AREQUIPA, Peru – The diving tower at the pool of the iconic Hotel Riviera in Havana collapsed on the night of Tuesday, March 5th, reflecting the neglect of the Cuban authorities and the existing crisis in the country.
Photos taken by CubaNet show the concrete structure collapsed inside the empty pool. According to reports from the official press of the Cuban regime dating from 2016, the facilities have been closed for repair.
However, there have been no updates on the works, nor can any repair or masonry equipment be seen in the photographs of the area, which points to a collapse amidst a total abandonment.
CubaNet users on Facebook lamented the current state of the hotel and recalled times of splendor ruined by 65 years of Castro’s dictatorship.
“The continuity of neglect reflected in one of the most beautiful and functional hotels, its exterior and interior design is excellent. The Riviera is an emblem of Havana and its coastline,” commented Miriam Ramírez Santana.
“I spent my honeymoon there in 1969, it was the best, how sad,” says an internet user identified as Fina Bello.
Inaugurated in 1957, the Hotel Riviera was nationalized by Fidel Castro’s revolution after 1959. This happened after it was seized from its original owner, the wealthy U.S. mobster Meyer Lansky.
Lansky was considered for decades one of the most powerful mafia bosses and the mastermind behind the Havana-Las Vegas clan, which made significant investments in casinos and achieved lucrative results.
One of them was the Habana Riviera hotel, which opened in 1957 as a result of the good relations between Luciano, who financed these operations, and the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
This hotel complex was part of the project to create a dream paradise for the mafia and establish a place from which to direct their business in the United States, resulting in hotels like the Deauville and Flamingo, which also opened just a few years before Castro’s rise to power.
Lansky’s grandson declared in 2015 to the Sun Sentinel newspaper that his grandfather never recovered the money invested in that hotel, which had a cost of close to eight million dollars, and for which he has the documentation to prove his ownership.
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