How Havana's Glittering Boom Became Cuba's Long Collapse

In the 1950s, Cuba was one of the world’s most dazzling destinations, especially Havana, where luxury hotels, open-air cabaret, mob-run casinos, and Hollywood stars created an image of nonstop glamour. Beneath the neon, however, the island was marked by dictatorship, corruption, and deep rural poverty.

The article says that contrast helped set the stage for revolution. While Havana attracted rich Cubans, American tourists, investors, and mafia figures such as Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante Jr., most of the countryside, the campo, remained trapped in seasonal sugar work, hunger, poor housing, disease, and low literacy. More than half of rural children had no access to schooling, and much of the best farmland was controlled by large landowners and foreign firms.

The political crisis intensified after General Fulgencio Batista seized power in a 1952 coup, suspended the constitution, canceled elections, and used secret police, torture, and public executions to silence opponents. In 1959, Fidel Castro’s rebels ousted Batista, promising democracy, an end to corruption, and land reform. Castro then nationalized American-owned assets worth billions of dollars, prompting the United States to cut ties and impose a full trade embargo in 1962, pushing Cuba toward the Soviet Union.

The new government expanded free public education and health care, but the planned economy and the end of private enterprise crippled tourism for decades. After the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1991, Cuba entered the “special period,” with severe shortages of food, fuel, and medicine. The state reopened to foreign tourism and foreign currency, recreating a dual economy, while Havana’s grand buildings slowly decayed and 1950s American cars became symbols of the lost era.