THE CUBAN CONNECTION, DRUG TRAFFICKING, SMUGGLING AND GAMBLING IN CUBA FROM THE 1920'S TO THE REVOLU

Chapter . . . . . 12 ........................................

The Diplomacy of Drug Trafficking at the Beginning of the Revolution

I

n early 1959, as the Cuban Revolution unfolded, Harry J. Anslinger, director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), demanded that the new government deport the mafia bosses who administered the island’s casinos, asserting that they were directly responsible for importing drugs from Cuba to the United States. Fidel Castro shrewdly parried Anslinger’s demand by asking for a list of the traffickers and stating that he was disposed not to deport them but to have them brought before a firing squad.1 He also pointed out that he believed that the Cubans who had sought refuge in the United States after the revolution were “gangsters” and “war criminals” and that the United States should therefore deport them back to Cuba.2 Just days after the revolutionaries had seized power, FBN officials stressed to the Cuban government that it needed to take strong measures against the drug traffickers. FBN agents suggested that anyone convicted of trafficking receive a prison term of between ten and twenty years and complained about the laxness of the judiciary, noting that courts had too often in the past freed drug traffickers. The agency also compiled a dossier of the names of various drug traffickers so that the individuals could be brought to justice.3 The officials also requested the deportation to the United States of “hardened and dangerous” American traffickers such as Carmine Galante and John Ormento so that they could be tried.4 The New York–born Galante was considered “an extremely important figure in the international drug trade.”5 Ormento, likewise a native of New York, had been convicted several times on drug trafficking charges in the United States.6 In all, the FBN prepared case reports on forty-one mafiosos it wanted deported from Cuba, with Meyer Lansky’s name atop “the list of gangsters who [should] never [be] allowed to return to Cuba.”7 At the beginning of April 1959, Efigenio Almejeiras, chief of Cuba’s national revolutionary police, offered Joseph H. Dillon of the U.S. Department