Word: havana
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Batista's last years Havana became the Western Hemisphere's capital of lust and license, with touches of depravity and opulence unmatched anywhere. Brothels, such as the Mambo Club, with chic girls, matronly overseers and a consulting physician, catered to U.S. tourists. Cheaper cribs along Virtues Street enticed Cubans. There were 10,000 harlots and as many panderers. Payoffs from prostitution and gambling ran into the millions and were efficiently organized, e.g., Batista's brother-in-law had charge of slot machines...
...much as five hours without strain. He hates desks-behind which he may have to sit to run Cuba. He sleeps irregularly or forgets to sleep, living on euphoria. He has always been late for everything, whether leading a combat patrol or speaking last week to the Havana Rotary Club, where a blue-ribbon audience waited 4¾ hours for his arrival. Wildly, he blasted U.S. arms aid to Batista, but he paid a friendly call at 1 a.m. on the ambassador from Britain, which sold tanks and planes to Batista for nearly a year after the U.S. had stopped...
Symbol on a Hill. Castro has confidence, physical courage, shrewdness, generosity and luck-qualities that will one day plant his statue in some Havana plaza. He won his long war not by fighting but by perching in sublime self-confidence on the highest mountain range in Cuba for more than two years, proving that Batista could be flouted. He became the symbol of his rebellious country, pulled quarreling rebel factions together and inspired them to face down a modern army...
Moving to Havana, Castro enrolled at the Jesuits' Belen College, got interested in politics. Like many another Cuban student, he kept a revolver or two around the dormitory. He worked his way up through student politics at Belen and Havana University (1945-50), got hauled in twice for questioning about political murders...
...Castro swam three miles to shore, his Tommy gun still on his back. He turned to law, defended a few friends in political trouble, a few farmers evicted from their plots; he honeymooned in New York with his bride Mirtha. fathered a son named Fidel, settled down in Havana. At 2:43 on the morning of March 10, 1952. Fulgencio Batista-who had been Cuba's behind-the-scenes ruler for some ten years-seized Cuba by army coup. Castro, a candidate for Congress in the elections that Batista canceled, at once found his cause...