It meant the Cuban president fled the island with all that bribe money. It meant that Roth and Corleone would never get to open their casino because Castro had taken over. It was a huge financial setback for them. BTW much of the history of the mob in pre castro cuba as portrayed in GFII is relatively accurate.

Yep all that bribe money and whatever else he stole.

So the Castro rise was inevitable in his(cuban presidents) eyes?

Michael caught on too...

FFC led us to believe Michael was politically prescient when he said to Roth on the terrace at his birthday party: "It tells me they [the rebels] can win." Almost makes it seem as if Michael had a crystal ball--until you remember that he never intended to give Roth the $2 million in the first place. The $2 million was a prop to buy time so he could learn who the traitor was.

That said, Michael had designs on Roth's Cuban empire at one time. But, I believe, the combination of Roth trying to kill him at Tahoe, and Batista's very shaky situation, made Michael back off his Havana fantasies. He was right, of course.

In real life, Batista, who'd run Cuba in the late Thirties and early Forties, returned to power in Cuba in a coup in 1952. He found gaming in shambles--the games were so crooked that tourists were staying away in droves. He called on his old pal Meyer Lansky to straighten things out. Lansky had a reputation for giving suckers an even break--he thought the house odds were good enough. Batista paid him $100k/year as a consultant. His brother Jake ran the casino at the Nacional. He invited others in, too: Eddie Levinson of Lexington KY (as in "Eddie Levine of Newport"); Vincent (Jimmy Blue Eyes) Alo, and mostly Santos Trafficante of Florida. In '58, Lansky put up $5m of his and investors' money and $6m from Batista to build the Havana Riviera, the city's largest and plushest hotel/casino. It started making money as soon as it opened in March of 1958. Then Castro took over, first closed the casinos, then nationalized the hotels. Lansky and his investors lost everything they put into the Riviera. Trafficante spent a month in a Cuban prison before Lansky prevailed on the authorities to spring him (he had given money to Castro as well as Batista as a hedge).