Books

Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba
By Tom Gjelten, Viking, 2008, 411 pp., $27.95

Why does a black bat stretch its wings inside a red circle at the top of a bottle of Bacardi rum?

It turns out that the bizarre logo for the world's most popular rum is the result of a commercial accident and not the trademark of a premeditated marketing campaign.

When Don Facundo Bacardi began peddling his homemade rum in Cuba in the 1860s, he sold the sugar cane based liquor in " . . . recycled olive oil containers that came with a picture of a bat on the wax seal. As Bacardi rum gained in popularity some customers in Santiago referred to it as el ron del murcielago (the rum of the bat) . . . ," writes Tom Gjelten in his significant new book on the Bacardi family. He explains that bats exemplified the ideals of brotherhood, self-confidence, discretion and faithfulness — all characteristics of the rich and powerful Bacardis.

The simple story of how the bat's image became the symbol of a family's vast wealth and political influence is the paradigm of Bacardi and The Long Fight For Cuba. Tom Gjelten's history of a troubled nation and one of its leading mercantile families relates the enduring Cuba/Bacardi love-hate relationship that has been distilling for 150 years.

Gjelten, a veteran correspondent for National Public Radio and the author of the best selling book, Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege, offers a fresh look at the island nation of Cuba, with new characters and a plot that does justice to the country's complicated, nuanced and troubled history.

"Cuban history was not preordained," Gjelten writes. "There were choices made and paths not taken, and the men and women who were excluded and then exiled deserve to have their contributions recognized, if only to understand why so many became so angry. The Bacardi saga serves all these purposes."

Today, the Bacardi distillery is the largest in the world, but it is located in San Juan, Puerto Rico, not in the family's beloved Cuba. How this drastic change came about is the story of a family's acquisition of spectacular wealth and the painful birth of a nation, a country that often mistreated its most devoted and patriotic citizens with treacherous retributions.

Early in the book Gjelten offers a quick disclaimer: He is not a maker of myths, nor does he intend to create false heroes within the Bacardi family or within the historical governments of Cuba. He does not ". . . propose the Bacardis as would-be saviors of Cuba. The Bacardi story appeals to me in part simply because it contains so many critical but unfamiliar elements of the modern Cuban drama. At every stage of the nation's development over the past century and a half, there is some Bacardi angle, some family member who is a key player . . . ." Rarely is a single family's fate so entwined with the fate of its nation.

When Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in the 1960s, one of his Communist regime's first acts was the confiscation of the Bacardi rum empire. The family was forced to flee to Puerto Rico and Mexico. There the Bacardis lost no time re-building the family's liquor business. By 2008, Bacardi Limited accounted for two-thirds of world-wide rum sales and controlled such familiar brands as Martini & Rossi, Dewers Scotch whiskey and Bombay gin.

For Gjelten, the conflict between the Bacardis and the Castro government symbolizes the division of the Cuban nation and the rival claims on the country's past. Here is where the book takes off in an attempt to sort out those claims, examining the Bacardi family in superb detail and relating its history to Cuba's national story. Gjelten also looks forward to a post-Castro Cuba and the possibility of a Bacardi family return to the land of their colorful ancestors.

As far as the bat is concerned, ". . . no marketing executive today would allow such a creepy image to identify a popular brand," Gjelten writes. But he likes to point out that current sales of Bacardi products are measured in the billions of dollars!

So, mix a Cuba Libre (Bacardi-rum-and-Coke), toast the bat and enjoy this exciting saga of one family struggling to come to terms with its own country.

Art Gould is a former newspaper reporter and book publisher. He lives in Anniston.