The Mafia in Havana

A Caribbean mob story

Enrique Cirules

Regular price US$17.95 Our price US$13.46
A colorful if shocking portrait of the Mafia’s Caribbean empire before Fidel Castro appeared on the scene
 
Here is a vibrant picture of the Mafia’s Caribbean empire when Havana was the playground of the rich and infamous. With a novelistic eye for detail and drama, prize-winning author Enrique Cirules presents a shockingly glamorous and fantastically seedy picture of the world of Sinatra and the showgirls, mambo and marijuana, corrupt cops and politicians, run by shady characters like “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky.

In this extensive investigation into the Cuban underworld, the author exposes the close ties between the Mafia, US business interests and intelligence agencies, and their often brutally enforced reign over pre-revolutionary Cuba.

The Mafia in Havana won the Casa de las Américas Prize for Latin American literature and the Critics’ Prize in 1994. It features stunning photographs of some of the famous personalities who hung out in Havana in the era before the 1959 revolution.

Enrique Cirules was born in Camaguey, Cuba, in 1938. He is a great storyteller and the author of several novels and short stories, including “Conversation with the Last American.”
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We invented Havana, and we can goddamn well move it someplace else if Batista can’t control it.

—Meyer Lansky in Sydney Pollack’s movie “Havana”

A meticulously accurate and superbly written history of the Cuban underworld in terms of the interactions between the American Mafia, US businesses and governmental intelligence agencies. …The Mafia in Havana is a seminal and strongly recommended addition to the personal and academic American Organized Crime historical studies and supplemental reading lists.

—MidWest Book Review

The author takes us on a journey from the US to Cuba starting in the 1920s with the US Mafia running rum. The depth of corruption was profound, reaching up to the presidential palace itself. Vivid portraits of gangsters like “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky make for fascinating reading.

—People’s Weekly World

178 pages | ISBN 978-0-980429-23-7