page_title: Havana Plan Piloto
section_title: Santo Trafficante Jr.
hierarchical_section_title: Havana Plan Piloto / Architecture of the mafia / Santo Trafficante Jr.
caption_attribution_description: English: Tropicana Arcos de Cristal. Havana, Cuba
context_page_description: The Havana Plan Piloto was a 1955-1958 urban proposal by Town Planning Associates which included Paul Lester Wiener, Paul Schulz, the Catalan architect Josep Lluis Sert, Seely Stevenson of Value & Knecht, Consulting Engineers seeking to combine "architecture, planning, and law," in a project heavily influenced by the politics of Fulgencio Batista which in turn were dictated by his involvement with the American Mafia and their desire to augment United States tourism, and thru his architects, the modernist principles of CIAM and the Athens Charter. The Charter got its name from the location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the in SS Patris II bound for Athens from Marseilles. This conference is documented in a film commissioned by Sigfried Giedion and made by his friend Laszlo Moholy-Nagy "Architects' Congress." The Charter had a significant impact on urban planning after World War II and, thru Josep Lluis Sert and Paul Lester Wiener, on the proposed modernization of Havana and in the effort erase all vestiges of the 16th-century city.
context_section_description: Santo Trafficante Jr. (November 15, 1914 – March 17, 1987) was among the most powerful Mafia bosses in the United States. He headed the Trafficante crime family and controlled organized criminal operations in Florida and Cuba, which had previously been consolidated from several rival gangs by his father, Santo Trafficante Sr. Reputedly the most powerful crime boss in Batista-era Cuba, he never served a prison sentence in the US. Trafficante turned his father's criminal organization into a multi-billion dollar international organized crime empire. Trafficante was reportedly a multi-billionaire and wielded enormous power and influence all over the United States and Cuba by paying off police, judges, federal prosecutors, city officials, government officials, local and international politicians, mayors, governors, senators, congressmen, CIA agents and FBI agents.
  Trafficante maintained links to the Bonanno crime family, in New York City, but was more closely allied with Sam Giancana in Chicago. Consequently, while generally recognized as the most powerful organized crime figure in Florida throughout much of the 20th century, Trafficante was not believed to have total control over Miami, Miami Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, or Palm Beach. The east coast of Florida was a loosely knit conglomerate of New York family interests with links to Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Angelo Bruno, Carlos Marcello, and Frank Ragano.
  Trafficante admitted his anti-Castro activities to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. Though he vehemently denied any association with a conspiracy against President John F. Kennedy, at least one witness before federal investigators testified that Trafficante predicted the assassination in spring of 1963. Federal investigators brought racketeering and conspiracy charges against him in the summer of 1986.
  Santo Trafficante Jr. had been operating in Cuba since the late 1940s under his father, Santo Trafficante, Sr., a mobster in Tampa, Florida. After his father died in 1954, he became the head in Tampa and took over his fathers interests in Cuba.
  
  Trafficante moved to Cuba in 1955, where he came into contact with Batista and Meyer Lansky. During the rule of Cuba's authoritarian dictator Fulgencio Batista, Trafficante openly operated the Sans Souci Cabaret and the Casino International gambling establishments in Havana. As a leading member of the syndicate, he also was suspected of having behind-the-scenes interests in other syndicate-owned Cuban casinos: the Hotel Habana Riviera, the Tropicana Club, the Sevilla-Biltmore, the Hotel Capri Casino, the Comodoro, the Hotel Deauville, and the Havana Hilton.
caption: Arcos de Cristal, Tropicana Club[63]
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