THE AMERICASThe Long Shadow of the Cuban Mafia: From Havana’s Casinos to Quintana Roo’s Smuggling Rings
An investigative report has pulled back the curtain on one of the most violent and well-connected human-smuggling networks operating between Cuba, Mexico, and the United States: a group Mexican authorities call La Mafia Cubana en Quintana Roo. A threads appears to be leading from the criminal organization all the way to the inner circle of the Castro family itself.
A New York Times investigation published this week has pulled back the curtain on one of the most violent and well-connected human-smuggling networks operating between Cuba, Mexico, and the United States: a group Mexican authorities call La Mafia Cubana en Quintana Roo, the Cuban Mafia in Quintana Roo. The report is notable not just for the brutality it documents, but for where its threads lead — allegedly all the way to the inner circle of the Castro family itself. It’s also a reminder that Cuban organized crime, often overlooked in a hemisphere dominated by headlines about Mexican cartels, has a long and largely unbroken history stretching back nearly a century.
A Modern Smuggling Empire
According to court records and the Times’ reporting, the network has operated since at least 2009, running smuggling routes from Cuba through the Mexican state of Quintana Roo and on to the United States. Its business model combined migrant smuggling with extortion: those who could pay roughly $10,000 for the journey were moved along; those who couldn’t were held in Mexican safe houses while traffickers contacted relatives — including some in Miami — and threatened to torture, starve, or kill their captives unless a ransom was paid. Victims who weren’t ransomed in time were reportedly beaten, threatened with knives and stun guns, and in some cases forced into sex work, until Mexican authorities eventually intervened, according to a Justice Department account of the case.
The organization also built a parallel criminal economy. Members stole more than 600 boats and outboard motors from Florida’s west coast — from cities like Sarasota, Naples, and Marco Island — and shipped them to Mexico, where they funded operations and, according to prosecutors, were used to bribe Mexican officials to look the other way. Separately, the group used stolen credit cards to buy merchandise in the U.S. and smuggled the goods into Cuba, where they were resold in state-run stores. Court documents describe a 2009 episode in which several members conspired to kidnap and kill a man in a dispute connected to the Zetas cartel; his body was dismembered and dumped at sea.
