Cuban Mix
New book connects Castro's Revolution with the Mob's domination of Cuba
by Paul V. Griffith
True crime writer T.J. English depicts 1950s Havana as a Disney World of vice. American gangsters have set up a licentious paradise on the tiny island that, he writes, is "the front for a far more ambitious agenda: the creation of a criminal state...[that] would become the means to launch further criminal enterprises around the globe." Standing between the gangsters and their plans are the Cuban people, whose interests have long been sacrificed in the name of illicit gain. In Havana Nocturne (William Morrow, 396 pp., $27.95), English explains what happens when unbridled development and hedonism conflict with revolution and social justice.
In many ways, Havana Nocturne is the story of two men—Meyer Lansky and Fidel Castro. Ironically, they are as much alike as they are dissimilar.
The son of a working-class Jewish family, Lansky rises through the syndicate to become "the Financier of the Mob." As such, he sets his sights on Cuba as a way of avoiding increased scrutiny of gangland operations stateside. In concert with Cuban president (and U.S. stooge) Fulgencio Batista, Lansky and his fellow gangsters bring unprecedented growth and graft to Havana as hotels, casinos and showplaces spring up like weeds along the Malecón, as the city's waterfront is known.
Castro, on the other hand, is born solidly middle class, though his revolutionary zeal grows to capture the hearts and minds of Cuban workers. Havana Nocturne depicts both Castro and Lansky as charismatic tacticians with an uncanny knack for improvisation. Both men are committed ideologues: One is an emerging Marxist; the other an uncompromising capitalist (albeit one who deals in contraband). Above all, Castro's revolution is a moral one born of Cuba's rural poor, far removed from the debauchery simultaneously taking place in the country's capital. The two are bound to clash.
Using archival research and interviews with key survivors, English sets the stage for the showdown. At first, both Castro and Lansky operate in a vacuum, neither understanding the fact that their histories are already inexorably linked. Even as Castro's "26th of July Movement" is poised to take over Havana, it's business as usual for the mobsters who remain convinced that even "the Bearded One," as Castro is known, can be bought.
Likewise, many in the revolution seem unable to make the connection between the corrupt Batista regime and the gambling empire rising along the waterfront. Not until New Year's Day 1959, when Castro's forces enter the city and desecrate the casinos, does English's story come full circle.
In addition to writing two best-selling novels—Paddy Whacked and The Westies—English is a journalist whose work has appeared in Playboy and Esquire. As a screenwriter, he wrote gritty dialogue for the TV crime dramas NYPD Blue and Homicide. All three occupations converge in Havana Nocturne. Its exhaustive research and taut prose provide a sexy, riveting account of how the Mob stole a country and the Cuban people took it back.
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