To: Raymond Duray who wrote (24700 ) 11/24/2001 9:28:40 PM From: Hawkmoon Read Replies (1) | Respond to The reason for this is because Castro wanted to clean up the casinos and prostitution in Cuba nocastro.com nocastro.com "Most compelling of all is the evidence of substantial Cuban involvement in the drug trade. Links between Cuba and Colombian drug barons apparently date back to the 1970s. In November 1981, the Colombian Navy sank a cartel ship while offloading Cuban arms destined for the radical Colombian terrorist movement M-19.136 Four senior Cuban officials, including diplomats in Colombia and the Vice-Admiral of the Cuban Navy, were indicted in the US in November 1982, for conspiring to import Colombian methaqualone and marijuana to the US via Cuba. 137 The Cubans provided safe air and sea passage and protection, by government troops, in return for large cash payments and access to cartel smuggling networks for use in shipping arms back to M-19. 138 More senior Cuban officials, including Fidel Castro's brother Raoul, were implicated in the case. Raoul Castro, along with 14 other officials, was named in a US indictment in 1993, which charged the Cuban government with conspiring with the Medellin cartel to facilitate the transportation and distribution of large quantities of cocaine destined for the US market, especially South Florida. 139 A senior Cuban general, Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez and three others were tried and executed by the Castro regime in 1989 on drug trafficking charges." lib.unb.ca "Fidel Castro is more than a Cold War headache to the United States. Federal narcotics officials said Saturday they can date an ‘alarming rise’ in the cocaine traffic into the U.S. from Castro’s accession to power in Cuba. And federal officials say it may be that Castro is relying on dope smuggling to get badly needed dollars for foreign exchange that he could not otherwise obtain." (David Kraslow, "Castro Linked to 'Alarming' Cocaine Traffic?" The Miami Herald, September 22, 1963, p. 6-A.) 82 words persuasivepen.com cuban-exile.com January 29, 1959 February 6, 1959 cuban-exile.com "Fidel Castro had always hated gambling. He viewed it as a criminal waste of the nation's financial resources and, as during the heyday of Fulgencio Batista, as an invitation to governmental graft and corruption. Then he learned the facts of government life–it was a losing bet to attempt running the country without the gambling revenue. Without the spinning wheel and the click of the bones, tourists would go elsewhere. Thus, he legalized it again, just as the others before him had, but he added a new twist. The gambling is run under strict supervision of the government, and Castro has promised that any official found dipping his hand into the till will be punished most severely. None has been caught yet. (except himself, being dictator of the country and arbiter of where those gambling revenues are spent). cuba-sex.com Cuba prostitution has focused on tourists since the 1940s. One of Castro’s first acts was to outlaw prostitution, but the new laws went unenforced.
