ABSTRACT
The Italian Embassy reminded David of the fashionable homes that were constructed in Havana during the boom years after World War I, before the plunge in world sugar prices began devastating the island's fragile economy in the late 1920s. Until then, the “dance of the millions”—and with it, the massive infusion of American capital—had produced an opulent age during which the newly enriched entrepreneurs and speculators built elegant homes. But once the economy began to crumble, the houses proved far sturdier than the island's social order. Only the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado momentarily preserved the status quo. Then the 1933 revolution erupted, bringing down the rickety structure, while ushering in the first of many changes in Cuba's society and politics.
