Havana Nocturne by T.J. English
"How the Mob owned Cuba...and then lost it to the Revolution."
Well, I actually never knew the Mob owned Cuba. To me, the word Cuba conjured up images of an ailing Fidel Castro and a distant memory of once talking about the Bay of Pigs in high school history. The only thing I knew about Cuban entertainment was Ricky Ricardo. (Sad, I know.)
I had certainly never heard...
The music they created was sultry, adventurous, lusty--the perfect sound track for an era marked by gambling, drinking, dancing and fornicating into the tropical night...an organic, exotic foreign culture mixed with the most adventurous aspects of Afro-Americana.My loss!
Anyway, as it turns out, some of the major American gangsters from the 1950s were in the process of turning the island into the "Monte Carlo of the Caribbean" when Fidel and his gang took over instead.
One place where Castro's manifesto was rarely seen was in the tourist hotels, cabarets or casinos where revelers gambled, danced, drank and screwed the night away, oblivious to the political climate around them. The fact that the Cuban people were being surreptitiously radicalized by the writings of a dynamic new political thinker while at the same time hedonism reigned in the domain of the mobsters was a harbinger of things to come.T.J. English does a great job of explaining how the Mob (Meyer Lansky in particular) dreamed up the idea of turning Cuba into a personal money-making empire. And he weaves Castro's story in so easily that Havana Nocturne ends up reading like a thriller--even more so when you realize this stuff actually happened.
It is an odd quirk of history that the two most powerful forces behind the Havana Mob--Batista [Cuban president] and Lansky--were both born into harsh poverty, while Castro was weaned by the social elite. Having contributed to the flowering of lavish hotels, casinos and cabarets in Havana, Batista and Lansky would devote their lives to the betterment of the bourgeoisie, while Castro, the son of privilege, would become an advocate for the poor and dispossessed. It was an inverse reality that would ultimately push the Havana Mob past the point of moral credibility and help Castro to destroy everything that Lansky and his associates had hoped to accomplish in Cuba.I found myself frequently wondering what might have been--what if the Cuban president had been more realistic about his country's status, or if the revolutionaries and the Mob had been willing to work together.
[But] Lansky had a casino to run and an economic empire to cultivate, and he was not about to get sidetracked by the intellectual ramblings of a spoiled rich kid turned revolutionary leader.
English seems fascinated by the mobsters and the revolutionaries alike, but he never fawns over either group. He highlights the mistakes made and the injustices suffered by both.
To the enemies of the Batista regime, a moral rot had taken hold in Havana that was a natural consequence of the president's unholy relationship with what Castro referred to as desfalcadores (embezzlers), his term of choice for those behind the economic plundering of the island.Then, after the revolution...
The tenor of government in Cuba became more and more totalitarian, as Fidel became the sole decision-maker in all matters of state. Many who had played major roles in the Revolution became disenchanted and spoke out--they were either shot or given decades-long prison sentences, or fled into exile.
What has happened to this country over hundreds of years really is regrettable, as is the fact that we as Americans often know nothing about its history prior to Castro coming to power (or the reasons behind his rise). Of course, the Cuban people are the ones who helped Castro come to power...
Emotionally, the revolutionaries and ultimately the Cuban people had come to identify the Havana Mob with everything they despised about the Batista regime....but they have also been the victims of his evolution into dictatorship and the resulting policies.
Havana Nocturne ultimately not only helped me understand Cuba's history and culture, but it also reminded me that I should appreciate the freedoms we currently have and take advantage of participating in the elections next month. Despite the dissatisfaction with my choices, I'm reminded it could be worse.
One in a Million by Kimberla Lawson Roby
Besides working on a semi-friendly "No food or drink" sign, here's what's been keeping us busy at the library lately...
