the Caribbean Racket: Havana, Miami, Tampa, and Florida Mob

Before Scarface and Miami Vice reshaped Miami's image, Florida already had an underworld, and it knew how to hide in plain sight.The Caribbean Racket tells the story of the older Florida mob: a gambling-centered world built on bolita, bookmaking, hotel rooms, racetracks, political protection, ports, and the long reach of Cuba. From the cigar factories and immigrant neighborhoods of Tampa to the resort hotels of Miami Beach and the glittering casinos of Havana, James R. Wexler follows the hidden system that moved beneath Florida's public promise of sunshine and escape.This is a story of Charlie Wall, Santo Trafficante Sr., Santo Trafficante Jr., Meyer Lansky, Al Capone, Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro, and the investigators who tried to expose the machinery behind the glamour. It traces how Tampa's neighborhood gambling became organized power, how Miami Beach gave vice a polished surface, and how Havana offered the mob its grandest dream before revolution destroyed it.Carefully researched, clear, accessible, and engaging, The Caribbean Racket separates documented history from rumor while explaining why Florida's mob story became tangled with exile politics, Cold War intrigue, and later conspiracy claims. Before Miami Vice, before Dadeland, before the drug wars of the 1980s, there was already a darker Florida: one of back rooms, casino lights, cigar smoke, quiet favors, public scandals, and money moving through paradise from Tampa to Havana and back.