Gangster's Paradise
Aregal dictator calmly addresses a crowd during a New Year’s Eve celebration; he speaks with stoic poise, hoping to make a grand exit as low key as possible. As he departs, followed by confidants and staff in step, guests process the grim reality of the situation and panic soon paints their expressions. They rapidly shuffle out and the scene cuts to ragtag rebels motoring through the streets in their own celebratory way. The Godfather Part II cinematically captured both the exotic beauty and maligned undercurrents of political turmoil and a mobbed up Havana masterfully, but that was a fictionalised tale with characters only loosely based on the actual criminal overlords. So then, who were the real people involved, and how did the organised crime’s virtual utopia in Cuba come to a bitter end?
Underworld figures, not unlike tourists from high society, were drawn to the island nation quite early in the 20th century. “The port of Havana has been an extremely important, and strategic, port since the 1500s,” explains Scott Deitche, author of “By the early 1900s Havana was the most important port of trade with Florida as well as other Gulf ports, like New Orleans, due to proximity.” Frequency of travel increased with the onset of Prohibition in 1919. The tropical climate, legal liquor, gambling establishments and geographical stone’s throw (located just 90
