José Miguel Battle Sr.
| José Miguel Battle Sr. | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | September 14, 1929 Havana, Cuba |
| Died | August 4, 2007 (age 78) South Carolina |
| Other names | Sir corporation |
| Occupation | Cuban Mafia leader, policeman |
| Criminal charge | murder, arson, drug trafficking, bookmaking, and numbers rackets |
| Children | José Miguel Battle Jr. |
| Conviction(s) | 20 years in prison |
'Jose Miguel Battle Sr. (September 14, 1929 – August 4, 2007) was the nominal leader and founder of "The Corporation," which is otherwise known as the "Cuban Mafia."
Battle was born in Havana, Cuba in 1929.
A former policeman in Fulgencio Batista's Cuba, Battle assisted the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1960s in training Cuban exiles and personally volunteering as a soldier in the Cuban liberation effort of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961. The invasion, although it killed beyond a thousand Castro supporters per less than 200 exiled losses, resulted disastrous after President John F. Kennedy aborted American air support just five minutes before the armed Cubans reached Cuban soil. Subsequently Jose, along the other surviving expatriate soldiers, was captured after three days of arduous battle and imprisoned for nearly two years in a Cuban prison. Allegedly Castro stopped executing the prisoners of war and used the remaining surviving exiled soldiers as bargaining chips in exchange for $52 million worth of American goods.
After being released from what many saw as the result of a betrayal from JFK, Battle settled in Union City, New Jersey, and began establishing a presence as the leader of a family of Cuban-American criminals involved in organized crime activities from loansharking and gambling to drug trafficking and murder. He allegedly established good working relationships with the Italian Mafia in the New York City area, but at other times the Corporation is known to have had violent turf wars with various Italian mafia families. He made the bulk of his wealth from an illegal lottery racket known as bolita (little ball), which was popular among expatriate Italians, Cubans and Puerto Ricans. It is estimated that his network was making up to $45 million a year in the 1970s from bolita in New Jersey, New York and Florida. Battles' reputation was such that he was known among the Cuban American community as El Padrino, or the Godfather. Battle was convicted in 1977 and sentenced to 30 years in prison in connection with the death of Ernestico Torres, an alleged hit man for Battle's organization. An appeals court overturned the conviction, but Battle later pleaded guilty to murder conspiracy in exchange for a sentence of time served - two years.
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