Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub

by Rosa Lowinger

Martín, for example, continually showered Ofelia with jewelry, cars, and exotic pets. For their third anniversary he gave her a four-inch, diamond-encrusted crucifix pendant. For her thirty-fourth birthday, in 1957, he gave her a new cream-colored Eldorado with a 14-carat-gold key. He himself took to wearing a 13-carat diamond ring. “The stone was the size of a cooked garbanzo,” remarked Ofelia, admitting that it was somewhat extravagant. Though she already had a dog and cat, Martín bought Ofelia a pet rhesus monkey that she named Tito. Another time he came home with a pair of tiny spider monkeys that she told him to return because they were too ferocious. In 1956, a year before the Kenyan tribal prince sent Ofelia the lion cub that irrevocably stole her heart, Martín presented her with a pair of chimpanzees. “I rejected them also because they were already grown and I would not be able to train them.”