Distilling the ties between Bacardi and Cuba

NONFICTION
Distilling the ties between Bacardi and Cuba
This is an engaging portrait of a family squabble and a corrupt country.
Posted on Sun, Sep. 14, 2008
BY MICHAEL DEIBERT

BACARDI AND THE LONG FIGHT FOR CUBA.

Tom Gjelten. Viking. 480 pages. $27.95.

When a Catalan merchant named Facundo Bacardi purchased an
underperforming rum distillery in Santiago de Cuba in 1862, he likely
could little have imagined how vast his business venture would one day
become, nor how intertwined its rise would be with the fate of a nation.

The story of Facundo and his descendants is the focus of the new book by
National Public Radio correspondent Tom Gjelten, who seeks in his
narrative to view much of Cuba's history through the microcosm of a
single sprawling, occasionally squabbling Cuban family. He is largely
successful in painting an engaging portrait of a vibrant though often
tragic national trajectory.

Gjelten writes that what made the family-held company unique was its
''intertwining of nationalist and capitalist identities.'' These dual
strands never coalesce with greater passion than in Emilio Bacardi,
Facundo's son and the dominant figure in the first half of the book.
Twice imprisoned by the Spanish and subsequently Santiago de Cuba's
first Cuban-born mayor and a national senator, Emilio represents perhaps
the greatest flowering of these complementary identities. A fine
portrait is likewise drawn of the corrupt playground Cuba became under
presidents Ramón Grau San Martin and Fulgencio Batista.

Gjelten does not paint the island in stark primary colors of good and
evil, instead portraying a Cuba of imperfect patriots, conflicted
loyalties and sometimes disastrous rebellions. Fidel Castro's
ill-advised nationalization of businesses finally succeeds in driving
the Bacardis out in a melancholy coda to a business identity that always
seemed inextricably linked with the soil on which it was founded.

The book has some shortcomings, as Gjelten appears to have gotten a
little too close to his subject and thereby lost some of the objectivity
that is so important in such a definitive undertaking. The Bacardi
family is almost always portrayed as selfless, while the company's
workers are often portrayed as difficult and opportunistic, though
Gjelten does make a point of expounding upon the stark inequalities
between Cuba's rural poor and urban elite.

The family squabbles that mark the narrative once the Bacardis move to
the United States prove nowhere near as engaging as the chronicle of
revolution, politics and commerce that precedes it, though the company's
ability to get a pro-Bacardi amendment inserted into the Omnibus
Appropriations Act of 1999 vividly illustrates how powerful corporations
can bend legislation to suit their interests.

One is left with the sense that Cuba was a nation of missed
opportunities. The original Bacardi credo of responsible civic
engagement, one that the powerful in both Cuba and the United States
could do well to remember, is perhaps best summed by lines that Emilio
Bacardi penned following the start of the U.S. occupation of Cuba at the
close of the 19th century: ``The obligation of those in authority is to
be at the service of those who suffer. It is not for those who suffer to
be at the disposition of those who command.''

Michael Deibert is the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The
Struggle for Haiti.

http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/arts/books/story/683886.html