inspector of the gambling casinos. Sturgis knew nothing about the casino business and admitted as much to Lansky, Trafficante, and anyone else who would listen.

  The casinos were reopened, but the uncertain, vengeful, paranoid environment that existed in Havana made it impossible for tourist-related businesses to flourish. Though the rebels finally moved out of the Havana Hilton (soon to be re
named the Havana Libre), the hotel was operating at less than half of its capacity. At the Riviera, operating losses for the period from December 1958 to April 1959 were listed by accountants at $750,000. Within months, all the major hotel-casinos were awash with debt.

  To Castro and his new government, the failure of the casinos was a point of contention. A Cuban bank—part of the system now overseen by the new minister of finance, Che Guevara—accused the casinos of skimming revenues and assumed responsibility for counting the casino take. Rebels in the counting rooms! It was too much for the mobsters to bear. When the casinos continued to bleed money, the government added insult to injury by rounding up many of the casino operators and placing them under arrest.

  Among the most prominent mobsters incarcerated by Castro was Santo Trafficante. The Mob boss from Tampa had consistently underestimated the wrath of the Revolution, and in the months after Batista’s fall and the entrance of Fidel, he tried to operate as if nothing had changed. Years later, Santo recalled this period in testimony before the 1978 House Committee on Assassinations:

  COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: When Fidel Castro took over, how soon did he order the casinos to be closed?

  TRAFFICANTE: Well, even before he reached Havana, because he didn’t come down from the mountains until after Batista had left. He had a walkathon, you could call it, from the mountains to Havana. And they kept interviewing him and he kept saying that the casinos would close. Everything was in turmoil. There were people all over the streets, breaking into homes. There was complete enmity, and the only thing at that time was to try and stay alive.

  CHAIRMAN: Did a time come when you were detained or imprisoned in Cuba?

  TRAFFICANTE: Yes.