Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba and the Mafia: 1933 - 1966

Author: Jack Colhoun 2013, OR Books 978-1-935928-89-8 Charts the links from 1933 to 1966 between United States government agencies, right wing Cuban politician, the Mafia and their associates.

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This book charts the links from 1933 to 1966 between United States government agencies, right wing Cuban politicians, the Mafia and their associates.

The Mafia paid vast amounts of money to the likes of Fulgencio Batista, other politicians and their families in return for highly lucrative concessions. They built hotels, established gambling casinos, and ran the prostitution and drugs industry. It begins with stories of the operations of US gangsters like Santo Trafficante, Sam Giancana, “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky who used Cuba as a base to run their rackets. Keeping politicians, police and army officers on their payroll to ensure things ran to their liking they established a safe haven in which to operate. Cuba was to all intent and purposes a gangster state.

In contrast, the revolutionary forces declared emphatically from the outset of their struggle to overthrow Batista that they intended to end to the whole operation. Little wonder that a few weeks after the revolution the Mafia realised that they stood no chance of regaining their privileged position without a change in government. Colhoun tells how Meyer Lansky in a meeting in Miami offered one opponent of the revolutionary forces, a Cuban Senator named Manuel Antonio Varona, several million dollars to form a government-in-exile to overthrow the revolutionaries.

What is interesting is the extent to which US presidents were directly involved in encouraging such initiatives, as if the Mafia were just another wing of the White House administration. They sold arms to Cubans but like true capitalists they sold them to both sides! The advice of the Mafia was sought to develop some of the assassination plots on Fidel Castro they were hatching whilst they were also developing ideas of their own about blowing up oil refineries and causing other forms of mayhem. Colhoun has done a valuable job in searching the archives and uncovering the evidence revealing the links between the Mafia, Batista’s supporters and US agencies such as the FBI and the CIA.

This is an interesting read and it also helps explains why the work of the Miami 5 was so important.

Bernard Regan for CubaSi Spring 2013 issue