Alberto Yarini

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Yarini and the second or maternal family name is Ponce de León.
Alberto Yarini
Born5 February 1882
Havana, Cuba
DiedNovember 21, 1910(1910-11-21) (aged 28)
Cuba
Known forRacketeering, pimping

Alberto Yarini y Ponce de León (5 February 1882 – 21 November 1910) was a Cuban racketeer and pimp during the period of the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. Yarini was well known in his time, is Cuba's most famous pimp, and came to symbolize the concept of Cubanidad, the Cuban national identity, to many Cubans, long after his death.

Yarini was born into an elite family, once owners of a Matanzas sugar plantations, with his father a dentist, and his uncle a medical surgeon, in Havana. He was educated in the United States, spoke fluent English as well as Spanish, and was politically well connected. He became known for importing prostitutes from France, and worked out of San Isidro, a barrio and red light district in Old Havana. He was killed on November 21, 1910, by gunfire from rival French pimp Louis Lotot and his confederates, who had been waiting for him. Lotot was himself killed in return gunfire from Yarini's bodyguard.[1][2][3][4][5]

La Caricatura front page on the death of Alberto Yarini
  1. ^ "Para Subsistir Dignamenta: Alberto Yarini and the Search for Cubanidad, 1882-1910". Mayra Beers, PhD thesis, Florida International University, February 17, 2011.
  2. ^ Beers, Mayra (January 2003). "Murder in San Isidro: Crime and Culture during the Second Cuban Republic". Cuban Studies. 34 (1): 97–129. doi:10.1353/cub.2004.0003.
  3. ^ Cluster, Dick; Hernández, Rafael (2008). "8". The History of Havana. Macmillan. pp. 123–134. ISBN 9780230603974.
  4. ^ Escalona, Roberto Luque (1992). The Tiger and the Children: Fidel Castro and the Judgement of History. Transaction Publishers. p. 43. ISBN 9781412840040.
  5. ^ Nathalie Handal (2014). "The City and the Writer: In Havana with Leonardo Padura". Words Without Borders. Retrieved August 9, 2014.