Many sentimental Cubans were saddened when a U.S. belly dancer named Patricia ("Satira") Schmidt got a 15-year sentence for killing her yachtsman-lover in Havana two years ago. They not only thought that the penalty was outrageous, they were grieved by the fact that she was sentenced to serve the time in the old Guanabacoa prison. After she had spent 18 months there, President Ramón Grau San Martin set Satira free.
Habaneros felt that their dark, dank, dungeonlike women's jail was no place to send a good-looking girl. There were no individual cells;...
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