Word: batista
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...machine-gun fire, Venezuelan Dictator Marcos Péerez Jiménez toppled with a crash that rattled the Americas' few remaining strongmen. Struggling to avoid a similar end at the hands of mountain guerrillas who have been battling for his overthrow, Cuba's President Fulgencio Batista relaxed his grip on civil rights, prepared to set up what he hoped would be a well-controlled election. And Guatemala, following its second try at presidential elections in three months, hovered at the brink of violence while Congress tried to decide who won. For a rundown of the week...
Never had Castro taken such chances, showed such strength. Yet this burst of force probably grew out of frustration and disappointment. Castro was tired of waiting for the people to rise up to drive out Dictator Fulgencio Batista. Last week's attacks may well signal that his rebellion has entered a new. tougher and riskier phase. From the hills Castro sent word: "Until now we have spared the cities. But now we realize we must carry the fight to the cities as well as the countryside...
...casinos were prospering moderately in the early 1950s. Then some U.S. thugs introduced an eight-dice game called razzle-dazzle, so complex that most suckers never even learned the rules before they were fleeced. As resentment over this form of larceny spread among U.S. tourists, President Fulgencio Batista grew worried. In 1955 he decided to look around for U.S. technical assistance. The man who popped up was Meyer Lansky...
...Kefauver Committee Report on Organized Crime paints Russian-born Meyer Lansky, 55, as one of the six top U.S. hoodlums: bootlegging, gambling on both coasts, many a link to Murder, Inc. From Batista Lansky got a dream decree for enterprising crapshooters willing to invest abroad. The government waived corporate taxes for ten years, canceled customs' duties on imported gaming equipment. Under certain conditions it offered to back casinos in nightclubs or hotels worth more than $1,000,000. The Minister of Labor, whose brother turned up this year owning a cut of one big new casino, obligingly ruled that...
...casino at the Havana Riviera brings the Cuban capital's tony gambling spots to ten, all authorized by free-and-easy laws aimed at making Havana a strong Eastern competitor for the West's Las Vegas. Batista's government lent $6,000,000 toward the $14 million that the hotel cost. Exactly who supplied how much of the rest of the money is a deep secret; the directors include Toronto Hotelman Harry Smith. Edward Levinson of Las Vegas' Fremont, and a Cuban Senator whose brother happens to be a Cabinet minister...