Havana Nocturne

by T. J. English

  Among those who heard Castro’s voice on the radio was William Gálvez Rodríguez, a young activist from Holguín on the eastern side of the island. At the age of nineteen, Gálvez had been expelled from his local polytechnic institute for his “subversive” political activities. He later became a member of the estudiantil, made up mostly of college students who held secret meetings and engaged in anti-Batista agitation. In Santiago, Gálvez had been incarcerated and interrogated numerous times by agents of SIM. By his mid-twenties, he was a hardened member of the Revolution.

  Hearing Castro changed Gálvez’s life. “Fidel was putting into words things that we all felt,” he remembered years later. “He was an inspiration to anyone who cared about la patria (the homeland).”

  Gálvez became a clandestine member of the 26th of July Movement. He moved back to his home province of Holguín and became the underground leader of a grupo de acción y sabotage (Action and Sabotage Unit). By night, he was a secret member of the organization; by day, a postgraduate student. The Revolution gave new meaning to his life.

  Eventually, Gálvez would be incorporated into the rebel army in the Sierra Maestra, where he would serve under Che Guevara and one of the Revolution’s most effective leaders, Camilo Cienfuegos. Eventually he would rise to the rank of captain and became recognized as a comandante. “The fact that we were outnumbered so greatly by Batista’s army did not deter us,” remembered Gálvez. “Our morale was strong.”

  Young firebrands like Gálvez represented some of the most daring men of their generation: proud, brave, and dedicated to the cause of fidelismo.

  By early 1958, Castro’s revolutionary army consisted of approximately three hundred soldiers. Whereas the early months of the war had involved forming these rebel soldiers into a viable army, now the 26th of July Movement inaugurated a second phase, in which winning over world opinion was the primary goal.

  In February, an article written by Castro appeared in Coronet magazine in New York. Under the headline “Why We Fight,” El Comandante went to great lengths to assure American investors that the movement’s “armed campaign on Cuban soil” was the surest path to a true liberal democracy in Cuba. Castro declared, “We have no plans for the expropriation or nationalization of foreign investment here.” He acknowledged that a government takeover of U.S.-owned utilities “was a point of our earliest program, but we have currently suspended all planning on this matter.” He also stated—in contradiction to the movement’s own propaganda—that “we will support no land reform bill.”

  To those who opposed Castro, the Coronet article and a subsequent interview in Look magazine were examples of a grand deception. In El Cubano Libre and on Radio Rebelde, the movement advocated a sweeping political and social revolution based on Martí and Marx. For American consumption, Castro kept his cards close to the vest. “I know revolution sounds like bitter medicine to many businessmen,” he was quoted as saying in Look. “But after the first shock, they will find it a boon—no more thieving tax collectors, no plundering army chieftains or bribe-hungry officials to bleed them white.” As he had when he traveled to New York, Tampa, and Miami to raise money for la lucha (the struggle), Castro was working both sides of the fence.

  In late February, Castro’s followers staged one of their most dramatic public relations successes yet, this time in the front yard of the Havana Mob.

  The Gran Premio Formula One auto race was a wildly popular event. It had been inaugurated the previous year by Roberto Fernández Miranda, Batista’s brother-in-law and also the new director of the National Sports Commission. It was in his role as sports commissioner that Fernández Miranda was able to benefit from gambling: he controlled the national lottery, used the island’s slot machines as his own personal slush fund, and was therefore a significant cog in the Havana Mob machine.

  Fernández Miranda, along with the Cuban tourist board, had come to the conclusion that international sporting events were a better celebrity draw than the usual Afro-Cuban street festivals during carnival season. The Gran Premio de Cuba was modeled on the world-renowned Grand Prix held each year in Monte Carlo. The Cuban version involved premier Formula One drivers from around the world and would take place along the Malecón, with a full slate of drivers zooming past the Deauville, Nacional, Riviera, and other holdings of the Havana Mob.

  Juan Manuel Fangio from Argentina was favored to win the race. At the age of forty-six, Fangio was greatly admired in Cuba. He had won the Gran Prix Monaco earlier in the decade, and he brought great prestige to the event in Havana. His car, a Maserati 450S, was seen zooming up and down the Malecón in the days before the race, as Fangio and his team attempted to iron out what they felt were inconsistencies in the handling of the vehicle.

  On the night before the race, the famous driver was in the lobby of the Lincoln Hotel, in Central Havana. He and his team had finished a long day of trial runs and were deeply engrossed in a discussion about their Maserati when two men entered the lobby. They were both in their midtwenties and dressed casually. One of the men stood near the entrance to the hotel, while the other approached Fangio and his three crew members.

  “Which one of you is Fangio?” asked the young man.

  “I am. What do you want?” asked the driver.

  The man pulled out a gun and pointed it at Fangio. “I am a member of the 26th of July Movement. I want you to come with me. Don’t resist and you won’t be hurt.” The revolutionary stuck the gun in Fangio’s rib cage and moved him toward the exit. At the entrance to the hotel, the kidnapper turned to the stunned people in the lobby and said, “Don’t anyone leave the hotel until five minutes have passed. There are four men outside with machine guns pointed at the door.” The rebels then whisked Fangio out of the hotel and pushed him into a waiting sedan. The car peeled away from the curb and drove off into the night.

  Within minutes, telephones rang in every news agency in the city. Revolutionaries had kidnapped the champion racer and refused to say where he was being held. The next day, headlines blared the news to the world.

  The police unleashed an intensive manhunt, searching all known rebel hideouts. There was little communication from the kidnappers. The race was delayed in the hope that Fangio would be released, but he was not.

  The news only increased interest in the event: a hundred and fifty thousand spectators lined the Malecón to watch the race. The competition began, only to end in tragedy a half hour later when a Cuban driver skidded on a patch of oil that had leaked onto the racecourse from the burst oil line of another car. The driver’s bright-yellow Ferrari spun out of control and hit one of the supports of a grandstand. Dozens of spectators came crashing down and spilled out onto the car and pavement. One of the other drivers ran over to help the people; he later told Time magazine, “I couldn’t even see the Ferrari. The bodies were piled all over. I was wading in arms and legs.” The crash killed four people and injured close to fifty. The race was over.

  Government authorities charged sabotage, a deliberate act of murder by the rebels, but an investigation quickly determined that the crash was an unfortunate accident. Even so, happening as it did in the middle of a revolutionary campaign against the government, the event made it appear as though Cuba were cursed with death and destruction.

  A few hours after the race was halted, Fangio was released. Calm and fresh-looking, he relayed the details of his captivity to the press. To avoid the police manhunt, he had been transferred to three different houses, all well-furnished homes. He was treated with respect and was well fed (steak and potatoes, chicken and rice). Faustino Perez, the 26th of July Movement’s Havana commander, had made a personal appearance to apologize to Fangio for the inconvenience; he had explained the motive behind the abduction and the reasons for the Revolution.

  Fangio had nothing but praise for his captors, whom he referred to as “my friends, the kidnappers.” Given the tragedy that had taken place at the race, they may even have saved his life, he said. “If what the rebels did was in a good
cause, then I, as an Argentine, accept it,” he told the media.

  The kidnapping and aborted race were major coups for the 26th of July Movement. Batista and his police force had been made to look vulnerable. Roberto Fernández Miranda looked incompetent for allowing spectators to so closely line the racecourse. Fangio had practically proposed a toast to the Revolution. And it had all taken place in the lap of the Havana Mob.

  Castro seized the moment. In the days that followed it was announced on Radio Rebelde and in various underground newspapers that a new initiative was to commence. The rebels undertook one of their more controversial acts yet, as they began to torch sugar crops throughout the island.

  Cultivation and processing of sugar constituted about one-third of the island’s economy and employed two-fifths of the labor force. Hitting the sugar crop was going to affect everyone—including the Havana Mob. Castro acknowledged publicly that it was a “terrible decision,” adding:

  I well know the heavy personal losses involved. My family has sizable holdings here in Oriente, and my instructions to our clandestine action groups state clearly that [my family’s] crop must be the first one to burn, as an example to the rest of the nation. Only one thing can save the cane, and that is Batista’s surrender.

  In a matter of weeks, members of the movement’s Action and Sabotage Units torched ten sugar mills around the perimeter of the Sierra Maestra. Closer to Havana, rebels set fire to 400,000 gallons of jet fuel at the Belot oil refinery owned by New Jersey–based Esso Standard. The fire, in a Havana suburb, burned for days, forcing the oil company to form an air brigade and fly in chemicals from the United States to put it out. It seemed as though the entire island were going up in flames.

  In Santiago, the police murder of two seventh-grade students sparked an extended boycott by high school and college students. The 26th of July Movement and the Directorio organized the students, teachers, and administrators; by late February, they had shut down virtually all the public primary and secondary schools as well as colleges and universities across the country. The Revolution was growing so fast that it threatened to spin out of control. Bombs went off and acts of sabotage took place in virtually every province. Highways were shut down, hindering commercial traffic to and from Havana. The revolutionary army grew and split into separate “columns,” one headed by Raúl Castro and another by Che Guevara, expanding their regions of control throughout the countryside.

  Fidel and Guevara may have hoped to establish a rock-solid foundation for the Revolution outside of Havana first, but events were now taking on a momentum of their own. At the same time Havana was peaking as a playground for the Mafia, the Revolution began to exert itself within the city limits more forcefully than ever before. Just two days after the kidnapping of Fangio, a team of rebels raided the National Bank of Cuba, held employees at gunpoint, and set fire to the previous day’s checks and bank drafts delivered from all over Havana. They took no money. The act was designed to demonstrate the inability of the Cuban state to manage the country’s economic affairs.

  Weeks later, a hit squad from the Directorio attempted to assassinate Raúl Menocal, a Batista minister. He miraculously escaped after being struck by half a dozen bullets. The night of March 16 became known as “The Night of One Hundred Bombs” because the underground resistance in Havana set off that many explosions across the city, from Old Havana to Miramar.

  Rumors of multiple rebel arms shipments arriving on the island fueled the belief that Batista was in big trouble. His support in the island’s business community and—more importantly—his heretofore steadfast relationship with the U.S. government began to erode. Things were moving fast now, spreading like wildfire, the Revolution looking more and more like a manifestation of the will of the people.

  Castro sensed the growing momentum; he and others in the upper echelon of the movement engaged in intensive communications, trying to decide how best to capitalize on positive developments. The leadership in Havana strongly advocated for an all-out huelga (strike). By this, resistance leaders did not mean only a labor shutdown, though civic workers not showing up for their jobs on that day represented an essential aspect of the strategy. That was to be accompanied by further acts of industrial and agricultural sabotage, violence, selective assassinations of government officials, attacks against symbols of the regime, and generalized mayhem. The idea was to expose Batista’s inability to maintain public and economic order and reveal to Washington, D.C., and the world that Cuba could not be governed by the current regime. It was announced publicly that there would be a strike; privately, the date was set for April 9.

  This was it: the strike would shut down government offices, all commercial ventures, and, most pointedly, the casinos and nightclubs. Castro was going to hit Batista and his mobster cronies where they breathed.

  DESPITE THE TURMOIL, for many, life in Havana went on as if nothing were amiss. Like a teething infant, the city clung to the maternal teat. The economic elite lived in their own little world, in which the good times continued, tourist dollars flowed, and President Batista ruled all with an iron fist. For members of the Havana Mob—and also families of U.S. businessmen, the diplomatic corps, the Cuban military, and members of Batista’s administration—it was possible to believe that all was right with the world. The closer a person was to the mobsters and their associates within the system, the more likely they were to view what was happening in Cuba as nothing more than a grand adventure.

  Such was certainly the case with Lansky’s granddaughter, Cynthia Schwartz, who arrived in Havana in early 1958. Cynthia was the seven-year-old daughter of Richard Schwartz, Teddy Lansky’s son from a previous marriage. Meyer had a chilly though cordial relationship with his stepson, who was nineteen years old at the time Lansky married Teddy back in 1948.

  Richard was a silk-screener by trade. His business was not doing well in the late 1950s, so Teddy suggested to Meyer that maybe he could hire the young man to work in some capacity at the Riviera casino. Richard had been a frequent visitor to Lansky’s various carpet joints in Broward County, including Club Bohème and the Plantation, where he often announced himself as “Meyer Lansky’s son.” Richard’s penchant for dropping the Lansky name did not endear him with Meyer, though the Mob boss did agree to let his stepson work at the Riviera casino as a pit boss. Schwartz arrived in Havana in November 1957, a few weeks before the hotel-casino opened for business.

  When young Cynthia and her two siblings joined their father and mother in Havana in January 1958, the city was bustling with activity. Little Cynthia knew nothing of the place. Years later, she remembered, “I knew I was in Havana, Cuba, but where it was on a map I couldn’t have told you. I saw the ocean all around, so I knew it was an island, but not much more. I felt like the little girl in Peter Pan. I was on an adventure.”

  She joined her parents in an apartment at the Focsa, the prestigious apartment complex in central Vedado, also home to casino boss Norman Rothman. She was placed in a private primary school known as the Lafayette Academy, a school for Americans and the children of wealthy Cubans where only English was spoken. Her school uniform consisted of a tan shirt and brown pleated skirt with the Lafayette insignia.

  Cynthia knew little of her grandfather’s reputation, though it soon became apparent that Meyer Lansky was someone special in Havana. Each day, on her lunch break from school, she was picked up by her mother and brought to the Hotel Riviera, where her grandmother Teddy had a poolside cabaña. “We were treated like royalty at the Riviera,” she remembers. “Every day at the cabaña I was given a turkey sandwich on rye bread with Russian dressing, which I loved. Then we went swimming in the pool. It was the only saltwater pool in all of Havana. I remember that because the water tasted like salt.”

  Occasionally Cynthia was taken to the casino to see and say hello to her father. Through the eyes of a child, the casino floor was especially exotic. Sometimes she got to spend time with her grandfather. Lansky would say, “Come on, Cindy girl, let’s go
for a walk.” The Mob boss and his granddaughter would stroll through the casino and into the lobby, where the Great Lansky was treated like a king. To Cynthia, the experience was one of a kind: “I felt special when I was with my grandfather.”

  It was true that Lansky, the mobsters, and their extended families were treated like royalty in Havana, but such was not always the case back home in the United States. The high-profile Anastasia murder and busted Mafia convention at Apalachin had put the Mob front and center in the media. Press attention tended to attract the interest of ambitious law enforcement personnel looking to enhance their careers. Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan had put out the word that he was interested in talking with both Lansky and Trafficante following the Anastasia murder, though both had reason to believe that by early 1958 the heat had died down. Which is why on the afternoon of February 11, on a brief trip to Manhattan to see his personal physician, Lansky was surprised when he was “pinched.” It happened on the corner of West 53rd Street and Broadway in midtown Manhattan as soon as Lansky stepped out of a taxi from the airport.

  Meyer was in New York because he had recently begun to suffer from ulcers. It was cold and there was snow on the ground when detectives brought him into the precinct on West 54th Street. Though usually polite with cops, Lansky was annoyed at being brought in for no good reason. When a detective asked him what he knew about the Anastasia murder, Meyer snapped, “As much as an Eskimo in Alaska.”

  Another detective asked Lansky what he did for a living.

  “Business,” Meyer replied.

  “What kind of business?”

  “My business.” Lansky declined to say anything further.