gaming in cuba · 2011-04-20 · economy to resume its position as the playground of the eastern...

28 CASINO CHIP AND TOKEN NEWS | April · May · June 2004

The history of the style and impactof gaming in Cuba has a clearlydefined point of transition. Cuba hadgained a reputation as the playgroundof the eastern United States in the1920’s that continued into the 1930’swith evidence of the effects of thedepression. With the commencementof World War II, Cuba as a play-ground destination, suffered from thewar on the high seas and the lack ofcommercial shipping which wasbeing diverted to the war effort. Withthe termination of the conflict inEurope and soon the ending of hostil-ities in the Pacific, Cuba awaitedonly the mending of the Americaneconomy to resume its position as theplayground of the Eastern seaboard.In March 1952, Fulgencio Batistamade himself president of Cuba forthe second time. Batista, who ruledCuba from 1933 to 1944 made themistake of offering his government tothe approval of the country in anational election and lost. Batistaresided in Florida for a period of timefollowing his democratic defeat.Cuba was not doing that badly, infact, when Batista again seized powerin the spring of 1952. Havana had aclaim to being the world’s premierplay city - the Paris of the NewWorld, swaying to the rhythms of itsrumbas and sambas and mambos,which it exported to Europe andAmerica via a dozen white-tuxedoedorchestras, the hottest dance bandsanywhere on earth. The one problemwas the gambling.

Gamingin Cuba

by Steve Piccolo

Havana’s gaming was a free-for-all - no more regulated than a fair-ground whose operator subcontractedthe individual sideshows and stalls.The Cuban owners of the city’s night-clubs were leasing out their gamingrooms - and sometimes even individ-ual games and tables - to just aboutanyone who claimed to have abankroll to risk. Some were serious,professional operators. But had lessexperience - and less bankroll. Thecome-on games like cubolo were theresult of this. They offered quickreturns on minimal investments.Stories proliferated of gullibleAmerican tourists being cheated bysmiling and plausible dealers - someCuban, but many American - whobrought the cards and dice to theirtable, and who took their money offthem as they ate. ‘The President ofthe Republic,” announced the HavanaHerald on February 10, 1953, “hasgiven definitive instructions to thevarious police forces to intensifymeasures of protection for foreigntourists.” It was “unprecedented,”said the newspaper, for the presidentto express himself personally on thissubject, and he had dispatched theminister of the interior on a tour ofHavana’s gaming rooms to look outfor fraudulent multidice games likecubolo and razzle-dazzle, a variant onthe theme. The Cuban TouristCommission even had a form printedwhich authorized visitors whobelieved that they had been cheatedto stop payment on their checks.

These measures had scarcely had achance to work, however, when, atthe end of March 1953, the SaturdayEvening Post ran an expose’ head-lined on its cover, “Suckers inParadise: How Americans Lose TheirShirts in Caribbean Gambling Joints.”The author of the article, Lester Velie,had been on a thorough tour ofHavana’s nightspots. All, he reported,had succumbed to the operators ofrazzle-dazzle, cubolo, and the come-on games, and must now be consid-ered “bust out” joints - or fraudulent.Nor were the traditional casino gamesabove suspicion.

Most dealers in Havana were deal-ing blackjack from a hand-held pack,which was open to manipulation,rather than from a box, which hadlong been the standard practice inAmerica. In the length and breadth ofHavana the reporter could discoveronly two locations where the gam-bling was honest. One was the so-called “louse ring” underneath thegrandstand at the Oriental Park horsetrack, where Cubans gambled withCubans for modest stakes. The otherwas at the very opposite end of thescale - the Montmartre Club, a luxuri-ous, plush-and-glit, third floor estab-lishment a few blocks away from theNacional Hotel in downtown Havana.The operation of the Montmartre’sgaming tables had recently beentaken over by Meyer Lansky. Theserious high-rollers knew cheatingwhen they saw it, and there was no

CASINO CHIP AND TOKEN NEWS | April · May · June 2004 29

suggestion of sleight-of-hand orcome-on games in the MontmartreClub. To the contrary, thanks toMeyer Lansky, honestly conductedhigh-stakes gambling was still aliveand well in one corner of Havana, atleast.

Batista’s return to power was thesingularly most influential event inCuban gaming as it signals the begin-ning of the rise of Cuban casinos tointernational reputation and thefounding of an empire of “Las Vegas”style casino action. Meyer Lansky’s

dreams for Cuba had been tested insouthern Nevada beginning with hisformer partner Bugsy Siegel’s ven-ture with the Flamingo Hotel.Following Siegel’s death in 1946, theFlamingo’s operation was perfectedby others and as additional casinoswere established on the strip, theiraction and return on investment wasverified. To have “Las Vegas” stylegaming in not only an unregulatedenvironment but to have the only“regulator”, the government, firmlybound by a friendship of mutual ben-efit was ideal. President Batista invited

Meyer Lansky to become his advisoron gambling reform, and to carry out,on a larger scale, a cleanup job likethe one he had performed so effec-tively at the racetrack and at the GranCasino Nacional in the late 1930’s.Lansky might be an outlaw inAmerica, but in Cuba he was wel-comed as the man who knew how toput things straight.

Fulgencio Batista saw theenhancement of revenues from for-eign visitors, and from Americans inparticular, as a major source of futureincome for Cuba - and for himself.With the development of hotel chainsand airline travel in the early 1950’s,tourism was just starting to be seen asan industry in its own right, and thenew president enthusiasticallyendorsed it as a priority of his newregime. One of his first actions was toreorganize the old National TourismCorporation - “to assist and stimulateprivate enterprise,” as Batista laterwrote.

Cuba’s climate and beaches, itsproximity to New York and Miami,“the striking beauty of our women,”and “the traditional hospitality of ourpeople” were all assets that weresadly undeveloped, in the opinion ofthe new president. He simplified entryregulations so that Americans couldspend up to a month in Cuba withoutneeding a visa and could also bringtheir private cars and boats with them.At Barlovento, to the west of Havana,canals were planned for a marina-housing development, with a view toluring the investment of Floridianboaters who lived in similar develop-ments in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

And when it came to gambling, itwas Batista’s ambition, with the helpof Meyer Lansky, to turn Havana intothe Monte Carlo of the Caribbean.The first priority was to flush out the


crooked gambling subcontractors. Theonly casino operator in Havana forwhom Meyer had any respect wasSanto Trafficante, Jr., son of the num-bers boss of Tampa, Florida.Trafficante, ten years younger thanMeyer, had been operating in Cubasince 1946. Quiet of manner, with acrew cut and spectacles that gave himthe air of a college professor,Trafficante went about his businessconservatively. Meyer also knew, andhad less respect for NormanRothman, the Sans Souci gamingroom operator. Meyer warnedRothman, in so many words, “Yourun clean, otherwise, you can’t oper-ate,” and the Sans Souci stopped itsprogram of come-on games. But otherdishonest croupiers, many of themAmericans, continued to operate on afree-lance basis. They had beenapproaching victims away from thegaming tables - in restrooms, even -with their card shuffles and dicegames that a sucker “just could notlose.” On March 30, 1953 - two daysafter the Saturday Evening Postexpose’ - Cuban military intelligencearrested thirteen such cardsharps, allAmerican, and immediately deportedeleven of them.

Cuban gaming opened up for thewinter season of 1954-55 in itsreformed state. Blackjack everywherewas dealt from a box, not from thehand. Floor men became “laddermen,” hoisted up to sit in little jockeyseats, atop stepladders, from whichthey could more effectively spotsharp practice at the tables - andwhere they could very obviously beseen to be making that inspection.Most important, the nightclubsoffered no house room to the opera-tors of razzle-dazzle, cubolo, or anyother come-on games. The fairgroundhad been policed. There were nomore newspaper stories about touristsbeing swindled in Havana, and the

American embassy was able to closeits file on the subject. The last com-plaint about dishonest Cuban gam-bling practices dated from the springof the previous year, at the same timeas the Saturday Evening Post article,and referred to an incident that hadhappened the previous New Year’sEve.

Meyer Lansky’s Montmartre Clubremained the premier destination forhigh rollers. The Montmartre did nothave floor shows or ambience tomatch the under-the -stars nightclubsof the garden suburbs, but it did haveLansky’s table crews, and that attract-ed the best players. It was seriousgambling for serious gamblers. TheMontmartre was only a few minutesstroll from the Nacional, the grandesthotel in Cuba - or in the entireCaribbean. Lansky had long nursed aplan to install a casino in theNacional Hotel itself. The hotel stoodimposingly on a rocky bluff lookingout across the bay towards the Morro,the ancient and picturesque fortressguarding the entrance to Havana har-bor. Ten stories high and of classicdesign, the Nacional bore a striking

resemblance to the Breakers Hotel inPalm Beach, whose architect itshared, and Lansky’s scheme was totake over a wing of the Nacional andrefurbish it with luxury suites forhigh-stakes players, a deluxeCaribbean version of the formulawhich Las Vegas had been developingso successfully since the death ofBenny Siegel.

This idea did not accord with thehabits of Havana’s American colony,who used the rambling gardens andcorridors of the Nacional as some-thing of an expatriate club. A fewyards along the Malecon, the seawall, from the U.S. embassy, theNacional was a cozy and non-com-mercial setting for tea and bridge par-ties, tennis tournaments, and gather-ings on the Fourth of July. But Batistaliked Lansky’s casino idea, and sincethe Cuban government owned theNacional, he seized on the project asa chance to show off his dynamicnew tourist policy. In 1955, theNacional was placed under new man-agement. International (laterIntercontinental) Hotels, Inc., a sub-sidiary of Pan Am, the principal air


carrier to Havana, took over the man-agement of the hotel and embarkedupon an extensive program of refur-bishing. They did not designate a par-ticular wing of bedrooms for gam-blers, but at the northern end of thelong entrance hall, inside the curvedloggias looking out over theMalecon, an elaborate and luxuriousnew complex of public rooms wascreated - a bar, a restaurant, a show-room, and a casino. This complexwas sublet by the hotel for a substan-tial rent to a casino operator, and thatoperator was Meyer Lansky. Thisbecame home to Wilbur Clark’sCasino – Havana.

Eartha Kitt was the star of thefloor show with which the newNacional Hotel casino opened forbusiness in the winter season of1955-56. It proved an immediate suc-cess. Lansky placed his brother Jakein charge of the casino floor, andnight after night Jake surveyed theproceedings from his giant ladder tomake sure the games were kept clean.The Lansky brothers were operatingin partnership with a regime whichwas corrupt. But they did not allowthat corruption to touch the purity ofwhat made them real money - seri-ous, professional gambling. Theirpartner, Fulgencio Batista, sharedtheir professionalism. Flamboyantand high profile in many respects, theCuban president was not, himself, agambling man. He also realized, asclearly as the Lansky’s did, that hav-ing Cuban officials gathered aroundroulette tables in their caps, uniformsand all the trimmings, would not begood for anyone’s business. Batistaseldom visited Meyer Lansky’s casi-nos - in the winter season of 1955-56Lansky was operating at both theNacional and the Montmartre, andhad a piece of another, more modestclub, the Monseigneur - and the twomen were almost never seen together

in public. Nor did they socialize pri-vately. Their relationship was strictlybusiness. Lansky and Batista were, toall intents and purposes, partners inthe commercial development ofCuban gambling, but there was noth-ing so crass as a direct transfer offunds from one to the other. It mademore sense for both sides to operatethrough middlemen, and though thepayoff might sometimes take the formof cash, it more often involved jobs,supply contracts, and a whole net-work of patronage.

In 1955, the system reached itsculmination in the promulgation ofHotel Law 2074, by which the Cubangovernment granted tax exemptionsto “all new hotels, motels, and similarestablishments providing touristaccommodations.” Any hotel withmore than $1 million of new invest-ment, and any new nightclub valuedat $200,000, was entitled to apply fora casino license. The governmenteven announced itself ready, in cer-tain circumstances, to provide “directfinancial assistance” for the construc-tion of tourists projects it consideredparticularly valuable.

Batista was able to cite this law asthe reason why, in a matter of years,the number of hotel rooms in Havananearly doubled - from some 3,000 in1952 to nearly 5,500 in 1958. Allthese new rooms were modern, luxu-rious, and air conditioned, and Batistawas entitled to take credit for hisachievement. By 1958 Cuba wasexperiencing the booming touristeconomy that did not come to othercorners of the Caribbean for ten yearsor more. But Hotel Law 2074 wasalso the channel by which the presi-dent could dispense governmentmoney to associates like MeyerLansky, who then made sure that itwas friends and relatives of the presi-dent who profited privately from theconstruction and operation of the newhotel-casinos that they built. No cus-toms duties were levied on the gam-ing tables and equipment that came into fill the new casinos, and Cuba’sstrict labor quota laws were relaxed toallow foreign croupiers and casinostaff into the country on special two-year visas as “technicians.” In thespring of 1956, less than three yearsafter he had been in jail in Saratoga,Meyer Lansky started work, under the


terms of Hotel Law 2074, on the con-struction of his own hotel, TheRiviera, a twenty-one-story, 440-roomskyscraper, towering above theMalecon in Havana. When it opened,the Riviera would be the largest pur-pose-built casino-hotel in Cuba - oranywhere in the world, outside LasVegas.

By 1956, Havana had attractedmany of America’s professional gam-blers from the wide-open era, includ-

ing a number who had become promi-nent in Las Vegas. It was not Meyer’sstyle to exploit his special relation-ship with Batista, but there was notmuch point in a casino operator’scoming to Havana in the 1950’s ifMeyer Lansky did not like him.Meyer, Jake, and their friends wouldgather for sandwiches at lunchtimebeside the Nacional’s pool, wherethey all had cabanas. The memoriesthey shared went back more thantwenty years. Moe Dalitz, Sam

Tucker, and Morris Kleinman,Meyer’s partners in the MolaskaCorporation, were there. So was theirCleveland partner, Thomas “BlackJack” McGinty, along with WilburClark, who fronted the Desert Inn, notfar down the strip from the Flamingo.Dalitz and his partners had boughtinto the Nacional casino, and theywere due to take it over entirely whenMeyer’s Riviera Hotel got startedproperly. Benny Binion, the Texasgambler, was one of the few friendsof Meyer’s who did come over tocheck out the prospects for businessin Havana. He later explained: “Idon’t like operating anywhere that Idon’t speak the language.” Youngerthan Meyer and his generation, butrespected for the position he hadcarved out for himself in Cuba, SantoTrafficante,Jr., was admitted to theinner circle.

Meyer Lansky set his sights highwhen it came to the construction ofhis own hotel-casino in Havana. Hehad had pieces of hotels before - mostnotably in Benny Seigel’s Flamingo.But the Havana Riviera was Meyer’sown baby. With his past, it wasimpossible for Meyer Lansky to hopethat he could ever get a Nevada gam-ing license or operate openly in LasVegas. But now, just over the horizonfrom Miami, and in an open, legalsetting that was more agreeable inmany ways than the dusty and remoteNevada desert, he could build a luxu-ry, resort hotel-casino which showedhow it should be done. People in theknow declared that Meyer Lanskywas the dean of American gambling.The Havana Riviera would prove it.

To construct the Riviera, Lanskyselected Irving Feldman, a builderwho had a dozen hotels and presti-gious apartment blocks to his crediton Miami Beach. Short, swashbuck-ling, and dynamic, Feldman was a


Napoleonic figure who had the repu-tation for bringing high-quality jobsin on time. In his previous life,Feldman was an unashamed gamblerand ladies’ man. But when it came toconstruction, he was all business. Hebroke ground on the Riviera inJanuary 1957, and eleven monthslater it was finished. Meyer’s brief forhis hotel was that it should containnothing but the best. The Riviera wasthe first major building in Havana tohave central air conditioning, in con-trast to the new Capri Hotel, complet-ed a few months earlier not far fromthe Nacional, which had individualbox units, rattling and dripping fromevery window. Cold hissed smoothlyand silently into the Riviera’s luxuri-ous room from ceiling vents, andevery window had its own view ofthe sea. Seen from the air, the twobroad curves of the Riviera sweptback from the Malecon in the shapeof a tremendous Y, with cantileveredbalconies at every end. In terms ofstyle and decor, the Riviera was angu-lar and futuristic. Echoing and reflect-ing the waters of the Florida straits,the hotel was clad in turquoise mosa-ic, while the casino itself, a curvedand windowless pleasure dome cov-ered in gold mosaic, nestled on theground beside it like an enormous,gilded ostrich egg. The furnishingswere by Albert Parvin-Dohrman,which was supplying the latest luxuryhotels in Las Vegas. Modernisticchandeliers glittered from the ceilingsof the casino, restaurant, and publicrooms, like so many convoys ofwinking flying saucers. The overalleffect did not, perhaps, win prizes fortaste, but it was undeniably exciting.

Everyone in Havana knew that theRiviera was Meyer Lansky’s project.He sent excited progress reports andphotographs of the construction backto his son Paul, in Tacoma, as thesteel skeleton of the main tower rose

in the sky. But, as ever, Meyer hid hisown participation behind the namesof his partners and associates. Thecasino license, for which the hotelpaid the Cuban government $25,000a year, was held by Eddie Levinson.The casino manager was an associateof Levinson’s, Eddie Torres - and theRiviera Hotel Corporation itself washeaded by the Smith brothers, Benand Harry, two Toronto hoteliers withwhom Lansky had negotiated theManagement contract. The only placein which Lansky’s name appeared onthe paperwork was as director of thehotel’s kitchens.

The Riviera Hotel opened with afanfare on the evening of December10, 1957. Its Copa Room floor show,which was carried in part onAmerican network television, washeaded by Ginger Rogers. TheRiviera was universally judged animmense success. Its casino startedmaking money from the first night.Its 440 double rooms were bookedsolid through the winter and springseason of 1958 and beyond. It tookthe deployment of several large-denomination bills to secure a decentseat in the Copa Room, where the

performers that winter included VicDamone, Abbott and Costello, and theMexican comedian Cantinflas. Mostsatisfying of all, it was even harder tosecure a table to eat in the RivieraRoom, the hotel’s gourmet restaurant,which offered, by general consent, thecity’s finest fine dining, and steaks ofa particularly high quality.

Havana in the winter of 1957-58offered the visitor many rare andextravagant experiences. The memo-ries of visitors to the Riviera Hotel inits heyday are of an ambiance thatwas anything but gangsterish. Thegaming in the egg-shaped casino washushed and reverent, as befitted theseriousness of the stakes. A strictdress code was enforced. Many menwore tuxedos. The women wore seri-ous jewels. The marble halls ofMeyer Lansky’s Riviera were an asy-lum of quiet and gentility, comparedto the raucous carnival to be foundoutside.

As the Lansky/Batista gamingempire gathered influence, it alsogathered notoriety. An article appear-ing in the March 10, 1958 issue ofLIFE magazine indicated that East


Coast United States mob influencedominated Cuban gaming and thatNevada casinos were supplying theexpertise for the operations. The arti-cle cited Batista’s 1955 regulationchanges as bearing fruit in the formof five major casinos, three night-clubs with another three hotels inprogress. The article lists five hotels:the Riviera, Hotel Capri, theNacional Hotel, the older Comodoroand the Sans Souci. A new HavanaHilton was in the progress of openingand two additional hotels were com-ing on line. The article also cites acasino at the race track for those whotire of the races. Although not specif-ically mentioned, the nightclubsincluded the Lefty Clark’s Tropicanaand Wilbur Clark’s Casino. Thirteendifferent syndicates, almost all ofthem separate from the gamblersalready established in Havana, hadapplied to sublease the new HiltonHotel’s casino which, it was calculat-ed, should produce about $3 millionprofit per year. Hilton wanted $1 mil-lion annual rental, paid in advance,and Roberto “Chiri” Mendoza wasthe candidate that the companyfavored. Mendoza had Batista’s per-sonal blessing, and he was also thecandidate favored by the CubanHotel and Restaurant Workers Union,which was the owner of the newhotel. The union was financing theproject as a source of employmentfor its current workers and as aninvestment for their pension fund,leasing out the management andinternational marketing to Hilton.There were Americans running thegaming in the Nacional Hotel, theSans Souci, and in the recentlyopened Capri Hotel - where GeorgeRaft, the movie star, was acting asfront man and meeter and greeter fora syndicate headed by SantoTrafficante. Americans had more thantheir fair share of gambling inHavana, and when it came to the new

Hilton casino, Batista had given theword that this one was for the Cubans.

Havana had something of a fairy-land about it in the winter season ofJanuary, February, and March, 1958.There were more visitors than everbefore. The operators of the newlyopened casino-hotels could hardlybelieve their good fortune. At theCapri, J. “Skip” Shepard, a Miamihotelier who had a twenty year con-tract to operate the hotel, remembers

that the flow of money - sheer, nakedprofit - was “just unbelievable.”Thanks to Meyer Lansky’s reputationand connections, it was the Rivierathat attracted the most serious, high-stakes players - men who thoughtnothing of writing a check for$20,000 or $30,000 at the end of anevening’s gaming. Who would havethought that by the end of that verysame year, the “gambling empire” ofLansky would come crashing downalong with the Batista regime.


Early in December 1958,Fulgencio Batista sent his children’spassports to the American embassy tobe stamped with U.S. visas. OnDecember 9, President Eisenhowerdispatched a personal emissary toBatista promising unhindered accessto, and asylum in, the dictator’sDaytona Beach home, providing thatBatista was willing to leave Cuba rap-idly and quietly. Just over a weeklater, on December 17, 1958,Ambassador Earl E.T. Smith repeatedthe message more officially. For thosewho were in the know, there wasample warning that Batista’s days ofpower were numbered. The newsreached the central Havana hotelssoon after one o’clock in the morningon New Years Eve, 1958. An hour or

so earlier, PresidentBatista had drivensecretly to CampColumbia, where hehad commandeeredthree planes at theneighboring air forcebase, filled themwith his wife, fami-ly, closest aids, andbaggage - and fledthe country. FidelCastro and his fol-lowers were still inOriente Province,nearly 500 milesfrom the capitol,while the Cubanarmy, larger than ithad ever been,remained generallyloyal to Batista. Butafraid for his life,and concerned tomake sure of hismoney, the sergeant-stenographer withthe engaging smilehad chosen to pickup his winnings andto leave the table

while he could. In reality, very few inBatista’s circle were given any noticeof what was happening. ChiriMendoza rocked perceptibly withshock when he had heard the news -along with everyone else - in thenewly opened Hilton casino in thesmall hours of January 1. Over at theRiviera, they had been no betterwarned. American consular officers,roused from their beds, struggled withtheir New Year’s Day hangovers asthey went round the hotels, tellingAmerican citizens to stay indoors,while compiling lists of visitors’names in case an evacuation becamenecessary. As dawn rose on the sud-denly Batista-less Havana, there wasdancing in the streets. The workers atthe Riviera deserted their jobs to go

out and celebrate. In the early weeksof January 1959, peasants who hadonly dared to look wistfully at theoutside of the chrome-and-glass tow-ers housing the visiting Americanosnow strolled with impunity into thelobbies. It was several days beforelife in Havana returned to some sortof normality.

One of the first decisions of thenew revolutionary government ofCuba in January 1959 was to shutdown the casinos and the national lot-tery. Both were inappropriate to theethics of the new, reformed Cuba. Ifthe country’s tourist business depend-ed on gambling, announced the newprime minister, Miro Cardona, thenthe tourist business would just have tosuffer. Fidel Castro had already pro-claimed from the mountains his inten-tion of removing the Yankee gang-sters who ran the casinos of Havana.The realities of government, however,soon caused Castro and his ministersto think again. At the end of January1959, several thousand waiters,croupiers, dealers, and bartenderswho had been thrown out of work bythe closing of the casinos paraded inprotest through the streets of Havana.Castro had delegated the responsibili-ty for the casinos and the national lot-tery to Pastora Nunez, one of thewoman guerrillas who had fought inthe Sierra Maestra, and at the end ofFebruary 1959, Señorita Nunez sum-moned the major casino owners to heroffice. “I highly disapprove of theway you make a living,” she lectured,“but we are reconsidering our earlierdecision.”

Money proved to be the final per-suader. The casino owners agreed togive their employees seven weeks’back pay for the time they had beenout of work, and with that assurance,the government rescinded its earlierdecree. CASINOS REOPEN IN


HAVANA, proclaimed the bannertrailing behind a plane which flew upand down Miami Beach in the lastweek of February 1959. There wereabout six weeks left until Easter, and,with luck, the Riviera and the otherhotels could recoup enough of theirlosses to break even for the season.Cautious optimism filled the gamingrooms at the prospect of coexistencewith a regime that seemed both cleanand pragmatic.

In April 1958, nine months beforeBatista’s departure, when the recentlyopened hotels-casinos of Havanawere going full swing, the NevadaGaming Board had banned the hold-ers of Nevada gaming licenses fromoperating in Cuba. The spectacularsuccess of the Havana Riviera, Capri,Nacional, and Hilton hotel-casinoswas hurting business in Las Vegas,where the most recently openedhotels were all in financial difficul-ties. Five Nevada gamblers had actedimmediately to safeguard their posi-tions in Las Vegas. In the autumn of1958, Moe Dalitz, Wilbur Clark, SamTucker, Morris Kleinman, andThomas “Black Jack” McGinty allsold out the interests they had devel-oped in Havana. Cuban gaming nowrested solely in the hands of Batista,Lansky, and his associates from theeast coast. Nevada’s contribution toCuban gaming had been to supply the

“know-how” of the operations forLansky’s dreamed of “Las Vegas”style casinos. On New Year’s Day1959, they looked very clever indeed.They got themselves clear of Cubangambling, and they even had a profitto show for it. Lansky did not look soclever. The Riviera Hotel had cost$14 million to build and equip. Sixmillion dollars of that investment wasprovided by the Batista governmentunder the provisions of Hotel Law2074. No paperwork survives to pro-vide exact figures, but $8 million to$12 million seems to be a fair esti-mate of what Lansky and his associ-ates personally invested in theRiviera’s bricks and mortar, chande-liers, roulette tables, and mosaic tile.At the time of Batista’s departure, theRiviera Hotel had been open for afew weeks longer than a year, and bythe estimate of the Hilton’s analysis,who studied the Riviera’s success inorder to predict how much revenuetheir own casino might be expected togenerate, gaming at the Rivierashowed a clear annual profit of some$3 million. But after little more than ayear of operating profits, that still left$5 million to $9 million of investmentpaid out and buried in the hotel - withthe deficit getting larger, since theRiviera did not register a singlemonth of clear profit in the periodthat it operated under the unwillingand unhelpful regime of Fidel Castro.

On October 24, 1960, the GacetaOficial de la Republica de Cubaannounced the confiscation andnationalization of the Havana RivieraHotel. The gazette announced thesame fate for 165 other Americanenterprises. This marked the end ofLansky’s dream of Las Vegas stylegaming in Cuba. Gaming in Cuba wasgrowing so fast, that if it weren’t forthe revolution, Las Vegas might notbe what it is today. Reports of gamingin Cuba after the confiscation of allthe American operated casinos, con-sist of casinos operated for the pleas-ure of eastern block tourists.

A recently reported joint venturewith French gaming interests in part-nership with the Cuban governmentas recently as 1991 indicate that theoperations have labored under the dif-ficult problem of having the govern-ment as a partner. The glorious daysof Havana gaming are now more than40 years old, but the urge for gam-bling, long a sport in Cuba, continuesto run in the blood of the country. TheCuban National Lottery was such adeeply rooted institution that evenFidel Castro could not ban its exis-tence and today it serves as an indica-tion that Cuba will once again revivethe spirit of gaming if and when itsgovernment is so inclined.

gaming in cuba · 2011-04-20 · economy to resume its position as the playground of the eastern...

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