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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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 Chapter 12 136 :: Diplomacy of Drug Trafficking of the Treasury complete cooperation in arresting drug traffickers. From his post at Camp Libertad, the name given by the government to the old Camp Columbia, Captain Raúl Cros, chief of the intelligence division of the revolutionary air force, made a similar commitment.8 Dillon then met with Comandante Aldo Vera Serafín, who promised to pursue persons arrested for drug trafficking under the previous government and to work with the courts to see that justice was applied.9 Discussions on these matters continued , and on 17 April 1959, Steve Minas, a U.S. customs agent in Havana, met with Lieutenant Adolfo Díaz Lorenzo, chief of the narcotics unit in Cuba’s Bureau of Investigation. Minas had given the chief a list of cases involving drug traffickers; Díaz reported that he was working with the list and that people whose names appeared on it were by and large the same as the people on a list that Charles Siragusa had given Antonio de la Carrera, private secretary to President Manuel Urrutia, the previous January. Minas also met with Mario Fernández y Fernández, Cuba’s attorney general and prosecutor for the Supreme Tribunal, and with Jorge de Castroverde. Both Fernández and de Castroverde agreed that a new narcotics law needed to be implemented, and according to Minas, Fernández believed that repeat traffickers should be denied the right to remain free on bail and favored applying the death penalty in certain drug cases.10 American embassy personnel believed that the new revolutionary police force, “disorganized and inexperienced” as it may have been, was nonetheless eager to assist in apprehending criminals sought by the U.S. authorities.11 Two months earlier, in fact, agents of the Cuban Bureau of Investigation had arrested Abelardo Martínez Rodríguez del Rey, the irrepressible El Teniente , and one of his associates, Ricardo Borroto Díaz, as they were preparing to board a plane at the Rancho Boyeros airport. The two, who between them had $18,891 in currency and $1,300 in traveler’s checks, were planning to fly first to Panama and then to Argentina and Peru to buy cocaine for resale on the Cuban market. They were equipped with two suitcases with false bottoms .12 In addition, Cuban antinarcotics agents arrested El Teniente’s brother, Jorge Martínez...

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