In 1958, President Fulgencio Batista was trying to retain an air of normality in Cuba. Fidel Castro's guerrilla forces were camped in the mountains to the east, and their revolutionary presence was being felt via increasingly aggressive riots in the streets. But in downtown Havana, President Batista was keen for business -- which, along with corruption, had been booming since he seized office in 1953 -- to continue as usual.
Batista's vision was for Cuba's capital to become a Latino Las Vegas, in which wealthy tourists from the United States would pump money into the country's casinos. And what better way to attract the wealthy in the 1950s than a high-stakes motor race?
The first Cuban Grand Prix was held in 1957 along Havana's waterfront, the Malecon, and by all accounts it had been a huge success. Juan Manuel Fangio, whose tally of five world championships has been surpassed in the decades since by just Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher, won the race in front of streets lined with enthusiastic and curious spectators. In 1958 a repeat event was scheduled, but with the revolution less than a year away, things did not go so smoothly.
