Powerful sugar baron with 14 ingenios in Oriente province whose plantation, Niquero, served as a rendezvous for bands of Fidel Castro’s forces. Lobo gave Batista’s opposition $50,000 in 1957, although not specifically to Castro himself. At least half was used by Justo Carrillo’s abortive rising in Cienfuegos. By 1959 Lobo owned a million acres and had a reputation for honesty and good treatment of his workers. He was also Cuba’s most important art collector. His home in Vedado with its collection of Napoleonic relics (originally begun by the emperor’s physician who died in Cienfuegos) was confiscated when Lobo left Cuba and now forms Havana’s Napoleonic Museum.
Lobo had been one of the first to try to mechanize sugar cane cutting but the machine he imported had been returned to the United States by Batista’s customs officials. In 1959 his lands were confiscated. That same year he refused an offer to become finance minister, pleading his need to attend to his own businesses. On October 11, 1960, Che Guevara sought to make him general manager of the entire sugar industry, but he refused, leaving for Miami two days later, leaving everything behind. He then moved to Spain, living in Madrid until he died in January 1983.
