Cuba de ayer
[5] In the 1950s, Cuba's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was roughly equal to that of Italy at the time, although still only a sixth of that of the United States.
[8] Throughout the 1950s, Havana served as "a hedonistic playground for the world's elite", producing sizable gambling, prostitution and drug profits for the American mafia, corrupt law-enforcement officials, and their politically elected cronies.
[11] In addition, drugs, be it marijuana or cocaine, were so plentiful at the time that one American magazine in 1950 proclaimed "Narcotics are hardly more difficult to obtain in Cuba than a shot of rum.
"[9] As a result, the playwright Arthur Miller described Batista's Cuba in The Nation as "hopelessly corrupt, a Mafia playground, (and) a bordello for Americans and other foreigners.
[13] In the wake of the Moncada assault, Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and increasingly relied on police tactics in an attempt to "frighten the population through open displays of brutality.
"[14] By late 1955, student riots and anti-Batista demonstrations had become frequent, and unemployment became a problem as graduates entering the workforce could not find jobs.
[18][page needed] On 25 November 1956, the yacht la Granma carrying the Castro brothers and 80 other rebels including Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos headed from Mexico to Cuba.
On 2 December,[19][20] After arriving and exiting the ship, the band of rebels were attacked by government forces but began to make their way into the Sierra Maestra mountains.
Comandante William Alexander Morgan, leading RD rebel forces, continued fighting as Batista departed and had captured the city of Cienfuegos by 2 January.
[24] By the middle of 1959 various new policies enacted by the revolutionary government had affected Cuban life such as the redistribution of property, nationalization of religious and private schools, and the banning of racially exclusive social clubs.
Those that began to leave the island were driven by them being negatively affected by new economic policies, their distaste with new national public schools, or anxiety over government supported racial integration.
The sight of formal racial segregation in the American south by Cuban exiles reinforced the idea that the Cuba de ayer was free of racism unlike the United States.
He has written that the actual Cuba of Fulgencio Batista was not as idyllic as made out to be and was solely designed for American tourists' benefit in that it was mostly populated by brothels and casinos.
