American writers and Hollywood productions have nurtured their audiences with spicy stories about the mafia endeavors in pre Castro Cuba. As is inevitably the case most of what is portrayed in those books, articles and movies are a distortion and magnified version of what was really happening in those years. Serious researchers such as Robert Lacey (Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life, 1991), Scott M. Deitche (The Silent Don: The Criminal World of Santo Trafficante Jr.2009) and Eduardo Saenz Rovner (The Cuban Connection: Drug Trafficking, Smuggling, and Gambling from the 1020s to the Revolution, 2008) are rarely consulted. Unfortunately most people prefer light reading and sensational fabrications such as those provided by fiction writer T.J English (Havana Nocturne) than the detailed report and proven hard facts of true research.
Among the past realities that most light writers choose to omit is the fact that while there was a presence of well known members of the American mafia in Cuba they were operating legal casinos that were quite profitable and for that reason stayed away from other activities such as drug trafficking (mostly carried out by Europeans in small quantities at that time). The invention by T.J. English that a rich man such Amadeo Barletta was in charge of money laundering the profits from the casinos is absurd because to start with no laundering is needed when the origin of the capital is legitimate such as was the case with the gambling profits in Cuba. Moreover, independent research on the Barletta mafia story has proven that it was originated in a Cuban state character assassination campaign against that man after the Castro mafia connections were exposed in the drug trafficking scandal of 1989. Not surprising for a man such as Fidel Castro who was well known for his belonging to political gangs who systematically resorted to violence against their rivals in the 1940s.
