Pitt expert on Cuba supportive of U.S. resuming diplomatic relations
Pittsburgh's Cuban connections run deep.
From an aborted gun-running scheme a pair of New Kensington mob bosses orchestrated to support Fidel Castro's revolution in 1958 to recent studies by top academic experts at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon, the tiny island nation was on the city's radar long before the Obama administration moved to resume diplomatic ties with Havana.
As recently as September, a group of Cuban activists descended on Pittsburgh for an event focusing on the plight of marginalized Cubans, including blacks and children.
It's through those types of events that Kenya Dworkin, professor of Hispanic studies at Carnegie Mellon, has sustained her connection to the nation of 11 million. Dworkin was born in Cuba in 1956 and arrived in America when she was 8 months old, when her father accepted a job in New York.
Though Dworkin has never returned to Cuba, she maintains deep ties to her cultural heritage, writing for the bilingual civil rights journal Identitades, which is banned in Cuba and playing an integral role in bringing artists and activists to the city.
Some say normalizing relations will be a win-win proposition that should benefit the average Cuban as much as American businesses.
But things are far from simple where Cuba is concerned, Dworkin said. She pointed to ongoing issues with civil rights and economic reforms that may have widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
“I think it's a great move, a great publicity move. But we still have to see what the reality is going to be on the ground. There is not a lot of information about how it is going to affect people,” she said.
Sister city
Pittsburgh has been a sister city to Matanzas, Cuba's third-largest city, since 1999.
Like Pittsburgh, Matanzas, on the island's northern shore, is often referred to the as the City of Bridges for its numerous bridges crossing the three rivers flowing through the city.
But long before that relationship began, there was another legendary connection.
Yellowing FBI reports document how Kelly and Sam Mannarino, a pair of New Kensington mob bosses, became involved in the Cuban revolution supporting Fidel Castro.
Back in the heyday of Havana nightclubs in the early 1950s, the Mannarinos rounded out their business interests by investing in the Sans Souci Casino and slot machines across the island.
Business was good until Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista seized their holdings in the late 1950s and the Mannarinos threw their support to Castro's rebels.
In 1958, the FBI arrested four Mannarino associates at the Remich Airport in West Deer as they were loading a $100,000 shipment of stolen weapons into a plane destined for Cuba. In the end, Sam Mannarino's son-in-law Victor Carlucci and three other men went to prison for gun running.
Authorities implicated, but never arrested, Kelly Mannarino in the theft of $12 million in Canadian government bonds stolen in 1958, the FBI said, to help finance Castro's revolution and gain exclusive rights to operate casinos under his regime. That plan fizzled when Castro declared his allegiance to communism.
Countless Cuban businessmen and professionals fled to Miami. In January 1961, the United States severed relations with Cuba.
Out of the blue
Political scientist Scott Morgenstern, director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Latin American Studies, said American businessmen are looking at everything from the tourism potential of Cuba's pristine beaches to its mineral reserves.
He said the embargo, designed to crush the communist regime, failed long ago.
“It's really a remarkable change that I don't think anyone was expecting. There have been signs of movement in that direction, but an actual 45-minute phone conversation between Obama and Raul Castro, that was a landmark event that was not expected,” Morgenstern said.
Debra Erdley is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-320-7996 or derdley@tribweb.com.
