Mafia paradise - Cuba before the 1959 revolution
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Mafia paradise - Cuba before the 1959 revolution |
| Original title | Cuba, Batista et la mafia |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | Spanish |
| Publishing year | 2012 |
| length | 52 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Bernhard Pfletschinger |
| script | Bernhard Pfletschinger, Hans-Peter Weymar |
| production | Hans-Peter Weymar |
| music | Leandro Saint-Hill |
| camera | Martin Kaeswurm |
The Mafia Paradise - Cuba before the revolution in 1959 (original title: Cuba, Batista et la mafia ) is a documentary by Bernhard Pfletschinger and Hans-Peter Weymar, about the American mafia in Cuba, before the revolution in 1959. It is about a co-production by Hans-Peter Weymar Filmproduktion with WDR , in collaboration with Arte .
action
Havana, mid- 20th century : gambling, prostitution and drugs for cash as night turned to day and the American mafia set the tone, before the Cuban revolutionaries overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and established a socialist state in 1959 .
The Cuban writer Enrique Cirules guides the viewer through the documentary, with subjects such as the business of Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky in New York, Las Vegas and mainly in Cuba, where the two met from the 1930s, as did Albert later Anastasia and Santo Trafficante, Jr. settled at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba and operated from there.
We learn how Lansky and Batista got to know each other, a friendship developed and Lansky thus enjoyed various privileges. We learn that Lucky Luciano was expelled to Italy by the USA in January 1946, was not supposed to leave the greater Naples area and that he was therefore staying illegally in Cuba.
At the end of 1946, Luciano and Lansky, high-ranking mobsters from New York City, New Jersey, Buffalo, Chicago, New Orleans and Florida, invited to the week-long meeting at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba , which became known as the Havana Conference . Shortly afterwards, Luciano's presence in Cuba was noticed and the US victoriously forced Cuba to extradite him back to Italy.
Further topics are Frank Costello and the so-called Kefauver Hearings in the USA, as well as J. Edgar Hoover's fight against the American Mafia in his own country. Meanwhile, the Cuban state and the mafia jointly financed the construction of luxury hotels with exclusive casinos under the control of the mafia, while Batista and his partners benefited from the income and the mafia was able to launder its income from illegal drug deals.
A few years later, Lansky went into hiding in Havana, as Batista wanted to grab more casino winnings for himself and allowed Albert Anastasia to come to Cuba unnoticed and demand more percentages from Lansky from his Cuba business for the families in the States, while Lansky did declined and spread that he was withdrawing from Cuba. Immediately after Anastasia's murder in October 1957, Lansky reappeared and opened the Gran Caribe Habana Riviera Hotel .
With the victory of the revolution in 1959 under Fidel Castro , the political situation changed and the casinos and hotels in Cuba were nationalized. Lansky withdrew from Cuba and offered one million US dollars for Castro's murder - in vain. Later, the mafia has been shown to cooperate with the CIA to behead the revolution and support the overthrow of Castro - in vain. Castro turned to the Soviet Union for protection , which sent reinforcements to Cuba in late 1962. John F. Kennedy then assured that the US would never again take military action against Cuba.