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Chapter 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Prío Socarrás Government and Drug Trafficking U nder the government of President Carlos Prío Socarrás (1948–52), Cuba’s reports to the United Nations continued to maintain that the country’s drug problem involved primarily marijuana and a very limited amount of morphine and that the problem primarily affected lower-class elements of society.1 Thus, for example, one report asserted that “the drug that addicts use most heavily is marijuana . . . out of Mexico, which, because it costs the least is used the most.” The report continued that such findings were hardly surprising, “given that the majority of those using it are from the country’s lower class.” The same report indicated that during 1948, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare had destroyed 222 marijuana cigarettes, 15 pounds of loose marijuana, and just 10 grams of cocaine. The document acknowledged, however, that the retail price of heroin was high “due to its scarcity.”2 The figures for 1949 did not differ significantly: 125 marijuana cigarettes, 5 pounds of loose marijuana, 399 vials of morphine, and 27 grams of cocaine were destroyed, and 63 drug cases came before the courts.3 A report submitted the same year by a U.S. antidrug agent noted that because of excess supplies in New York, cocaine prices in Cuba were three times higher than in the United States.4 In 1950, however, Cuba’s report to the United Nations showed that although Cuban authorities destroyed only 96 marijuana cigarettes and 8 pounds of loose marijuana, 1,117 grams of cocaine had been confiscated and the courts had heard 125 drug cases.5 For 1951, the last full year of the Prío presidency, the Cuban government reported to the United Nations that the courts had heard 75 drug cases and that a much greater amount of drugs had been confiscated : 146 marijuana cigarettes, 1,360 grams of loose marijuana, 87 vials of morphine, 595 grams of opium, 592 grams of morphine powder, 1.5 grams of cocaine, and 350 grams of coca paste. Both drug dealing and drug use were 76 :: Prío Socarrás and Drug Trafficking generally the province of young men; of the 43 court cases in which the offenders ’ gender was specified, 42 involved men and only 1 involved a woman. Those accused ranged between twenty-four and thirty-six years of age.6 Claiming that the volume of drug trafficking taking place on merchant ships had increased noticeably since the Second World War, the U.S. government introduced a December 1950 United Nations resolution calling on member states to compile “a list of those crew on merchant ships who have been convicted, inclusive of the years 1946 to 1950, of crimes connected to drug smuggling.” The measure also asked that “sailors’ papers and officers’ licenses be revoked when held by such people.”7 The Cuban government expressed its support for such an initiative to the Office of the Secretary-General.8 At the beginning of 1950, Prío offered to support Eduardo Chibás in the 1952 presidential campaign; according to Chibás, he rejected the offer because “we do not conclude agreements with bandits. . . . The Orthodox movement can’t line up in any way with those who steal from the public treasury, be they members of the government or of the opposition. For that reason, the three soul mates, Prío Socarrás, Grau, [and] Batista, are all equally rejected.”9 On another occasion, Chibás accused the president and his brother, Antonio, “of having embezzled millions of pesos.”10 Chibás also claimed to have documents suggesting that President Prío and Genovevo Pérez Dámera, head of the army, were prepared to accept a section of land in the province of Pinar del Río in return for helping an estate owner expel some squatters.11 Yet Chibás, the mercurial public face of anticorruption in Cuba, was tormented by private demons. Days before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the stomach, an act committed at the end of one of his weekly radio broadcasts, Chibás repeated his accusations against “the government of Carlos Prío for being the most corrupt of all those which the Republic has had up to the present.”12 Chibás also accused the president of having tolerated drug trafficking and contended that highly placed Prío Socarrás administration officials had profited from the business.13 In...

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