Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [56]
In 1895, after another failed uprising, the Spanish sent a general (fondly nicknamed El Carnicero, the Butcher) to get Cuba more firmly under control. One of his tactics was to herd huge numbers of people into concentration camps, where the military could more conveniently keep an eye on them. And while the military watched, the internees died, hundreds of thousands of them, from disease and starvation.
There was widespread outrage in the United States, and the newspapers clamored for President McKinley to do something: ideally, turf the goddamn Spaniards out of Cuba and take over the place. McKinley didn’t do that. He issued dire warnings to the Spanish, who ignored them and continued on their brutally merry way. Then, toward the end of January 1898, the president sent the USS Maine to Havana, thinking, I suppose, that the sight of American sea power might persuade them that he was serious. The Cuban authorities treated the crew — the officers, at least — with careful courtesy. (The ordinary sailors were not allowed ashore, in case trouble broke out. Which must have been deeply frustrating, so close to a tropical island reputedly full of beautiful dusky women and awash with rum.)
And then — WHUMPH! — the Maine was gone.
The U.S. Navy conducted an inquiry and concluded that the ship’s magazine — its ammunition store, containing several tons of explosive charges for its guns — had blown up. That was pretty much a no-brainer, given the violence of the cataclysm. But the navy also decided that the explosion had been triggered by a mine. And, of course, the only people who could have planted the mine were the Spanish. This conclusion was almost certainly wrong, but that didn’t matter. It gave the Americans a reason to go in.
On April 22, 1898, McKinley ordered a sea blockade of Cuba to strangle the trade in and out of the place. Two days later, Spain declared war on America. It was one of the dumbest moves in all history. The U.S. trounced them. The war was over in less than three months, and the Americans took possession of the Spanish Empire, which, in addition to Cuba, included the Philippine Islands on the other side of the world altogether.
Surprisingly, the U.S. did not declare Cuba to be part of its territory; it didn’t make it one of the United States. Officially, it occupied the country for only four years. In fact, it controlled the country for the next sixty, until, in my lifetime, the nightmare figure of Fidel Castro loomed over the horizon.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
In the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, Cuba became the holiday destination for rich Americans. And where you find rich Americans, you will find the Mafia. The Mob moved in pretty early. Meyer Lansky, probably the cleverest gangster ever, saw the possibilities quicker than most. If Americans with plenty of money were sailing or flying south for a suntan, what else might they want while they were there? Class hotels? Certainly. Casinos, bars, brothels, drugs, racetracks, nightclubs? Definitely. Lansky went to Cuba and got himself appointed “adviser on gambling reform” to the U.S.-sponsored dictator, Fulgencio Batista. You can imagine what kind of gambling reform advice a casino-owning mobster would offer a tyrant: “Like, just keep the cops away, Fulgencio, unless we need a bad loser beaten up, okay? And let’s not talk about taxes. Here, put this fat envelope in your pocket.”
Lansky built himself a twenty-one-story hotel on the Havana seafront. His brother built one just down the way. Cuba became America’s marijuana-smoking, coke-snorting, sex-drenched, rum-addled tropical playground. One of the privileged young Americans who went there, as an official guest, was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Years later he would be one of the men who played a game of political poker, with the survival of the world at stake, and hurried me and Frankie toward our fate.
Yet again, I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s not easy, keeping history in line. Herding cats in fog is easy by comparison.
America’s party in paradise came to a sudden