Book Review: Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba by Tom Gjelten

Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba

by Tom Gjelten

      Who doesn’t like an occasional pina colada or a cuba libre? Well actually I don’t drink cuba libres because coca cola rots both your stomach and your teeth while making you obese. But I love a good mai tai or a mojito. Shots of dark rum are good too especially when you want an instant mental vacation in the tropics which is happens often if you live in a dismal, freezing cold climate like upstate New York with its grey skies and five foot mountains of lake effect snow on a weekly basis every winter. Why not just fly down to the Caribbean for a break, you might ask. Because it’s the 21^st century and working on a teacher’s salary makes it nearly impossible, that’s why. And to be honest a bottle of rum is just plain more affordable. You must know all these great cocktails might not even be possible if it weren’t for the Bacardi rum company. It’s not just that the Bacardis made drinkable rum available to the masses, but it’s also true because the family business saved the company’s brand from the Cuban Revolution. They didn’t just fight for the legal right to their own name and product though; the Bacardis also fought for freedom and justice in their homeland of Cuba in political conflicts dating back to the early 19^th century. Journalist Tom Gjelten tells the whole story in Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba.

The Bacardi family were Catalans who immigrated to Cuba while it was still a colony under the Spanish crown. They settled in Santiago de Cuba on the southeast coast of the island. Sugarcane farming and the production of granulated sugar were the backbone of the fledgling economy at the time. Industrial sugar production yields a byproduct which we now know as molasses. This byproduct is what is distilled to make rum. This drink was basically swill they made by sugar mills to sell to sailors, unskilled laborers, and other drunks in order to make some extra profits and keep the proletariat too inebriated to think about rising above their station.

Rum production turned a corner when the Bacardi family business entered the liquor market. Under the guidance of Emilio Bacardi, they developed a method of distillation that made rum more palatable to the middle and upper classes. Emilio Bacardi was also an intellectual who wrote poetry and kept extensive historical records of happenings in Santiago de Cuba. Researchers are still referencing his works today. He was also a liberal in the sense of free market economics as it was practiced in the 19^th century and a philanthropist with progressive ideas on politics and social issues. The Bacardi family were prominent in using their wealth to build infrastructure in Santiago de Cuba, financing schools, hospitals, and charity funds for the poor. They were deeply involved in Cuba’s Wars of Independence and supported the abolition of slavery on humanitarian grounds.

During the 20^th century, Bacardi’s aggressive international marketing and advertising campaigns made them the one brand that people most associated with Cuba aside from some cigar manufacturers like Cohiba and Romeo y Julieta. They also helped promote the image of Havana as a sophisticated hang out in the tropics with first rate nightclubs, opulent hotels, casinos, high end restaurants, and pristine beaches lined with palm trees. Part of their marketing strategy involved pampering tourists by keeping them drunk.

By the time the Cuban Revolution complicated the Bacardis’ privileged position in Cuba, Pepin Bosch was in charge of operations. Being the progressives that they were, the Bacardi corporation supported and funded Fidel Castro as he led his peasant army out of the Sierra Maestra in Oriente Province to seize Havana and conquer the island nation. This decision came back to bite them when Castro and Che Guevara nationalized all the rum factories. Even worse, Guevara, who knew little about economics and even less about rum production, tried to change the company’s method of making rum. Pepin Bosch, along with thousands of other Cubans, fled to Miami, leaving the factory in Santago de Cuba in the hands of a less experienced relative.

Castro failed when he attempted to sell post-Revolution manufactured Bacardi rum internationally due to Pepin Bosch’s shrewd maneuvering around international trademark law. Cuba was allowed to manufacture Bacardi rum, but were unable to sell it outside the country. Castro and company eventually began producing rum under the label of Havana Club which became one of the only sources of export product revenue that Cuba could obtain after the fall of communism. Meanwhile, Bacardi set up shop in Puerto Rico and has been associated with that island ever since. The company has also been involved in American politics and lobbying, guiding the the government’s hands into their deep trouser pockets since the 1970s So if you wonder why the United States have had some odd policies regarding Cuba in the past several decades, be aware that Bacardi Inc. has a lot to do with it.

Tom Gjelten has an obviously favorable view of the Bacardi corporation and the nation of Cuba in general. It is also obvious that he is strongly biased against the Castro regime. With all political opinions aside, this book is valuable in portraying Cuban history and society from multiple levels. He demonstrates that the Bacardis have been so deeply enmeshed in the development and historical events of Cuba that the history of the family and the company is impossible to tell without relating it to the evolution of the country itself. By reading this, you learn the most important parts of Cuban history. By approaching the subject from an angle of business and industry, Gjelten also offers a sharp critique of a nation that got derailed by a political movement that went wrong. You also learn a bit about the Cuban exile community in the U.S. and how they have shaped international relations. Finally you get some insight into how corporate branding can play a role in international perceptions of a sovereign country and whether those perceptions are accurate or not. Gjelten thoroughly vindicates the Bacardi family business, but then again, I haven’t heard of any books written as detractions of them either, so this book stands alone as a unique take on Cuba, business, and economics.

The other benefit of this book is its readability. Gjelten juggles passages about history, business, culture, industry, and biography. You may not be enthusiastic about all the fine details of industrial rum manufacturing, but you can be sure that when those parts of the history come up, he won’t dwell on the subject too long and eventually he will move on to something of more interest to you. In this way, Gjelten creates hooks for a wide ranging audience with varied interests and puts you in the company of details and ideas you might not otherwise pursue out of general interest. This is good for the flexibility of the reader’s mind.

From the start, the history of the Bacardi family business is a typical one like so many stories we hear of immigrants arriving in the New World with virtually nothing who built up a fortune through hard work, brainpower, and dedication. But Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba shows that this story is not always unique to the United States. It also shows how the small empire built on a foundation of enterprise and good intentions can be little more than a sand castle being washed away by the waves of the Caribbean Sea. Pepin Bosch had the foresight to build Bacardi castles all over the world so that when the hurricane came, the family didn’t lose everything. Tom Gjelten also informs you as to why there is a bat on the labels of Bacardi rum bottles. The reason for that is more mundane than you might expect.

 

Book Review

Opium and Empire:

The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson

by Richard J. Grace

     Imagine some people in a neighboring country, like Mexico for instance, decide that a certain drug, maybe crystal meth or fentanyl, has a potentially giant market in another country like the U.S.A. So they decide to start businesses that manufacture and traffic these drugs. Of course these narcotics are dangerous, wrecking people’s health and causing addiction as well as draining people of their money and landing them in prison; therefore the American government classifies these drugs as illegal, criminalizes their sales and distribution, and labels the businessmen as purveyors of organized crime, drug syndicates, and cartels. But from the Mexican traffickers’ point of view, they aren’t doing anything wrong. They provide work for poor people and make money in a country that isn’t rich. Furthermore, the drug sales provide a steady income whereas other business ventures tend to be less predictable and unstable. Farmers who want to grow produce, like avocados for example, grow some banned substances to keep their finances steady while the market for vegetables fluctuates. This benefits trucking companies too who smuggle drugs in boxes of cucumbers and cilantro across the border, providing work for truck drivers who need to pay rent and feed their families. Of course, a lot of Americans, especially the government and police, think this whole situation is rotten so they fight back hard. Now imagine the Mexican cartels decide to start a war with America to force them into legalizing their drugs so the gangsters south of the border can make even more money than they already do. Eventually they convince the US government to give them the entire city of San Diego so they can have a convenient base for the distribution of their goods. All praise be to Santa Muerte.

This is roughly what happened when the Jardine-Matheson trading company began selling opium on the black market in China at about the same time the Napoleonic Wars began. Richard J. Grace, in his Opium and Empire, tells the story of this nefarious corporation and concludes that they weren’t such bad people and were, in fact, just ordinary businessmen who just happened to do trade in a vice that ruined people’s lives.

You could just as well argue that good things Mexican drug cartels do outweigh the bad. It isn’t fair that dangerous narcotics are illegal in El Norteno and they are really just ordinary gentlemen who provide a service that is in demand anyways. They work hard to earn their money and there’s nothing a red-blooded American capitalist loves more than people who get rich by working hard. Hell, you might even say that the cartels are nothing more than heroes of free market capitalism, letting the invisible hand of the marketplace decide what people buy and sell. Right?

Right?

The story of William Jardine and James Matheson begins in Scotland more innocently than one might expect. Jardine came from a poor farming family and got employed as a surgeon for the East India Company, Great Britain’s colonial trading and shipping monopoly. The younger Matheson came from an upper class family in Edinburgh and eventually went on to work for the East India Company too. He met up with Jardine in India, the two paired up, and went to work as speculators, trading in silk, rice, tea, and, most importantly, opium which they purchased in India and shipped to China.

The kingdom of China at that time was closed to foreigners. They would not allow outsiders to enter their lands for business so they sectioned off a strip of the river bank running along the outskirts of Canton, or what is now known as Guangdong. There they were allowed to build a tiny village of warehouses, factories, and living quarters. Chinese merchants came to the riverfront to do business, buying and selling all commodities except opium which was illegal in China. But Jardine-Matheson insisted on peddling opium since the addiction it caused guaranteed a steady flow of wealth which helped to supplement their more volatile trading goods whose prices fluctuated unpredictably. The Jardine-Matheson company therefore sold opium offshore in international waters to smugglers who brought it onto the mainland. If Jardine-Matheson couldn’t sell opium the legal way, they had no qualms about breaking Chinese laws to make their fortune.

A large portion of this book describes the backgrounds of these two businessmen and the running on their company. It also details how they grew to such prominence as the East India Comany monopoly ended, making room for other companies to enter the competitive colonial markets. Most of this is ordinary business history explaining the methods and functions of Jardine-Matheson. If that is within the scope of your interest, it might be exciting, but actually the writing is often dry and boring. The several passages about finance and banking are especially dull. There is nothing more boring then people talking about money, especially when it gets a bit technical. It is even worse than watching golf on TV.

The story gets more exciting in the run-up to the Opium Wars. After the Chinese government seized and destroyed the entire inventory of opium, Jardine and Matheson pressured the British government to invade China in retaliation and to demand compensation for the lost products. The second Opium War happened when the British colonial government decided to force China to legalize opium for the benefit of British businesses and the extension of British colonial power. Talk about a sense of entitlement. And yes, large numbers of people died over this. Along the way, China gave the mostly uninhabited island of Kowloon, Hong Kong to the British for the sake of allowing them to have a base for business-dealings in the region. So selling illegal drugs on the black market in China was the primary source of finance for building up the British Empire. Maybe in the future, Latin American drug cartels will rule the world.

The end of the book has a long chapter about the lives of Jardine and Matheson after retirement. It isn’t especially interesting. Then, in the epilogue, the author evaluates the Jardine-Matheson company from a moral and historical standpoint. He acknowledges that selling illegal drugs on the black market and starting two wars with China was kind of a crappy thing to do, but he lets them off with a slap on the hand, figuratively speaking, because they were really just a couple of ordinary businessmen who did a lot of good things for their communities back in the British Isles. More importantly, they belonged to some prominent social clubs back home and were considered respectable men by other members of the upper class. Richard Grace goes so far as to say that they were historically important, as if that could even be denied, and their amorality was of little consequence because they were pioneers of free market capitalism. Well, that is actually a weak argument for those of us who are not especially enthusiastic about capitalism to begin with.

And about those Mexican cartels...well they may be harming and endangering a lot of lives, but they are putting people to work and financially enriching their local communities, so it isn’t all that bad, is it? Besides those guys are fun to hang out with wow do they ever throw some fantastic parties and that’s really what’s important. Who cares about all those clucks who buy their drugs on the streets. It’s their own fault they’re losers because they didn’t choose to get a job and work like the rest of us. Right? Yeah right.

I don’t know anything about the author Richard J. Grace, but I can say for sure that we don’t see eye to eye when it comes to values. Opium and Empire tells the story of the Jardine-Matheson company, saying what it needs to say to accomplish that. It is a boring book, however, written by an author with questionable morals. He claims that Jardine and Matheson were not merelya couple of sleazy drug dealers. But just because they hid behind a facade of respectability and a Protestant work ethic, doesn’t mean they weren’t a couple of slimeballs at heart. I don’t think Grace is necessarily immoral, but I get the impression his ethics are in the wrong order. This book does serve a historical purpose, but there has to be an account of this company that is more engaging and a little more balanced. The Chinese perspective on this history is barely even mentioned.

If you visit Hong Kong now, you will find a skyscraper in the center of Kowloon with a unique architectural feature. It is a slender rectangle with its cladding entirely permeated with round windows like portholes. This is the Jardine House, world headquarters of the Jardine-Matheson company which still exists to this day. Because of its unique appearance, the local citizens of Hong Kong have nicknamed it the House of 1000 Assholes. Sometimes I wonder if the people of Hong Kong think back over the times when Chinese peasants became emaciated from lounging in opium dens while their families starved to death because all their income went to feeding their addictions. Maybe that name doesn’t actually indicate how they feel about the Jardine House’s appearance but actually signifies how they feel about all the company’s employees that got rich and powerful by enslaving Chinese people to narcotics. Richard Matheson justified the opium trade by saying he had never seen a Chinaman “beastialized” by opium use. I’m not sure what he meant by “beastialized”, but one thing is certain: while he was running his smuggling business and throwing dinner parties in his mansion, he wasn’t spending time in the opium dens of China, observing how his drug was ruining people’s lives. Just an ordinary businessman? No I don’t think so, but then again take a look at the businessmen of the 21^st century. I’m not sure they any better.