Female Speaker: From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
John Cole: Welcome to the Library of Congress.
I'm John Cole.
I'm the Director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress,
and we're pleased to have you here for a special talk and book event
which is sponsored not just by the Center for the Book but also
by the Hispanic Division and by the Humanities
and Social Sciences Division.
We love having cooperative efforts to promote books and reading.
The Center for the Book's purpose is to stimulate public interest
in books and reading using the resources and our partners
in the Library of Congress.
We have Centers in every state of the union and they work with us
at the local level to promote books and authors
and reading in their states.
One of our wonderful state projects consists of literary maps
which show the connection between geography and writers.
This is a continuing project that we find
to have great appeal at every state level.
Today's talk will be introduced by Guy Lamolinara, sorry Guy,
who is our Communications Officer.
Guy has recently joined the Center for the Book
and is helping us reach those states through all kinds
of new ways of communication.
I can announce that with Guy's direction we are going
to be looking again at our Web site.
How's that for putting some pressure on to somebody?
Speaking of the Web site, there will be a brief question
and answer period right after the talk,
and we hope that you will feel free to ask questions.
I will say that all of our talk are eventually --
filmed for our Web site, and if you do have a question,
your question gives us the authority to use your image and your talk,
your words on our Web site.
I would now like to turn this over to Guy for the introduction.
Guy? Let's give Guy a hand while I pick up my pencil.
[applause] Guy Lamolinara: For most
of you here the name Tom Gjelten is probably very familiar to you.
You've probably heard his insightful reports on National Public Radio
and you have also seen him as a regular
on "Washington Week" with Gwen Ifill.
Tom has been with NPR since 1982 and he's had assignments all
over the world: in Central America, Central and South America,
Central Europe, the Gulf War, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
and the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.   His coverage of the conflicts
in the former Yugoslavia earned him numerous honors including a George
Polk award and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
He was also part of the teams
that received the DuPont/Columbia University Silver Baton Award
for September 11th coverage and a Peabody Award
for the coverage of the war in Iraq.
Today Tom will discuss his fascinating book
of the famous Bacardi family's rum dynasty,
whose history parallels Cuba's development.
Tom will also talk briefly about the work he did here
at the Library in researching his work.
The New York Times praised Tom's 1995 book Sarajevo Daily:
A City and its Newspaper Under Siege
as a chilling portrayal of a city's slow murder.
And the newspaper said of his current book, Bacardi
and the Long Fight for Cuba that
"Mr. Gjelten masterfully illuminates the biography of a cause personified
by a proud family that pioneered a major business
and shaped the recent past of Cuba."
Please join me in welcoming Tom Gjelten.
[applause]   Tom Gjelten: Thank you.
That's a delight to be here and one of the most enjoyable parts
of this will be talking about the Library of Congress
because what a treasure this --
what a national treasure this institution is.
And it was really - I couldn't have,
literally could not have done this book without the assistance
of the people like Abby Yokelson [phonetic] from the Library
and many others and I'll get into that.
I thought I'd just mention briefly how this book came about.
I was a Latin America Correspondent in the 1980s.
I speak Spanish.
I then was -- I then covered the collapse
of the Socialist block in Eastern Europe.
I came back from Eastern Europe in 1994,
having lived in Berlin during that period.
And immediately became -- obsessed is not too strong a word,
with the situation in Cuba and wondering as many people did,
when was Cuba going to follow the example
of all these other socialist countries that made the transition
from Socialism to Democracy and Market Economics.
Started going to Cuba regularly in the middle '90s
and I've been back about 20 times since.
And became, as I say, I just became sort of obsessed
with understanding it, trying to get,
and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.
I had this experience where it seems like every time I went to Cuba
and returned I felt like I understood it less.
What I learned in all those visits was --
what I came to appreciate was how complicated this place was.
How hard to understand, how mysterious, how rich,
and as a journalist there is nothing more irresistible than a story
that you can't quite get your hands around so
that just drove me to go back and back.
And it inspired me to write a book.
I first made a decision to write a book about the Cuba story
without really knowing how I was going to focus it.
I did know that I wanted it to be a historical.
I came to the realization that in order
to really understand Cuba you really had
to have an historical understanding of it.
And I also wanted to write a book that told a story.
There have been many, many books; they are coming out at the rate
of about two a month, many books written
about Cuba and its modern history.
But what I wanted to do is something different.
I wanted to find a way to sort of sum it all up as a story
with characters, with vivid colorful characters with pathos and humor
and all the elements that go into making a story,
with a story structure which means a kind
of a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And I found all of those elements in this Bacardi tale.
Now as far as the end of the story I have written this basically
as a tragedy, and I'll get to that in a minute.
But there is a kind of a narrative evolution to this story.
But the Bacardi's presented me with just terrific memorable characters.
They are a quintessentially Cuban family,
and their story covers precisely the span of Cuban history
that I knew I needed to understand in telling this story.
It begins in 1862, which is when Facundo Bacardi,
who is a Spanish immigrant, opens this distillery in Santiago de Cuba.
Santiago is the second largest city in Cuba.
It is on the eastern end of the island.
Facundo Bacardi is from the Catalonia region of Spain.
The Catalans are famous as merchants.
There was a Catalan Colony in Santiago.
And he came to Santiago with his brothers and like dozens or hundreds
of other Catalan immigrants went into the retail business,
had a little general store.
He and his brothers had a series of general stores that sort of rose
and fell depending on the Cuban economy.
But Facundo was unique in that he was determined to find his fortune.
He was determined to become a famous businessman.
He was always looking for a way to sort of really put his mark on Cuba.
And he came up with the idea of going into the rum business.
And it made great sense for a couple reasons.
One, because Cuba at the time had, obviously had a sugar economy.
Molasses is a byproduct of making sugar but in the middle
of the 19th century the price of molasses was so low
that sugar growers were actually feeding molasses to their pigs
or even throwing it in the river.
I mean they just had -- the cost of transporting it to market was more
than it was worth so they really weren't doing anything with it.
So here you have, you can make rum from molasses.
So here you have the basic raw element in abundance.
The problem was that the rum industry
in Cuba was not well developed.
There really was -- in spite of the fact
that Cuban rum is very famous today,
in the middle of the 19th century there really was no Cuban rum
industry for a variety of historical reasons.
The other thing is the market for rum was really depressed.
[break in audio] -- a new style of rum.
Rum that was light, that was mixable,
that did not have this overwhelming flavor,
that he could reach a much broader market.
And so that's what he decided he wanted to go into the rum business
because it made sense economically and the way that he was going
to do it uniquely was to come up with a new style of Cuban rum.
And over the next 20 or 30 years he did
that through a real experimenting with filtration technique.
He was the first rum maker to use charcoal in filtering the rum.
Charcoal at that time was used for filtering vodka, which is,
of course, a very light, clear spirit.
No one had thought of filtering rum through charcoal.
He did that, he discovered the importance
of using white oak barrels for aging, and he also experimented
with different yeasts for the fermentation.
And as a result of a variety of, over the years,
of these experimental techniques, he was able to produce what we now know
of as Bacardi Rum which is a clear, light spirit that mixes
with fruit juices and sodas and is something that can be drunk
by a much broader market than people who had drunk rum previously.
That in a nutshell is the explanation
for the commercial success of the Bacardi Rum Company
and it is just a tremendous commercial success.
However, I have to say that this is
in many ways the least important part of my story.
Facundo Bacardi to me was not a central character nor is this really
a business history.   It's not a book about rum.
I have been much more interested in the political side of the story.
And in that regard the subtitle of my book is actually I think sort
of holds the key to the idea of the book.
The subtitle is The Biography of a Cause.
And the idea here is that the Bacardi family and their company
in one way or another throughout this entire period,
the last 150 years, have seen themselves as advocates
for Cuba or for the Cuban cause.
But the idea of that cause has been transformed over and over again.
It meant something different in the 19th century,
in the early 20th century, in the late 20th century.
It means something different today.
And what I have tried to do in this book is sort of,
as I say, trace the biography.
In other words, the life story of this cause,
the evolution of this idea, of the Bacardi's being committed
to something they called the Cuban Cause.
And I think it's in that aspect, in that way that I'm able to sort
of interweave the Bacardi story
with the modern political development of Cuba.
As I said at the beginning, I do think of this as a tragedy.
The Bacardi's embodiment of Cuban patriotism seems to me
to have been purer, more noble in the early part
of the story than at the end.
For the first century the Bacardi's Cuban patriotism was largely a
positive phenomenon with the Bacardi's working for the betterment
of Cuba in one way or another.
Their patriotism in this sense is uplifting.
They are proud, heroic Cuban rum family.
Their rum business is arguably the most Cuban business
of all the private companies on the island.
Their role in Cuban history during this whole period is full
of promise and potential.   Then what happens?
Their business is expropriated by Fidel Castro in 1960.
The Bacardi's go into exile, and from that point
on their interpretation of the Cuban Cause becomes in a sense,
for understandable reasons, more negative.
It's now devoted to sort of undermining Fidel Castro
and opposing the Castro Revolution.
So during this period it becomes characterized more by anger
and bitterness and it's fueled by a sense of betrayal.
And it ends up in a sense I think, corrupted,
by some of these sentiments and by the embittering experience of exile.
It also gets mixed up with commercial interests
and is manifested in the end, sort of more than anything else,
by corporate lobbying on Capitol Hill to strengthen,
to harden U.S. policy towards Cuba.
So if you'll look at the whole arc of the Cubans involvement,
of the Bacardi's involvement with Cuba.
You see, as I say, these different stages and that's basically sort
of an overview of my book.
Now to sort of go through some of the elements here:
Real quickly I've got some slides to show and I want to read a couple
of bits of this and I do want to leave some time for questions.
But, so as I say I am primarily interested in the --
in the political side of the story
and there the key character is Don Facundo's oldest son, Emilio.
Emilio is the first Bacardi born in Cuba
and he really emerges as the family patriot.
He comes of age in the middle of the 19th century just
as Cuban Nationalism is coming into its full flowering,
when Cuba at that time was of course a colony of Spain.
And there was the thriving Independence Movement,
and a movement to define sort of the Cuban nationality.
Emilio Bacardi is a young Cuban,
gets deeply involved in this movement.
There are two wars for independence in Cuba in the 19th century.
The first one lasted 11 years from 1868 to 1879.
The second one starts later in 1895.
Emilio Bacardi is involved in both of these wars.
Not as a fighter or a military officer.
He is involved as an underground conspirator.
He raises funds for the Cuban Rebels
who are fighting the Spanish Army up in the mountains.
He is their intermediary both internationally and nationally.
And as I say, he's a conspirator, operating underground very secretly.
He gets -- in 1878 he is arrested.
He is discovered doing this conspiratorial work,
gets sent to Spain, spends four years in a Spanish prison.
Comes back in the 1880s and then when the war breaks out again,
second war breaks out in 1895 inspired by Jose Marti.
Once again, Emilio Bacardi becomes involved,
basically doing the same thing that he was doing
in the first Independence War, which is he was acting as sort
of the key conspirator underground in Santiago.
I'm going to read just the first section here from my book.
This describing what Emilio is doing and what actually leads
up to his second imprisonment in 1895.
"One day in May, 1896 a unit headed personally
by Santiago's Police Chief showed up at Emilio
and Elvira's [phonetic] house."
[Elvira is his wife.] To carry out a search for anything
that might link them to the rebels.
Emilio had just written a series of coded letters
to Maseo Perez Carbo Emilito [phonetic], his son,
and other rebels and he was waiting for a currier to pick them up.
If they were discovered it could mean a death sentence for Emilio
and prison for the rest of his family.
Alerted that the police were headed their way,
Emilio and his family scrambled frantically to hide the letters.
It was a trusted black servant named Georgina
who calmly suggested an idea.
"Don Emilio give me the letters" she said.
"I'll get them out of the house."
Georgina, who had been with the Bacardi family for more
than 30 years was holding Lalita [phonetic],
Emilio and Elvira's baby girl and Elvira suggested
that she put the letters under Lalita's hat when she went out.
Emilio's teenage daughter Maria, seeing there were too many to fit
in one place, grabbed a few and tucked them down Georgina's blouse.
Just then the Police Chief wrapped on the front door.
As they began searching Elvira stood off to the side.
Her stern expression betraying no trace of the terror she felt inside.
Tall and sturdily featured with long thick black hair clipped behind her
head, she projected elegance, seriousness, and strength.
Turning to the Police Chief she pointed to Georgina
and said almost contemptuously "she's the cook,
is she allowed to go to the market?"
The Chief hesitated then nodded and Georgina left the house
with the incriminating letters stuffed
in her bosom and under Lalita's hat.
That move saved Emilio's life, in that instance.
However, the police, in that search, did find one document
that they found suspicious.
They thought it was a letter to one of the rebels up in the mountains
and he does get arrested at this point.
He is put initially into solitary confinement.
After a few weeks a Military Judge in Santiago released Emilio
from solitary confinement and allowed him and Elvira
to exchange written communication.
Over the next months Emilio wrote Elvira a note almost every day using
whatever materials he could scrounge, a brown paper bag torn
into pieces would give him paper for a dozen or more brief notes.
Elvira was Emilio's link to the world and he often asked her
to bring him things: a candle and a box of matches,
shoe polish, even some sherbet.
"I'm not dying for it but if you send some,
better to send milk than fruit."   Their anniversary came and went.
Nine years, omery [phonetic] how outrageous
to have it ruined like this.   But Emilio was always looking ahead.
"I'm fine; I hope you are the same.   One day more.
Adalante."
All the notes ended the same way: besos y se abraza, kisses and hugs.
Emilio's prison notes to Elvira highlight his remarkable powers
of discipline and will.   Never does he despair.
This is a man who is in his second extended imprisonment
and he has no clue when it will end.
Months earlier he has lost a beloved teenage son to disease, actually.
His eldest son is somewhere with the Cuban Rebel Army,
wounded once already and in almost constant combat.
But every note to Elvira is determinedly upbeat.
"Pasiensia y pasiensia," he tells her over and over again.
Notable is the absence of any reference to God or prayer or faith.
Emilio is a rationalist, appealing always to logic and reason;
a tendency he shows throughout his adult life.
He clearly has a sentimental side, especially evident
where his children are concerned about whom he inquires daily.
But Emilio Bacardi Moreau is also a proud and stubborn man,
and in his prison letters he shows a prickly side of his personality
that will come out many times again in his business and political life.
When the Spanish prison warden tightens security
and puts all the inmates behind an extra set of bars, Emilio is furious
and refuses to allow anyone to visit, even his wife.
"During visiting hours I will close my door" he warns Elvira,
"Pretend I'm on a trip.
I swear to you it would disgust me more even than this prison itself.
It would be to descend to their depths.
Remember what I have always said,
all we have is our dignity and our honor."
So this is -- with these little anecdotes here I am trying
to give a sense of this incredible character of Emilio Bacardi.
But also right here I just want to sort of insert a little bit
of a historical context that is important
for understanding Cuban history.
The Cuban Independent Movement was not just
for independence from Spain.
It actually had a fairly developed ideological aspect to it or agenda.
It was also for racial equality in Cuba.
Half the population in Cuba was black.
The Commander of the Cuban Rebel Army was black, Antonio Maseo.
And they stood not only for -- in the first war they stood not only
for independence but for an end to slavery in Cuba,
and then by the time the second war came
around slavery had already been abolished but they were
for a full part of the program of the revolution was
for full universal suffrage.
In other words that there be no discrimination between black Cubans
and white Cubans, a right to vote for all Cubans.
This of course is well in advance
of what has been achieved in the United States.
Well how does the United States view this independence struggle?
It actually makes a lot of people in the United States nervous
because the prospect is that there, if it is successful,
that there will be an independent Cuba that is largely dominated
by its African/Cuban population, and they will be setting a sort
of a model for other Caribbean countries.
And the United States fears basically what the political
ramifications of this might be.
So what happens at the last minute, just when it appears
that the Cuban Rebels are on the verge, finally after all these years
of defeating the Spanish Army, the United States intervenes in the war.
And remember this is the war we now call the War of 1898,
the Spanish-American War.
In fact, it's the second war for Cuban independence and begins
in 1895 and the vast majority of the people
that have done the fighting and died are Cubans.
But the Cubans sort of roll, the Cuban identity
in this war is kind of wiped out.
The United States intervenes, basically defeats the Spanish,
declares victory and says that it is going to occupy Cuba as the victor
in this war even to the point that it excludes Cubans
from participating or from even being present
at the Surrender Ceremony where the Spanish surrender.
There is just one land engagement.
The only time U.S. forces actually engage the Spanish physically is
in San Juan Hill in Santiago.
It's the Rough Riders and they are commanded of course
by Colonel Teddy Roosevelt who you see here
in the center of the picture.
Their attitude towards the Cubans is completely disparaging.
They, they basically say that the Cubans did not contribute
to this victory.   They are belittling of their cause.
And they actually block the Cubans efforts
to form their own government.
Part of is racism I'm afraid I have to say.
One of the Commanding Generals
of the United States Military Occupation in Cuba said
that the Cubans that he had dealt with were quote, "No more capable
of self government than the savages of Africa."
They actually vetoed the Cubans move to have universal suffrage.
As the occupation government they had that authority
and they did not allow the Cubans to move towards universal suffrage.
The key guy here is General Leonard Wood.
He is the Military Governor of Cuba, first the Military Governor
of Santiago then the Military Governor of all Cuba.
Now, Emilio Bacardi, he's in prison.
Just before the Spanish are defeated he is released from prison.
He goes first to Jamaica.   He comes back to Cuba finally.
Remember this is a guy who has been devoted
to the Cuban Independence cause for years and years and years.
He's outraged by the U.S. attitude towards this movement.
But what's interesting is that after sort of an initial sort of outburst,
he decides that he and other Cubans need to work with the Americans,
need to take a real practical attitude toward this
because for better or worse it is clear
that the United States is now going to occupy Cuba, that they are going
to be in Cuba for a while.
Theoretically they are committed to leaving Cuba at some point.
So Emilio makes a strategic decision to cooperate
with the U.S. occupation government
and he encourages other Cubans to do the same.
That fall, a group of Cubans go to General Wood and say,
we think we should have our own, we should have a mayor.
This is in Santiago now; we think we should have our own Cuban mayor.
And he says, "Well all right, I'll consider that.
Who would you like to have?"   And they say, "Emilio Bacardi."
So in November 1898 Emilio Bacardi becomes the first Cuban mayor
of Santiago.
And he goes on to play a very important role during this period.
As I say, his attitude is even though the United States is
thwarting our independence movement, we need to work with them.
And it has to be said that for all the racism and the arrogance
and the imperialist attitude
that the United States showed during this period, there is no one
like the U.S. Army for getting things done.
And during this four year period
that the United States occupied Cuba,
the U.S. Military did incredible things in the country:
built bridges, basically created the infrastructure, railroads.
Here is one picture; this is Santiago
where General Wood was in charge.
General Wood is a very interesting character.
He is a brilliant organizer and he takes charge personally
of Santiago's reconstruction.
This is the same street before and after, the top street is the way --
the top picture is the way it appeared when General Wood took
over the occupation of Santiago.
This bottom picture: the same exact picture
after this reconstruction project.
So this is sort of the benefit that the United States brings to Cuba
and Emilio Bacardi recognizes this.
In this picture he is reviewing street cleaning operations
in Santiago.   This is while he is mayor.
The man on the left is General Wood.
The man in the white straw hat is Emilio Bacardi.
So in this regard, Emilio Bacardi to me, now I'm sort of filling
out the sort of the picture of Emilio Bacardi.
To me he is a character that is all too rare
in Cuban political leadership.
He's principled, he's patriotic, but he is also very pragmatic and rather
than stand on the side lines and whine about the United States
and complain and kind of demagogue the issue, which is what a lot
of Cuban Nationalists were doing, he sort of puts all that aside
and works for the betterment of Cuba.
He is a capitalist.   He is by this point.
His father has died.
He's the president of the Bacardi Rum Company,
he makes no apologies for being a businessman.
He's the President of the Santiago Chamber of Commerce.
But he is also a social and political liberal.
He is fond of American's as individuals.
He sends his daughters, his children to America to be educated
but he is very critical of America as a regional power.
In fact like Jose Marti and other Cuban Nationalists, he comes to see
that Cuba has escaped the oppression of Spanish rule, as I say,
only to fall under the domination of the United States:
Meaning that Cuba has now had basically two colonial experiences.
First the colonial experience of being under Spanish rule,
second the colonial experience of being under American rule.
And he, as I say, becomes a very outspoken critic at this point
as he becomes actually a Cuban, a Senator on the national stage
and is a very outspoken critic.
I'm just going to pause here and let me just say, this is a good point
at which to talk about the Library of Congress.
Because I have been able to reconstruct this whole story
of the relationship between Emilio Bacardi and Leonard Wood largely
because of the Leonard Wood collection here.
The letters that -- these are in the days before carbon copies,
before e-mail and you know all the other sort of advances that allow us
to have copies of correspondence.
So all the letters that Emilio wrote, the only letters
that Emilio Bacardi wrote are the ones that were kept by the person
to whom the letters were addressed.
And the Leonard Wood Collection here took a long time.
He's got boxes and boxes and boxes of correspondence.
But buried in that correspondence are a few letters
that Emilio Bacardi wrote to him over this whole period of time.
And it is from those letters that I was actually able
to reconstruct something of their relationship,
also some of these pictures.
This picture here comes from Scribner's Magazine,
which I would have not have access too, 1898 if it weren't
for the collections in the Library of Congress.
The previous pictures that you saw --
wait not that one, I have to go back.
The pictures of Teddy Roosevelt and so forth,
those are all from the Library of Congress.
So I will be happy to talk about this
in the question and answer section.
As I say it's just a, it's a really important part of my research.
Okay, two brief points here.
So this story up to now really sort of underscores the foundation,
the identity, the meaning of Bacardi patriotism in Cuba.
This is the legacy, the heritage upon which the Bacardi's reputation
for patriotism in Cuba is really founded.
It largely has to do with Emilio Bacardi.
However, subsequent generations sort of see him as a role model
and he inspires you know kind of a continuing commitment
to the national cause in Cuba on part of the Bacardi family.
The other point is the one that I have just made.
And that is how the whole phenomenon of Cuban Nationalism has been shaped
by the U.S. intervention in Cuba.
Who knows how it would have developed
if the United States had sort
of let the Cubans established their own government,
make a few of their own mistakes but sort of find their way.
Instead the United States really sort of thwarts Cuban Independence.
And in the four year period that the United States occupied Cuba,
basically it seems almost like U.S. Commanders did everything they could
to keep Cuban genuine sovereign institutions from developing.
You might recall that in 1902 the United States agreed
to leave Cuba only under one condition,
which was that the Cuban Parliament, the Cuban Congress insert
in their constitution a provision that would allow the United States
to return to Cuba any time it wanted for whatever reason
if it felt its interests required it to do so.
This is the infamous Platt Amendment.
The result of this is that Cuba's political development is really
stunted and you don't see sort of the emergence
of Cuban democratic institutions.
And Emilio and other Cuban patriots during this period,
we're now talking the early part of the 20th century,
really become demoralized because the promise
of the Cuban Revolution has really sort of been lost.
The same time what else happens in Cuba?
Sugar prices are going sky high.
Prohibition is enacted in the United States.
And Cuba becomes the place
where Americans can go to have fun, to drink.
I say in my book, "It's at this point that Cuba Libre goes
from being a cause, Free Cuba, to being a cocktail."
And that really is the story of what happens in the 1920s.
You have a period of great cynicism in Cuba and self indulgence.
And this is the age of libation.   This is the age of cocktails.
Once again the Bacardi's are a part of the story
because now they are the producers of the rum that sort
of fuels this whole sort of prohibition playground lifestyle.
And nevertheless there is a way in which even in this role they sort
of manage to kind of express a kind of Cuban patriotism.
And it's because their promotion
of their own rum gets all wrapped up in promoting Cuba.
This is publicity that is aimed at U.S. tourists.
Notice the first three words.   "Cuba is great."
They are promoting Bacardi Rum, but they are really doing it in a way
that promotes Cuba as a country, as a tourist destination and so forth.
There is a Spanish version of this.
This is a picture of a group of Bacardi sales agents in the 1920s.
This is their motto in Spanish on the board behind them.
El cia Cuba a hecho fermosa [phonetic].
This is an advertisement for Bacardi Rum.
It is the one that has made Cuba famous.
So you have now this sort of new phase
of the Bacardi promotion of the Cuban cause.
I found a very interesting advertisement at this time
that perfectly expresses this.
It's a picture of a waiter serving a rum and cola, a Bacardi drink,
he's got a bottle of Bacardi on a tray,
to a couple at an outdoor cafe in Paris.
You know it is Paris because the Eiffel Tower is in the background.
And the caption says, at this time, sort of, there was a view in Cuba
as in many other parts of the world that the really fine things
in life came from Paris, right?   That Paris had this association.
The caption of the picture is, referring to Bacardi Rum,
"It doesn't come from Paris.   It goes to Paris."
So the idea that this is a product that is so esteemed worldwide
that it actually, the French buy it and it is served in Paris.
So this is sort of -- the Bacardi's are now promoting their rum in a way
that promotes their country.
However, there is you know, this is not the same as fighting you know,
in the way in the heroic way that Emilio Bacardi did.
It is a different manifestation of Cuban patriotism obviously
and the other thing is the Bacardi's by this point have become very rich.
Emilio has a younger brother Facundo, Jr.,
who is sort of running much of the technical side of the business.
He's got a sister, Amallia [phonetic]
who marries a French/Cuban named Enrique Schueg
who is a brilliant businessman and becomes involved.
And he's got a younger brother named Jose
who actually is only marginally involved in the business
and then he dies prematurely.
So you've got the three siblings, Emilio, Facundo,
and his sister Amallia who is sort of represented in the company
by her husband Enrique, the brother-in-law.
And they form a partnership.
In 1919 they organize the company as a stock corporation.
Emilio takes 30 percent, Facundo takes 30 percent, Amallia
and her husband Enrique take 30 percent,
the remaining 10 percent is set aside for the heirs to Jose,
the fourth sibling, who as I say, has died a few years earlier.
Now I'm going to read, "In 1922 Emilio dies and Enrique Schueg,
his brother-in-law, the husband of Amallia, takes over the company.
And this is basically the end I say of sort of the first phase
of the Bacardi story in Cuba.
And now we're moving in to the second phase
which is a very different manifestation as I have explained.
The three sons of Jose Bacardi Moreau, Jose, Jr., Pepe, Antoin,
and Juaquin, having been given a 10 percent share
of Bacardi stocks shortly after the 1919 incorporation were the first
of their generation to be fully vested with a portion
of the family fortune and among the first to start spending it.
Their mother died in 1910,
three years after the death of their father.
So the family's share was all theirs.
Pepe Bacardi, a debonair and handsome young man
with dark wavy hair was the oldest of the three
and set the pace for his brothers.
His marriage in 1922 to a 19 year old Santiago beauty named Martha
Durand [phonetic] lasted only a few weeks before his young wife
announced she could not put up with his carousing.
Their very public and colorful break up produced a high society scandal
and provided a glimpse of the social lives
of the Cuban upper class in the 1920's.
Martha Durand was herself, from a distinguished French/Cuban family
in Santiago, well educated and multi-lingual, having traveled often
to Paris and New York with her mother and father.
She grew up socializing with Bacardi's
of her age including Emilio's daughter and Enriqueta Schueg,
the daughter of Amallia Bacardi and Enrique Schueg.
Martha and Pepe's wedding was described by one local newspaper
as the "loveliest and most sumptuous that Santiago has ever known."
Making the nightclub rounds in Havana on their honeymoon,
the young Cuban couple exemplified glamour and wealth.
The former national beauty queen
in a bejeweled satin frock carrying an ivory and gold fan and escorted
by her new husband, the handsome Bacardi heir,
in a dinner jacket cut especially for him
by an English tailor in Havana.
Martha later claimed that Pepe's philandering doomed their marriage
from the start.
She laid out her whole melodramatic story
in an expose titled My Mad Romance
with Bacardi the Rich Rum King, Conqueror of Women.
[laughter] A titillating and embellished talk that ran
in 10 weekly installments in Sunday newspapers across the United States,
in December, 1923 and January of 1924.
She claimed in her story to have gone
into the marriage with misgivings.
"There was a great deal of talk in Santiago", she wrote,
"about Pepe Bacardi and his young cousins, the new generation
of Bacardi's who in no way resemble the stiff-spined old men
who made the Bacardi name really great.
I heard enough to make me know that Pepe was leading a wild gay life,
and that he had a decided predilection
for pretty girls and his own rum."
So just as Cuba as a whole is sort of now in this kind of age
of playboy living, again the Bacardi's are sort
of right there exemplifying what's going on in the country.
So the political aspect of the Bacardi connection to Cuba kind
of takes a backseat to the social and cultural aspect.
The promise of the Independence Movement has been lost.
But nevertheless the Bacardi connection, as I say with Cuba,
even though it's manifested differently,
continues throughout the next 50 years, and in very interesting ways.
The Bacardi's are sponsors
of the first semi-pro baseball team in Cuba.
And when baseball is ultimately televised
in Cuba, who was the sponsor?
It's Bacardi Run as the sponsor of Cuban baseball.
And nothing is more important
to the Cubans you know entertainment-wise than baseball.
Except maybe for music and who are the main sponsors of Cuban music?
Well in these years, in the 1930s and the 1940s,
Cubans hear their music only in one place: on the radio.
There are no record players, CD's;
you know they hear their music on the radio.
And they hear it every night on a program called "Party
with Bacardi" It goes on the air at 10 o'clock
at night: Fiesta con Bacardi.
And so the Bacardi's are known also as the sponsors of Cuban music.
When there is a national Dance Company organized
with Alicia Lonso [phonetic] as the prima ballerina,
who are the corporate sponsors?   The Bacardi Rum Company.
So you see this kind of cultural sponsorship of Cuba
that the Bacardi's are playing.
In 1955, jumping ahead a little bit, the most famous writer living
in Cuba, Ernest Hemingway wins a Nobel Prize.
Who throws a party for him?   The Bacardi Rum Company.
Many people wanted to throw a party for him but he would only go
to the party that the Bacardi's put
on because they said he could bring all his fisherman friends,
they could come barefoot, they could drink as much beer as they wanted,
as much rum as they wanted.   So the Bacardi Association again,
with sort of Cuba's national life is expressed this way.
In 1952 Cuba celebrates the 50th anniversary of its independence.
This is the Bacardi Headquarters in Havana,
a beautiful art deco building.
And they drape a Cuban flag all the way down the front of the building.
Meanwhile the Bacardi Company at this point is run by
yet another in-law, yet another son-in-law;
Pepin Bosch who marries Enriqueta Schueg,
the daughter of Amallia Bacardi and Enrique Schueg.
Incidentally Enriqueta and Pepin sign a,
witness a prenuptial agreement
between Martha Durand and Pepe Bacardi.
So Pepin Bosch's sort of involvement in this story goes a way back.
But Pepin Bosch, he's married to the daughter of the company president.
But he's himself a rich man from his own sort of roots in Cuba
and he's also got his own business career, largely in banking.
He refuses to join the family business.
By the 1940's, Enrique Schueg is getting old;
he's looking for who is going to replace him
as the next Chairman of Bacardi Rum.
He can't, he's not satisfied with any
of the family members working around him.
Meanwhile he decides the one he wants
to replace him is his son-in-law Pepin Bosch.
And in 1949 Pepin Bosch, actually 1944, he sort of takes over day
to day operations of the company,
later becomes President of the company.
As the boss of Bacardi, this is now a period
when Cuba is mired in corruption.
Batista and his cronies are running the country.
The American mafia is deeply involved.
Pepin Bosch as the Chairman
of Bacardi Rum establishes this reputation for integrity
and for refusing to pay bribes, for refusing to pay kickbacks
to the government inspectors who are always coming
around so he becomes famous as in some ways the cleanest
and least corrupt businessman in Cuba.
And in 1948, when Carlos Prio is elected President
of Cuba he asks Pepin Bosch to come to Havana
and be his Minister of Finance.
Pepin Bosch is the bald man in the center.
Carlos Prio, he's talking to Carlos Prio who is on the left.
So Pepin Bosch becomes President --
he becomes Minister of Finance in Cuba and during this period,
it's a very brief period, where it appears
that Cuban democracy is going to get back on track.
We're sort of making progress in the fight against corruption.
But what happens?
March of 1952 Fulgencio Batista has a military coup, a coup in Cuba,
throws out Carlos Prio, takes over the government.
Pepin Bosch is outraged by this.
Pepin Bosch actually has a bit of a reputation himself
for political activism in Cuba.
He starts out in the 1930s as one of the conspirators
against the Machado Dictatorship.
In the 1940s when he is running Bacardi Rum and refusing
to pay bribes to inspectors, Batista sees him as an enemy
because he is not willing to sort of cow tow to Batista.
Batista actually tries to take over the government n the 1940s.
And then when Batista takes --
sorry, Batista tries to take over the company,
the Bacardi Rum Company in the 1940s.
So in 1952 when Batista carries out this military coup,
Pepin Bosch becomes his arch enemy,
and over the next few years Pepin Bosch emerges as second
to very few people in Cuba for his opposition
to the Batista Dictatorship.
Who is running the fight against Batista in the 1950's?
It's Fidel Castro.
But who is the number one financial supporter
of Fidel Castro's rebel army?
It's Pepin Bosch; reaches in his own pocket, donates tens of thousands
of dollars of his own money to buy weapons for Fidel Castro's army.
And in January of 1959 Fidel Castro takes over the government.
Pepin Bosch is his leading backer within the business class.
He actually goes to the government in January of 1959,
three weeks after Fidel takes over, with a check for $450,000,
which he estimates is the amount that he is going to owe,
that the Bacardi Rum Company is going to owe
in business taxes for the next year.
He says "We're going to pay our income taxes in advance
to help your government get on a sound financial footing."
He is at this point, the Cuban industrialist most closely
associated with Fidel Castro as his best ally.
April 1959, Fidel Castro takes a trip to Washington.
He picks one business man to go with him as his representative
of the Cuban business class.   He asked Pepin Bosch to go with him.
And the last reading I am going to do is about that trip to Washington.
And this is coming at a key point in Cuban history.
"On the flight to Washington, Castro moved up and down the aisle chatting
with members of the delegation.
When he came to Pepin Bosch, Castro squatted on the floor next to him
like a pupil facing his teacher.
It was the first encounter of these two brilliant personalities,
each utterly confident in his own judgment but uncertain of the other.
"Senor Bosch" Castro said, "Tell me what you think we can do
for the economy in Cuba?"
The unkempt guerilla leader was showing as much deference
as he could manage before the short bald businessman
in the natty three piece suit.
Bosch, who was old enough to be Fidel's father, looked down at him
with his famously icy smile.
"Well, consider our resources" he said in his soft high pitched voice.
"We have iron, we have nickel, we have manganese, we have cobalt,
and we have the Hanabanilla,"
which was a large hydro electric plant then under construction.
Bosch had long been a proponent of hydro electric power in Cuba
and he'd worked hard in the previous years
to promote the dam-building project on the Hanabanilla River.
"So we could certainly make steel
and we could even become a high quality producer."
It was clearly an idea that appealed to Castro who had argued often
in favor of ending Cuba's dependence on sugar production.
His eyes widened.
"Do you think we can produce more than the United States?"
He asked. [laughter] Bosch was stunned by the question
for its obvious na vet and for what it revealed
about Castro's U.S. obsession.
"Of course not Fidel, whatever are you talking about?"
But Castro was not finished.   "Why don't you help me?"
He said. As Cuba's most respected businessman Bosch had enormous
influence with his fellow industrialist.
Labor leaders saw him as an employer who treated his workers fairly
and negotiated in good faith with the unions who represented them.
Castro was anxious to establish a Business Labor Coalition in support
of his revolutionary project.
After taking power he had mandated wage increases for workers.
But he had also prohibited strikes and work slowdowns saying that labor
and management needed to work together
on behalf of his revolution.   "You could help me."
He said again to Bosch.
In the coming years Bosch related many times the story of his exchange
with Castro on the flight to Washington, always recalling
that he told Castro that they could not help him.
"We capitalists are not afraid of labor" he quoted himself as saying.
"But we are afraid of the combination of labor and government.
With your system you are dominating labor like Batista did.
You want to control labor and you want to control private enterprise.
You can't get help that way.
If you want me to help you, you will have to allow elections
and give the workers their freedom.
Then you will see how the country can develop."
Bosch claimed that when he uttered the word "freedom" Castro took off
like an arrow and that they spoke no more during the remainder
of the trip."
So this is as I say a kind of a turning point.
This is the point at which Pepin Bosch and a number
of other Cubans are starting to get a little nervous
about where Fidel Castro is taking Cuba.
In October 1960, about 15 months later, Fidel Castro and Raul Castro
and Che Guevara make a decision that they are going to have socialism
in Cuba and they nationalize all private enterprise
in the country including the Bacardi Rum Company, which was, as I say,
probably the most progressive company in Cuba and the one
that had unfailingly been on Fidel's side.
Even to the point of telling other companies, "Look,
this is somebody we can work with.
This is for the good of Cuba," They had agreed to pay higher taxes.
They had contributed money to agrarian reform.
They really had established the reputation that is, I think,
unique in the western hemisphere as a company, a private enterprise
that is willing to underwrite
and support a really pretty radical social and political movement.
Nevertheless, Fidel Castro expropriates the Bacardi
Rum Company.
Here he is, this is the Aging Warehouse in Santiago,
the old Bacardi Aging Warehouse.
It is now the property of the Cuban government
and Fidel Castro is here talking to workers
and you know local government officials.
So now we're into sort of the final phase as it were,
the Bacardi's go into exile.
And as I said at the beginning, the Bacardi's notion
of the Cuban cause now changes.
It now, they now become dedicated to over throwing Fidel Castro.
They figure that Fidel Castro is ruining their country
and they become, they go from being his main ally
to being his most prominent adversary.
The Bacardi's become deeply involved in the Bay of Pigs.
They become deeply involved in a variety of CIA sponsored capers
to overthrow Fidel Castro and Pepin Bosch himself,
remember he had raised weapons to fight against Machado.
He fought against Batista.   He raised weapons for Fidel Castro.
This was a man, even though he is was a businessman he sort
of dabbles in revolution.
And he actually begins raising money to overthrow Fidel Castro.
This is a B26 Invader, a small bomber that sort of dates
from the Second World War Pepin Bosch bought this airplane
with the idea of outfitting it with bombs and rockets.
And he was going to hire a pilot to fly back to Cuba
and bomb the oil refineries in Cuba.
He figured that this was a good idea because no one,
there had to be very few civilian casualties if any.
On the other hand it would plunge the island into darkness
and he thought it would sort of lay the ground work
for an uprising against Fidel Castro.
Well it never worked, he never found anyone willing
to undertake this mission as you can imagine.
One solitary B26 flying on a bombing mission in Cuba.
He finally gives up.
This is the very aircraft that Pepin Bosch bought for this purpose.
He ultimately, he had it stashed in Costa Rica,
but ultimately the Honduran Air Force takes it
and then the Honduran Air Force gives it to the United States.
It is now at the Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
Nobody identifies it as the Bacardi Bomber but I checked
out the tail number and this is in fact the old Bacardi Bomber.
So this is now sort of the new phase of the Bacardi connection with Cuba.
After Pepin Bosch gives up on
over throwing Fidel Castro militarily he starts
to underwrite the political side of the anti-Castro movement.
He is the originator of the Cuban American National Foundation.
It's a little bit of a develop
which is the leading Cuban exile political movement in Miami.
The man on the right here is Jorge Mas Canosa,
who is hired by Pepin Bosch to sort of get this organization started.
Here he is of course with Ronald Reagan.
Jorge Mos Canosa starts out under Bosch's tutelage
as a young milk man.   He is hired to write the newsletter
for the predecessor organization to the foundation.
He emerges as probably the leading Cuban exile activist.
And right up until his death in 1997,
was a friend of President Reagan, President Clinton,
and was a leading force in pushing for a tightening
of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
And the Bacardi's as a family, as an enterprise now,
at this point as I said, their whole agenda is wrapped up in sort
of politically under cutting Fidel Castro.
And that's basically where the story ends.
The Bacardi Lobbyists were key in the enactment
of the Helms-Burton Law in 1992.
There is however a kind of a coda to this story which has
to do with the future of Cuba.
One of the reasons I like this story so much is
that it explains not only Cuba's past and present
but also gives us some clues about the future for this reason.
Throughout this period of Fidel Castro's rule
in Cuba there are very few industries
that are actual bright spots in the Cuban economy.
One is tourism, one is nickel, one is tobacco, and one is rum.
Cuban run, throughout this period,
maintains its reputation for quality.
Nineteen-ninety-three Fidel Castro decides in the aftermath
of losing socialist subsidies,
he decides to open the country to foreign investment.
Who is the first foreign investor who comes in?
It is Pernod Ricard the French liquor company.
And what is their interest?
They want to go into a joint venture with the Cuban government
to promote the Cuban government's own rum brand Havana Club.
And in 1993 they formed this joint venture and from that point
on Havana Club Rum is a joint venture
of the French company Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government takes off
like no other spirit brand in the world.
Over the next 10 years has the fastest growing sales
of any spirits brand in the world.
And it's because people are turning their attention to Cuba and sort
of Cuba is once again a very favored tourist destination.
And the promotion, interestingly enough,
the promotion of Havana Club Rum is sort of reminiscent of the promotion
of Bacardi Rum many years earlier, which is that Pernod Ricard
and the Cuban government are promoting Cuba once again
as a tourist destination.
In 2004 they hold this, this is a cocktail competition sponsored
by the joint venture.
Bartenders from all over the world come to Cuba to sort of --
to try their hand at making rum cocktails,
but this is a genius marketing move by Pernod Ricard.
So now we have a new Cuban Rum
that has taken the place of Bacardi, Havana Club.
What do the Bacardi's think of this?
This is the role that they used to play in Cuba
and that is very dear to their hearts.
So we enter at this point,
a complicated commercial legal trademark dispute
between Bacardi and Pernod Ricard.
Basically it's over who is going to have the right to sell Cuban rum
when the embargo is lifted.
Who is going to have the right to sell Cuban rum in the United States?
Who is going to make Cuban rum in Cuba?
Once again the Bacardi's are involved
and they are positioning themselves even now, to go back to Cuba
when Fidel and his brother are out of the picture and sort
of pick up where they left off.
It will be a very different situation.
This is the old Bacardi Rum warehouse as it appears today.
These horse and buggies here,
these are not carrying tourists, these are taxis.
These are the way people get around in Santiago.
It's an example to the length to which anybody planning to go back
to Cuba, it is what they have to take into consideration
because Cuba is a very underdeveloped country.
So this is the story in its sort of overall aspect.
I've only left a few minutes for questions.
There's 160 years to cover.
I've tried to race through it as quickly as I can
but we do have you know five or so minutes for questions
[ Applause ]   Yes sir?
Male Speaker: I read the book several months ago.
It's a great book.   Tom Gjelten: Thank you very much.
Male Speaker: And I would certainly recommend it
to anybody in the audience to buy.
My recollection is that in Castro's first military action was
against the armory.   Is that right?
Tom Gjelten: Yes, the army barracks in Santiago.
Male Speaker: It was basically a disaster.
Tom Gjelten: Yes.
Male Speaker: And he was arrested and sent off for a couple years
to what, the Isle of Pines?   Tom Gjelten: Pines, mhm.
Male Speaker: Okay.
The question is, why did Batista, who was so brutal, not imprison him
for longer or simply execute him and be done with it
and you know the rest of history would be very different?
Tom Gjelten: Well you know he was brutal but some would say he wasn't
as brutal as he should have been.
I mean you know this is what some people would argue.
That he actually sort of --
Fidel Castro at that point was already famous.
He had made a name for himself.
He was a lawyer, trained as a lawyer.
He defended himself in the courtroom,
gave this stirring courtroom speech.
And remember, basically the whole population of Cuba basically is
against Batista at this point.
As a result of leading this uprising and defending himself
in this famous speech "History Will Absolve Me,"
Castro becomes a here all across Cuba.
And I think Batista recognizes that and figures, as many dictators do,
that if he imprisons him for the rest of his life
or executes him all he is going to do is make him into a martyr
and then sort of the movement will be even stronger.
So he releases him thinking, because Fidel said this at the time
that he was going to compete politically, he was going to run
for elections, et cetera.   I think he underestimated Fidel.
People have always underestimated Fidel.
But I think he recognized that Fidel at that point was a hero
and he did not want to make him a martyr.
Yes sir?
Male Speaker: I'm going to ask you if you know of parallels
between the Cuban experience
and the Philippine experience with the Spanish.
My unit in World War II made three invasions of the Philippines
and each time things settled down and the natives felt safe,
they would come out of the jungle and not only greet us,
but thank us of course in English.
They have been taught English pre-war as part of their schooling.
So many did, and this was part of the legacy of William Howard Taft,
I understand was Governor General long before he was President.
And he put through this English education system and health,
systems; I don't know how far it went.
Do you know how far?   Tom Gjelten: No I don't.
I'm not real familiar with Philippine history.
Except you know that the military governor
in the Philippines was Leonard Wood.
He went from Cuba to the Philippines,
and he tried to do the same thing in Cuba.
He tried to institute English language instruction throughout
the schools.
I don't know about Philippine history as I say.
The problem with Cuba is that this was an immediate aftermath
of a heroic revolution and Cuban nationalism was really a
strong force.
So there was evidently more resistance to this kind
of anglosization in Cuba than there maybe was in the Philippines.
The parallel that I find interesting,
and I don't draw it in the book.
I will leave it for readers to consider, is the parallel
between U.S. occupation of Cuba from 1898 to 1902 and what effect it had
and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.   Yes sir?
Charles Ott: Charles Ott [phonetic] from the Treasury Department.
It sounds like the Bacardi family has been influential
in bringing U.S. sanctions policy against Cuba and shaping it.
Tom Gjelten: Yeah.
Charles Ott: Going forward do you continue
to see them influencing this or changing their position?
Tom Gjelten: Well you know their position is
that they had their assets expropriated so they have,
they see themselves as having interests to defend.
They have claims that they want to pursue in Cuba,
or theoretically want to have claims.
So they have a stake in U.S. sanctions.
However, interestingly enough I think they have sort
of evolved politically to some extent from the very hard line
that they took in the late 1990s.
There is new leadership at the company now.
The Chairman of the Board of Bacardi today is oddly,
or paradoxically, Facundo Bacardi.
He is the great-great grandson of the founder
but he is only 40 years old.
He was born in the United States and he has a little bit,
sort of a different viewpoint.
And there is a young, another young generation coming up
and they are sort of signaling --
I'd say more flexibility in their view of Cuba.
And they are now thinking, they certainly haven't said this publicly
but this is the sense I get, that when they go back
to Cuba they are not going to go back immediately
with a commercial agenda.
They want to go back first as a family foundation and they want
to go back first with humanitarian assistance.
And they sort of want to sort of re-associate the Bacardi name
with Cuba in a positive way without --
before they go back and try to reclaim the distilleries.
And they actually, I mean this --
they have no interest in these old facilities.
They haven't been maintained
and you know rum making has really developed over the years.
So they are not going to go back and file law claims
to get their old facilities back.
So they do have a somewhat of a different agenda even
that they had 15 years ago.
And I would predict that there are not to be in the future as sort
of tough in their advocacy
of a really tight sanctions policy against Cuba.
That's my view of it.   Yes ma'am?
Female Speaker: What was the relationship between the Bacardi's
with the Cuban Junta in New York in the 1990s?
Tom Gjelten: Well the -- yeah she asked
about the Bacardi relationship with the Cuban Junta.
The Cuban Junta in the 1990s was kind of the shadow government
of the Cuban Revolutionary movement, the Cuban Liberation movement.
Jose Marti was the head of the Junta and later Tomas Estrada Palma.
They didn't have a direct relation but Emilio Bacardi, as I said,
was deeply involved in this movement
and he had correspondence back and forth.
He went to New York for commercial reasons often, or under the cover
of commercial reasons representing the Bacardi Rum Company
on trade missions.
But he always went to the Junta offices.
He was a close of Jose Marti.
He was a close friend of Estrada Palma,
so Emilio Bacardi personally was deeply involved,
although not in a kind of official direct way.
Yes sir?
Male Speaker: I enjoyed your presentation,
looking forward to reading the book.
Did you have any opportunity to speak to members
of the extended Bacardi family during your research?
Tom Gjelten: Oh sure.
Male Speaker: For example the little anecdote
about the maid taking the documents?   Tom Gjelten: Yeah.
Male Speaker: Did you have some chance
to get some oral history from the family?
Tom Gjelten: I did and they actually, they are very proud
of their history and they have sort of maintained it and I, you know,
this is one of the reasons Abby and a few other people who are close
to me personally know how many years I have invested in this book.
And one of the reasons it took me so long is
because the Bacardi family is very private.
It is a privately held corporation
to this day owned entirely by the family.
There is no public aspect to their work at all.
No annual reports.
You know, their default position in dealing with journalists
and most people who inquire is basically they don't talk.
They just don't, they don't care what you write
about them, they just don't talk.
So it took a long time for me to establish, and I never got it
with the company in an official way.
What I did was I established sort of one by one,
relations with individual family members.
Particularly those who came from Cuba and had a recollection
of the family lure from there.
The other thing I was able to do was I did go back
to Cuba many, many times.
And in Santiago even though the Bacardi's have been associated
with the so called counter-revolution all these years,
in Santiago, their home town, their name is still revered.
There is still an Emilio Bacardi Museum there.
There is an Elvira Cape Library, Elvira is Emilio's wife.
And there are archives there that contain a lot
of the old Bacardi records.
And again, sort of through very careful diplomatic work I was able
to gain access to a lot of that archival material there
that allowed me to do this story.
But it's, you know, reconstructing this whole period
of history you know was not, was a very exhaustive sort of process.
Yeah?
Male Speaker: Could you comment on again, the future of Cuba.
As reprehensible as the political situation has been for 50 years,
Cuba itself is really kind of like a country locked in time.
And I think that everyone needs to be careful
about what they wish for, they might get it.
And I look at this picture and I fear for a future
that has huge amounts of Wall Street investment.
Tom Gjelten: Right.
Male Speaker: Beaches being destroyed, architecture being lost
and all in the name of freedom, and so I think the Cubans may wind
up getting ripped off again in a different way, a more insidious way
that destroys [inaudible].
Tom Gjelten: That's a really good point
and I would actually even add something to that.
If you go back to this last slide here.
Cuba is right now, the Cuban Revolutionary Government is
investing its future in the very thing
that Batista invested its future in which is promotion of tourism
and sort of this playground lifestyle.
And if there is a post Castro period, I fear that you are going
to see some of the same players reappear.
Cuba is right in the middle of a kind
of international drug trafficking channels.
If you have a weak government in Cuba in this period,
the chances of corruption, of organized crime getting established,
I think are really great.   If you look at Panama, for example,
after we over threw Noriega, 1989, 1990.
You know we installed what we thought was a democratic government.
Look at what's happened in Panama in the last 20 years.
Drug trafficking has reestablished itself
and corruption has reestablished itself in Panama.
So I think what you say is true,
and I think there is this added extra danger which is
with the influx of tourism from all over the world,
you know the prospect of sort of criminality coming back is one
that we really have to be concerned about.
John just cut me off whenever you want.
John Cole: Two more questions.   Tom Gjelten: Yeah, okay.
John Cole: Could you put a timeline on prospects for [inaudible]?
Tom Gjelten: Well actually I am going
to do a story on this next week.
I think the prospects for a change in U.S.
/Cuban relationships are better now than they have been
for about 30 years for a combination of reasons.
First of all, Raul Castro is not Fidel Castro,
and he has really lowered the temperature and sort
of made some very preliminary moves which I think would make it easier
for a U.S. Administration to respond to him.
Secondly, sort of the Cuban American Agenda has changed.
Do you know that Barack Obama in this last election got 35 percent
of the Cuban American vote?
Which is the most than any Democratic candidate has
ever gotten.
And he did it in spite of having been on the record in the past
as advocating an end to the embargo, and in spite of going
to South Florida during the campaign and saying
that he would lift all restrictions on family visits back to Cuba
and on remittances back to Cuba.
Two sort of cornerstones of the Bush Administration policy.
As it turns out those two moves are actually quite popular
in the Cuban American community so we are seeing sort
of new political forces here that I think will favor sort
of reconsideration of -- it's not going to happen quickly.
And I predict that Barak Obama will not lift the embargo probably
throughout his first time unless you see some dramatic changes in Cuba.
But I think over the next five to ten years you are going
to see a real dramatic change in Cuba and in U.S.
/Cuba relations.
But it could be a few years before it plays out.
One more question.   Yes sir?
Male Speaker: You called the Bacardi family story a tragedy I believe.
Correct me if I am wrong.
It is not the Bacardi Company the largest privately owned spirits
company in the world?
Some would see an element of success.
[laughter]
Tom Gjelten: You know go back to what I said at the beginning,
which is that I am sort of less interested, in this book,
in the business side of the story
and I have really not mentioned it very much.
The truth is that after the Bacardi's go into exile in 1960,
losing their Cuban headquarters, losing their Cuban operations,
they rebuild very successfully, and in fact,
some Bacardi family members think that Fidel did them a favor by sort
of getting them out of Cuba, getting them to sort of forget about Cuba
and focus on the rest of the world.
They then globalize at the perfect moment for them, and from the 1960s
and 1970s they just have explosive growth.
And you are right; they are the largest privately held spirits
company in the world.
And that is in my book, but that is sort
of on a little bit of another tangent.
The tragic aspect of it to me is the way the Cuban --
their advocacy of a Cuban cause sort of goes from being a positive thing
to being a negative thing.
And I don't mean negative in a pejorative sense I mean it goes
from being for something to being against something.
Male Speaker: And what can you expect?
Tom Gjelten: No, precisely, precisely.
But I think there is kind of a tragic aspect of that.
That is what I meant when I said that.
Okay.
John Cole: Please join me in thanking Tom.
[ Applause ]
Female Speaker: This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.   Visit us at loc.gov.