Havana Conference - Narcotics Trade

Narcotics Trade

One of the key topics at the Havana Convention was the global narcotics trade and the mob's operations in the United States. A longstanding myth has been the supposed refusal of Luciano and the Cosa Nostra to deal in narcotics. In reality, only a few bosses such as Frank Costello and the other bosses who controlled lucrative gambling empires opposed narcotics. The anti-drug faction believed that the Cosa Nostra did not need narcotics profits, that narcotics brought unwanted law enforcement and media attention, and that the general public considered it to be a very harmful activity (unlike gambling). The pro-drug faction said that narcotics were far more profitable than any other illegal activity. Furthermore, if the Cosa Nostra ignored the drug trade, other criminal organizations would jump in and eventually diminish the Cosa Nostra's power and influence.

Luciano himself had a long involvement in the drug trade, starting as a smalltime street dealer in the late 1910s. In 1928, after the murder of Arnold "The Big Bankroll" Rothstein, Luciano and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter took over Rothstein's large drug importation operation. Since the 1920s, La Cosa Nostra had been involved in drug importation (heroin, cocaine, and marijuana) into North America. In the 1930s, the organization started transporting narcotics from the East Asia Golden Triangle and South America to Cuba and into Florida. The American Mafia's longtime association with the government of Cuba concerning gambling interests such as casinos along with their legitimate business investments on the Caribbean island put them in a position to use their political and underworld connections to make Cuba one of their narcotics importation layovers or smuggling points where the drugs could be stored and then placed on sea vessels before they continued on to Canada and United States via Montreal and Florida among the ports used by Luciano's associates.

With Luciano's deportation to Italy, he now had the opportunity to import heroin from North Africa via Italy and Cuba into the US and Canada. Luciano made connections with Sicily's biggest bosses such as Don Calogero "Calo" Vizzini of Villalba who assisted the Allies' invasion of Sicily and had the greatest political connections of all the Sicilian bosses. Also, Don Pasquale Ania, a powerful boss in Palermo who had connections to legitimate pharmaceutical companies because large scale heroin manufacturing in Italy was legal at the time.

During the Havana Conference, Luciano detailed the proposed drugs network to the bosses. After arriving in Cuba from North Africa, the mob would ship the narcotics to US ports that it controlled, primarily New York City, New Orleans, and Tampa. The narcotics shipped to the New York docks would be overseen by the Luciano crime family (later the Genovese) and the Mangano crime family (later the Gambino). In New Orleans, the operation would be overseen by the Marcello crime family, led by Carlos "Little Man" Marcello. In Tampa, the narcotics shipments would be overseen by the Trafficante crime family led by Santo Trafficante, Jr.. The Havana Convention delegates voted to approve the plan.

Luciano built a massive drug organization spanning Italy and America. One of Luciano's narcotics Lieutenants in Siculiana, Sicily was his old associate from New York, Nicola "Zu Cola" Gentile who oversaw all drug operations in the Agrigento province for Lucky Luciano and his partner Don Giuseppe Settecasi, the Capo-provincal of Agrigento. A top Luciano Lieutenant in the "Caneba Network" of mainland Italy was Antonio Farina who would ship the narcotics to their U.S. partners in New York's Mangano crime family including Albert Anastasia, Frank "Don Cheech" Scalise, Jack Scarpulla, Peter Beddia and Matthew "Matty" Cuomo.

Long time Luciano ally Frank "Fingers" Coppola ran the Sicilian "Partinico Clan". This was a satellite group affiliated with the Detroit Partnership or Zerilli crime family led by boss Joseph "Joe Z." Zerilli and fellow bosses and Detroit allies, John "Papa John" Priziola, Angelo Meli, and Rafaelle Quasarano. The Detroit crime family then shipped the narcotics to their New York contacts, Giovanni "Big John" Ormento, of the Lucchese crime family, Carmine "Lilo" Galante and Natale "Joe Diamonds" Evola of the Bonanno crime family, Frank "Cheech" Livorsi of the Luciano crime family, and Joseph "Joe Bandy" Biondo of the Mangano crime family. These East Coast contacts would then distribute the drugs all along the East Coast.

Other Luciano lieutenants working mainland Italy included American deportees, Frank Barone and Giuseppe Arena in Rome, Frank Pirico, Frank Saverino and Giovanni Maugeri in Milan, Salvatore DiBella in Naples, and former Mangano crime family soldier, Joseph "Joe Peachy" Pici in Milan and Genoa. Others U.S. distribution groups that worked with Luciano and his allies were "The Bellanca Gang", brothers, Antonio, Joseph and Sebastiano "Benny Blanca" Bellanca and Gaetano "Tommy" Martino of the Mangano crime family. Then there was the group of Settimo "Big Sam" Accardi, Joseph "Hoboken Joe" Stassi and his brothers, Frank and Anthony Stassi, Anthony Granza, Vincent Ferrara and Louis Cirillo who worked for Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia and Carlo "Carl" Gambino. Even with all the growing animosity Lucky Luciano couldn't leave out his old associate, Vito "Don Vito" Genovese who had his group of distributors including Anthony "Tony Bender" Strollo, Vincent "Vinnie Bruno" Mauro, Frank "The Bug" Caruso, Salvatore "Sam" Maneri, Vincent "Chin" Gigante and even Joseph "Joe Cago" Valachi who were all associated with the "Papalia-Agueci Network" of the Magaddino crime family of Buffalo and led by members, John "Johnny Pops" Papalia and Alberto Agueci of Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario.

At first the Mafia's operation was one of many individual operations connected or affiliated to the French-Corsican Mob or Unione Corse's famous "French Connection" heroin distribution ring. By the late 1950s the Sicilians and Americans organized a joint U.S. and Sicilian La Cosa Nostra narcotics operation that would eventually grow into one of the largest global narcotics operation ever. This famous joint U.S.-Sicilian operation came to be known as the "Pizza Connection" and was cemented between the two mafia organizations at the famous mafia summit held at the Grand Hotel des Palmes in Palermo, Sicily in October, 1957.

Salvatore and Ugo Caneba assisted Luciano and were the overseers of the famous heroin operation they controlled from mainland Italy to the United States, the "Caneba Network" which supplied high grade pharmaceutical quality heroin. Luciano's narcotics network was big and complex and he had many of his old, deported former U.S. allies to help him run his empire throughout the late 1940s. The main drug imported by Luciano's network at the time was heroin and the main sources were French underworld "Clans" that made up the core of the Unione Corse Syndicate, or French Mob. The "Corsican Clan" was headed by powerful bosses Antoine D'Agostino, Jean Baptiste Croce and Paul Mondolini, while the "Marseilles Clan" was made up of 4 Groups. These 4 powerful groups included brothers, Antoine and Barthelemy "Meme" Guerini, brothers, Dominique and Jean Venturi, brothers, Marcel, Xavier and Jean Francisci, and Joseph Orsini. Auguste Joseph Ricord was another boss that became part of the Unione Corse in the 1960s-70s. These two "Clans" ruled the French underworld from the late 1940s to the late 1960s, supplying Luciano and his mafia allies with large amounts of heroin until the heroin ring known as the "French Connection" started to crumble in 1972 with the arrest of one of its biggest bosses, Auguste Joseph Ricord.

The Luciano narcotics empire continued to grow and prosper with the help of his U.S. associates. Many of Luciano's partners in the narcotics empire were "Havana Conference" delegates such as Joseph "The Old Man" Profaci who was once the biggest importer of olive oil and tomato paste in the United States and quietly used his food importation business to smuggle narcotics for decades, Gaetano "Tommy Brown" Lucchese, a longtime Luciano ally from their days as children in the streets of New York and who along with his Lucchese crime family's narcotics distribution arm, the 107th St. Crew which controlled all heroin distribution in Harlem, New York. Without a doubt one of the architects of the American heroin network and a partner of Luciano is well known and powerful New York mafia boss, Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, the patriarch of the Bonanno crime family, who along with the assistance of his cousin, Buffalo crime family boss, Stefano "The Undertaker" Magaddino led the American mafia's expansion into Canada. Bonanno's and Magaddino's crime families in New York and Buffalo opened up Montreal and Toronto in the 1950s as satellite groups or individual operations connected with the famous "French Connection", but eventually the satellite groups would grow into their own powerful crime families and control massive narcotics distribution networks that still operate even today, all of the narcotics networks mentioned help destroy the myth that Charlie Luciano and La Cosa Nostra were against narcotics. When Cuban President Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar was eventually overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959, the mob had to look elsewhere for a landing and storage facility for their narcotics shipments.