TONY MONTANA IMMEDIATELY COMES TO MIND WHEN YOU THINK OF CUBAN GANGSTERS. BUT THE POWER-HUNGRY AND RUTHLESS JOSÉ MIGUEL BATTLE ‘EL PADRINO’, THE REAL-LIFE GODFATHER OF THE EAST COAST’S CUBAN MAFIA, MADE SCARFACE LOOK LIKE A PUSSY CAT
In the 1960s, the recent Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro’s rise dominated news headlines in the US. It created a dangerous political dynamic between Cuba and the United States, as Cuban exiles schemed to take back Cuba from Castro, making backroom deals with shady government operatives. It was a running theme that continued for a long time. The Cuban exile community in the US was used by the CIA to do dirty political deeds over many decades, walking in the grey areas of legality where gangsters called the shots and politicians made moves that intertwined with those of organised crime.
The story of The Corporation and José Miguel Battle, ‘El Padrino’ (The Godfather), encompasses all these elements. Battle’s reign lasted 40 years. Beginning as a cop in Havana pre-Castro, he later fought at the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and served time in a Cuban prison. When the Kennedy administration secured his release in 1962, Battle settled in New Jersey and became the numbers king. He ran New York City’s ‘bolita’ racket – a very popular and completely illegal lottery – and controlled the Cuban Mafia from the New Jersey-New York area all the way down to Miami.
HAVANA VICE COP
“It was in Havana that he learned corruption,” T.J. English, the author of The Corporation: An Epic Story Of The Cuban American Underworld, told Real Crime. “He learned how the world operates, how organised crime is a conduit between the upper world – the business and political class – and the underworld – gangsters, vice, money, and how whatever money generated in the underworld facilitates the upper world. Battle developed a heightened skill at navigating all of that because 1950s Havana was a very corrupt place.”
With the criminals and mobsters running many aspects of the entertainment business in Havana, Battle worked in concert with them. The Mafia was making a ton of money in Cuba, and a lot of that money was being funnelled right back to Cuban President Batista and his government. Battle understood how corruption works. He took care of whoever needed to be taken care of within the system. Payment would be made to whoever needed it.
“He knew Meyer Lansky, of course,” English said. “He worshiped the mobsters who ruled in Havana. Lansky and Santo Trafficante, they walked around like royalty in Havana. And Battle dreamed of being like them in many ways. He wanted to be a casino king. Lansky would give Battle the skim from the casinos to deliver to the presidential palace. Battle was an establishment figure, a cop, but also a guy with lots of connections in the underworld.
