A Thousand Thirsty Beaches: Smuggling Alcohol from Cuba to the South during Prohibition by Lisa Lindquist Dorr

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Thousand Thirsty Beaches: Smuggling Alcohol from Cuba to the South during Prohibition by Lisa Lindquist Dorr Michael Lewis A Thousand Thirsty Beaches: Smuggling Alcohol from Cuba to the South during Prohibition. By Lisa Lindquist Dorr. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018. 312 pp. $39.95. ISBN 978-1-4696-4327-4. Lisa Lindquist Dorr’s book offers readers familiar with the scholarly and popular literature on Prohibition something old and something new. The picture Dorr paints of vast networks supplying illegal alcohol to hordes of Americans who wished to drink despite the national dry law is one that has been told many times before. What sets Dorr’s book apart is its focus on the United States South, a region that is typically considered to be the bastion of Prohibition support. In considering the South explicitly, Dorr’s book offers three insights previously ignored by scholars. The first is an examination of United States policy towards Cuba which, Dorr points out, was the primary source of the South’s illegal liquor. Dorr’s thorough research, especially of the Records of the U.S. Coast Guard Intelligence Division, shows that the United States had no standing to interfere with trade partners beyond its shores. Despite ample evidence gathered by “Uncle Sam’s Booze Cops” in Cuba that ships loaded with alcohol were leaving Havana with cargo meant for Savannah, Miami, Mobile, or New Orleans, the United States was powerless since these ships could credibly claim their cargo was intended for Canada where the sale of alcohol was legal. To enforce its Prohibition law, the United States had to negotiate treaties that gave the Coast Guard the ability to stop vessels they reasonably believed would bring alcohol to the United States. Eventually these treaties proved flawed, as ships could create plausible reasons, such as distress due to inclement weather or mechanical failure, for docking in U.S. ports. Thus, Dorr writes, “Havana never entirely lost its reputation as a smuggling port … [and] in the face of American efforts, the liquor traffic was resilient indeed” (125). Dorr’s second contribution is to point out that, in addition to alcohol, smugglers to the U.S. South “bootlegged” people, creating an informal immigration network with its corresponding underground [End Page 184] economy. This was a response not to the prohibition of alcohol, but to immigration restrictions enacted at roughly the same time. Dorr notes that, in the popular imagination, alcohol abuse and immigrant communities were intertwined, from Germans seen as master manipulators of an invisible liquor trust to drunkards hailing from countries and cultures that did not share Americans’ respect for temperance. Of course, these views were inaccurate, but they had the result of more closely tying alcohol and immigration together once both became illegal. People seeking to migrate to the United States first journeyed to Cuba. Then, they attempted to enter the United States by various means: as stowaways on ferries or steamers, as fraudulent members of shipping crews, hidden underneath and alongside liquor on smugglers’ ships, or as part of human trafficking rings. Dorr’s story is all the more poignant and important given current events. Dorr ends her book with a pair of chapters that consider the impact of illegal booze finding its way through the “dry” South. In particular, Dorr focuses on two trends. Firstly, Dorr points out that liquor was deeply intertwined with the changing roles of women across the region. Much of this is generational, and Dorr mines university yearbooks and other paraphernalia to tease out how collegiate women availed themselves of this new possibility. The mix of drinking and dating is not all lighthearted either, as one can see in these yearbooks views of women that were invitations to sexual assault. The second trend Dorr explores is the increased tourism fueled almost exclusively by access to alcohol. Drinkers from other parts of the country, who presumably wished to keep their behavior secret, traveled to southern cities that had both easy access to liquor and little respect for the national dry law. Havana itself was also a destination, as there visitors could drink legally. Through tourism, Dorr argues, the South became more connected...