The Cuban connection
Subtitle: drug trafficking, smuggling, and gambling in Cuba from the 1920s to the Revolution
By: Eduardo Sáenz Rovner ; translated by Russ Davidson.
Series: Latin America in translation/en traducción/em tradução
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Chapel Hill
Language: eng
Number of pages: 247
ISBN-13: 9780807831755
Subjects: Drug traffic -- Cuba -- History -- 20th century; Organized crime -- Cuba -- History -- 20th century; Gambling -- Cuba -- History -- 20th century; United States -- Foreign relations -- Cuba; Cuba -- Foreign relations -- United States
Work titles: Conexión cubana.
Description: "A comprehensive history of crime and corruption in Cuba, The Cuban Connection challenges the common view that widespread poverty and geographic proximity to the United States were the prime reasons for soaring rates of drug trafficking, smuggling, gambling, and prostitution in the tumultuous decades preceding the Cuban revolution. Eduardo Saenz Rovner argues that Cuba's historically well-established integration into international migration, commerce, and transportation networks combined with political instability and rampant official corruption to help lay the foundation for the development of organized crime structures powerful enough to affect Cuba's domestic and foreign politics and its very identity as a nation." "Saenz traces the routes taken around the world by traffickers and smugglers. After Cuba, the most important player in this story is the United States. The involvement of gangsters and corrupt U.S. officials and businessmen enabled prohibited substances to reach a strong market in the United States, from rum running during Prohibition to increased demand for narcotics during the Cold War. Originally published in Colombia in 2005, the book has been revised and updated by the author for this first English-language edition."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: U.S. prohibition and smuggling from Cuba; title: Drug trafficking and political anarchy during the 1930s; title: The Chinese and opium consumption in Cuba; title: Corruption and drug trafficking in Cuba during the Second World War and the early postwar years; title: Lucky Luciano in Cuba; title: The Prío Socarrás government and drug trafficking; title: Gambling in Cuba; title: The Andean connection; title: Contacts in France; title: The Batista dictatorship and drug trafficking; title: Revolution; title: The diplomacy of drug trafficking at the beginning of the Revolution.