Chapter . . . . . 11 ........................................ Revolution
a
s the guerrilla fighters of the 26 July Movement steadily gained the upper hand and achieved a series of military victories in different parts of the country, Fulgencio Batista, facing inevitable defeat, fled Havana shortly after midnight on 31 December 1958. In the aftermath of his departure and the collapse of his government, mobs roamed the city’s streets, destroying and looting parking meters, and invaded the casinos, where they plundered the slot machines.1 The casinos of both the Sevilla Biltmore and Plaza hotels, situated in the heart of the capital, were laid to waste.2 The magazine Bohemia got to the heart of the matter: “In the first hours after victory, people vented their anger at one of the hallmarks of the old regime, gambling, especially in its most ostentatious guise, the hotels and casinos.”3 The parking meters and slot machines symbolized entrenched graft and corruption and were linked to Batista and his family, inasmuch as the dictator and his brother-in-law, General Roberto Fernández Miranda, had a personal stake in those businesses.4 Yet whatever their political sympathies, hotel and casino employees stood their ground and confronted the crowds, attempting to prevent the destruction of the buildings — and their jobs.5 The militia of the 26 July Movement and the members of the revolutionary directorate intervened to help restore order; when less aggressive tactics proved insufficient, the militia opened fire on looters.6 In April 1958, Ernesto Betancourt, then serving as Fidel Castro’s spokesman and representative in the United States, had declared to a New York City newspaper that when Batista fell and Castro assumed power, the new government would purge the island of its mafia presence.7 Thus, immediately after the revolution, Castro announced that legitimate U.S. businesses in Cuba would be protected but not the businesses belonging to “those gangsters,” the casino owners.8 The first voices to protest this policy, however, were not those of the
