Source: Photograph (2010) by WTL© on site in Havana.
Comment: The entrance to the luxury Hotel Nacional de Cuba, which opened in 1930, overlooks the Malecón waterfront in Havana. The list of famous guests runs the gamut from humanists to actors to athletes to performing artists to government leaders to scientists to aristocrats and gangsters. In 1933, when Batista overthrew Machado, there was a violent confrontation between backers of these two competing army officers and would-be dictators. Francis Ford Coppola recreated a 1946 gangster meeting at the hotel in his famous 1974 film The Godfather Part II. In 1955, the gangster Meyer Lansky took over the hotel and transformed the entrance hall into the Starlight Terrace Bar, a restaurant, showroom, and gambling Casino Parisien nighclub. Fidel Castro closed the hotel in 1960 to tourists, and instead used it to house visiting foreign diplomats, mainly from the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet block in 1990, the hotel was restored, and it remains an attraction on standard tourist trips. Most recently Shakira and Juanes, the famous Colombian popular singers, gave concerts in Havana and stayed at the Hotel Nacional.
Humanities question: In what sense is this famous Cuban hotel a significant feature of Latin American humanities?