On #NationalRumDay observing the links between Bacardi, Havana Club, and Cuban freedom

Originally published by Center for a Free Cuba

To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms

On #NationalRumDay observing the links between Bacardi, Havana Club, and Cuban freedom

August 16th is National Rum Day. It is not clear when it started, but I found references to it going back to 2014. Today, @RealHavanaClub posted a Tweet highlighting the relationship between rum and Cuban independence, as symbolized by Cuba’s original cocktail, the Canchánchara.

However, there is another direct relationship between rum and Cuban independence, and that is the Bacardi family.

The Bacardi family began their world-famous rum business in Santiago de Cuba in 1862. Bacardi Limited was founded on February 4, 1862, by Don Facundo Bacard Massó. The family would also play an important role in civic life in Cuba, especially in Santiago, over the next century, and were constant opponents of dictatorship, political corruption, and remained ardent Cuban nationalists over several generations.

Emilio Bacardi Moreau

A history of the Bacardi family written by Tom Gjelten, a reporter for National Public Radio, titled “Bacardi and The Long Fight for Cuba :The Biography of a Cause,” led to renewed interest in their role in Cuba’s independence.  A 2008 review of the book in The New York Times by Randy Kennedy touches on the figure of Emilio Bacardi Moreau.

Emilio Bacardi, especially, comes to life as the book’s most powerful character, though one so strange that Gabriel García Márquez might have invented him. Emilio was imprisoned twice by Spain off the coast of Morocco for his revolutionary activities. But he still managed to hold the company together, to serve as Santiago’s mayor during the unsettled years of the American occupation, to help found a salon called the Victor Hugo Freethinker Group, to practice theosophy in a predominantly Catholic country and to track down a genuine mummy on a trip to Egypt, which he bought as the centerpiece for a museum he had founded in San­tiago. (Modest he was not; he signed his revolutionary correspondence with the name Phocion, after the Athenian statesman known as “the good.”)

His son, Emilio Bacardi Lay, actively took part in Cuba’s war of independence. In 1895, he was a field officer for Gen. Antonio Maceo during the invasion of Cuba by independence forces. He reached the rank of colonel by the age of 22.

Emilio Bacardi Moreau was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 5, 1844, the son of Facundo Bacardí Massó, and after a life of entrepreneurship and patriotic service, he died on August 28, 1922, of a “heart ailment.” He was 78 years old. The city of Santiago suspended all public events for two days to mourn and celebrate his life. He had been nicknamed “Cuba’s foremost son.”

Emilio Bacardi Lay ( Source: Cuba en la memoria )

Emilio Bacardi Lay, who had fought for Cuban independence and been opposed to the dictatorships of Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista but remained in Cuba and repeatedly resisted authoritarianism, was forced to flee when Castroism consolidated control in 1961.

Bacardi Imports, Inc., re-established its headquarters in Miami in 1963 after having been based for a century in Santiago de Cuba. Emilio Bacardi Lay, who was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 12, 1877, died in exile in Miami on October 14, 1972 at the age of 95. He was the last surviving ranking officer from Cuba’s war of independence with Spain.

This is the history that the Castros would like to erase but have been unable to. Meanwhile, to all who read this, please consider that if you wish to make a toast to freedom with alcoholic spirits, do it with Bacardi or the real Havana Club.

Another chapter of this hidden history is the story of a competing rum business started by another family 12 years after Bacardi.

«The Arechabala Family started their rum-making business in 1878 in Cuba and first registered the original Havana Club trademark in 1934. It wasn’t long before Havana Club Rum became a beloved and iconic Cuban brand – becoming a favorite amongst locals as well as American and European tourists.

Then everything changed. On January 1st, 1960, at gunpoint, the Cuban regime unrightfully seized the company’s assets without compensation. The Arechabala family lost everything and was forced to flee the homeland they loved, with a scant few of their remaining possessions – the precious Havana Club recipe being one of them. Meanwhile, the Cuban Government started to sell their stolen version of Havana Club, and continues to do so to this day.

It wasn’t until 1995 – after decades of rebuilding, the Arechabala family finally joined forces with another Cuban family in exile: Bacardi. The latter acquired the Havana Club brand and began producing rum based on the original Havana Club recipe and selling it in the one country that didn’t recognize the Cuban Government’s 1960 illegal expropriation, the United States.

The Havana Club brand is an example of how, despite the circumstances, Cubans in exile have never accepted their fate. Havana Club rum holds onto its rich Cuban culture.»

In case you missed it below is the February 2016 article announcing Bacardi’s opposition to granting the Castro regime the trademark for Havana Club. The rightful owners of Havana Club, the Arechabala family, had their Rum business and assets taken at gunpoint and a short time later were forced to leave Cuba or face prison. Rewarding the Castro dictatorship with the Havana Club trademark is an outrage and it should be reversed. The United States should be on the side of property not the communist dictatorship that expropriated them.

This is followed by an important November 16, 2016 Oped by Mauricio Claver Carone highlighting concretely how the previous Administration’s Cuba policy made matters worse. In the midst of the current public policy debate on Cuba it is important to remember  philosopher George Santayana’s wise counsel: «Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.»

In 2018, filmmaker David Fried went to Cuba to make a film about rum, but ended up finding much more. Here is what he said about it.

“In Cold War-times, Cuba racked up a debt with what was then called Czecholslavakia. Since then, the Soviet Union collapsed, Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic, and Cuba stood frozen in time. That Soviet-era debt survives though, and negotiations have recently surfaced for Cuba to repay that debt in rum. According to The Guardian, 130 years worth. Of rum. That’s a fun story, right? We thought so too. So we went to Cuba to tell it, and learned that you can’t just make a puff piece in an active military dictatorship.”

Below is the complete documentary short.