The Hotel Nacional, The Mafia, The Havana Conference of 1946 and the Batista regime - a brief synopsis.
Lucky Luciano
Sicilian-born mobster, Lucky Luciano, had been serving a 30 to 50 year prison term
in the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York, when, in 1942, the U.S. government
offered him a deal.
In exchange for promising no dock worker strikes in the U.S. east coast ports during the war
and for providing the Navy with intelligence contacts in Sicily, Luciano would be
pardoned and sent back to Sicily at the end of the war on the condition he never return
to the United States.
In February 1946 he was put on a ship to Sicily.
Later that same year, he was handed a note from a fellow mafia member that simply read
"December - Hotel Nacional".
The Hotel Nacional
The Hotel Nacional first opened in Havana in 1930 and had hosted an illustrious list
of guests including Winston Churchill, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Alexander Fleming,
John Wayne, Buster Keaton, Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, Ernest Hemingway,
Johnny Weissmuller and Errol Flynn.
The mob meets at the Hotel Nacional - The Havana Conference of 1946
What has become known as the Havana Conference of 1946 took place in the week of December 22nd.
It was the most important mob summit since 1929 and the heads of all the crime families of the
United States Mafia and Sicilian Cosa Nostra were present.
The "Mob's Accountant", Russian-born Meyer Lansky, had been a partner of Luciano and had set
up legal gambling operations in Florida, New Orleans and Cuba. He was there to meet Luciano.
There was a long list of other organized crime figures present, including Joseph "Joe Bananas"
Bonanno, Vito Genovese and the Fischetti brothers, "Trigger-Happy" Charlie and Rocco.
This meeting was dramatized in the movie "The Godfather Part II".
Frank Sinatra was flown in to provide the entertainment. He came on the same plane
with his friends, the Fischetti brothers.
Conference decision - capo di tutti capi - boss of all bosses
Luciano opened the agenda with discussion of appointing the position of "capo di tutti capi" or
"boss of all bosses'. The position had been vacant since 1931 when Salvatore Maranzano had been
murdered by Luciano's own henchmen. Luciano put forward the motion that he himself
should now be bestowed the title, which was agreed to.
Conference decision - Mafia agrees to global narcotics trade
Next on the agenda was the proposal that becoming major players in the global narcotics trade,
particularly in the United States, would be good for business.
Luciano detailed the shipping of massive amounts of heroin through a large and complex network
from North Africa and then via Italy and Cuba into mafia controlled ports in the U.S. including
New York.
Joseph "The Old Man" Profaci was present at the conference and would become a key player.
Profaci was was the biggest importer of olive oil and tomato paste in the United States
and would use these food import businesses to smuggle narcotics for decades to come.
Conference decision - The Bugsy Siegel & Flamingo Hotel problem in Vegas - a conditional hit is ordered
Next on the agenda was the discussion of a hit on Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.
Sigel had persuaded his friend, Meyer Lansky, that the construction and operation of
the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas would be a smart and profitable investment for the mob.
Lansky and the mob had agreed.
But the construction of the hotel had been troubled. Siegel had appointed his own
girlfriend as project overseer. Contractors would sell Siegel materials during the day
only to come back at night and steal them. The project had been projected to cost
$1.5 million but rose to $6 million.
When it became known that Siegel's girlfriend was making regular secret flights to Zurich
to deposit money in a Swiss bank account, the suspicion was that Siegel was stealing
money from the project.
The Flamingo was to open in the very same week as the Havana Conference.
Lansky convinced the other delegates to wait and see how the hotel did upon its opening
because Sigel might still make them some money. The opening turned out to be a flop and
though the hotel started to make a small profit, Lansky himself gave the final okay
and Sigel was shot in the head at his Beverly Hills home in June of 1947.
The hit brought about a major transfer of power from the New York crime families to
the Chicago Outfit and a subsequent increase of mob involvement in Las Vegas.
Batista
In 1952, Fulgencio Batista had seized power in Cuba via a military coup.
He established solid relationships with organized crime, notably with
Lansky and Luciano.
Batista encouraged large scale gambling in Cuba and prostitution and the
narcotics trade flourished.
The Hotel Nacional was the most elegant hotel in Havana and Batista endorsed
Lansky's plan to open a new casino there. Despite objections from Ernest
Hemingway, the casino wing opened in 1955. Each night, Batista's bagmen would
skim their 30 percent of the profits not just from the Nacional but from
hundreds of casinos, nightclubs and hotels in Cuba.
Meantime, U.S. business interests on the island flourished and the U.S. government
used its influence through Batista to help make profits rise. When Batista
agreed to a large increase in telephone rates, ITT Corporation presented
him with a gold telephone. This is also depicted in "The Godfather Part II".
In October 1960, in his campaign for the U.S. Presidency, Senator John F. Kennedy
criticized the Eisenhower administration for supporting Batista.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by John F. Kennedy, October 6, 1960
"Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years ... and he turned Democratic Cuba
into a complete police state destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime,
and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States
in support of his reign of terror. Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista
hailed him as a staunch ally and a good friend at a time when Batista was murdering thousands,
destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the
Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections."
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In a letter of October of 1963, Kennedy wrote -
Quote:
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Originally Posted by John F. Kennedy, October 24, 1963
I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under
colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse
than in Cuba, in part owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime.
I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he
justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption.
I will even go further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation
of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for
those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first
Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.
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At 3am on January 1st 1959, Batista fled with his family and forty supporters to the
Dominican Republic, carrying with him $300 million that he had amassed through
graft and payoffs.
On January 8th 1959, Fidel Castro and his army rolled into Havana.
The Hotel Nacional was restored in the 1990's but no longer carries the status
it once had.
