Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba

by Gjelten, Tom

  On the orders of José Martí, standing by in Florida, the new revolution was launched on February 24, 1895, beginning with a small uprising directed by General Guillermo Moncada of Santiago, a Bacardi friend and ally. Antonio Maceo and a small contingent arrived at the end of March, and Máximo Gómez came about two weeks later. José Martí himself accompanied the aging general. After a short sail from Haiti, they came ashore on a rocky beach in Guantánamo province in a driving rainstorm, with Martí taking the forward oar in the rowboat from their ship. Until that point, Martí had served the revolutionary cause exclusively in a civilian capacity, as organizer, strategist, and pamphleteer. Gómez and other military leaders argued that he was more valuable in that role than as a combatant, but Martí was determined to go to Cuba and fight alongside other revolutionaries. The Cuban people, he had written, would view with “a certain disdain and coldness the services of one who preaches the necessity of dying and does not begin by risking his own life.”

  Martí had been in ill health much of the preceding year, and with his slight physique and lack of combat experience he was at a huge disadvantage compared to the other military veterans with whom he was traveling. The humble soldiers around him, however, deferred to Martí as if to a visiting statesman and insisted on calling him Presidente. Though Gómez and other general officers in his company did their best to keep him away from the front, Martí was determined to see combat. He finally got a chance on May 19, when Gómez and the men under his command made contact with a detachment of Spanish troops. While Gómez was carrying out an encircling move, Martí approached a young military aide, asked him for a revolver, and insisted that they go to the front. The two men rode at a full gallop toward the sound of fighting, down a lane flanked by tall trees, and straight into an ambush. Martí, mounted on a white horse, was shot in the chest and died instantly.

  Martí’s martyrdom galvanized Cubans, inspiring an outpouring of volunteers for the revolution. Arguably, however, he could have had an even greater impact if he had lived. No one else had his vision or leadership quality, and had he become the first president of a free and independent Cuba—which he surely would have been—the country might have been spared some of the political agonies it subsequently suffered.

  Chapter 5

  Cuba Libre

  The Santiago train station was crowded with Sunday travelers and Spanish soldiers. It was Easter, and the day was fair and bright, but on that morning the hubbub was a phenomenon of war. Getting in and out of Santiago had become risky and unpredictable, and the train was by then the safest way to travel. The countryside was effectively under the control of rebel fighters, and there were skirmishes almost every day with Spanish troops. The police had set up checkpoints on all the roads leading out of Santiago in an effort to stop young Cuban men from heading to the mountains to join the rebels, but many were slipping through, some of them by train.

  Seventeen-year-old Emilito Bacardi, standing alone on the railway platform, was one of them. He had said his good-byes at home, knowing there would be spies and secret police at the train station. In the six weeks or so since the second war for Cuban independence had begun, Emilito had schemed to join the fight. He and his younger brother Daniel grew up hearing stories about the first war and the role that their father had played in the struggle. Between themselves, they resolved to head to the mountains together as soon as the opportunity arose. Their father had stopped Daniel, who was barely sixteen years old, sickly, and of little use to the rebel army, but Emilito would turn eighteen that summer, and Emilio figured he had no right to stand in his way. From his own experience, however, Emilio knew what mortal danger his son would face as a fighter in the rebel army, and when he and Elvira tearfully embraced their boy that morning, they realized they might never see him again.

  Emilito watched some Spanish soldiers in seersucker uniforms and straw hats pace nervously along the platform. He fidgeted with his train ticket, trying his best to look nonchalant. If asked, he would say he was going to see his step-grandmother, Elvira Cape’s mother, which in fact was true, because her coffee plantation near the town of La Maya happened to be an assembly point for rebel recruits. He had only a small bag, no weapon except for a little knife made for sharpening pencils, no military training, and little notion of what he could offer the rebel army except his determination to fight for the cause of Cuba Libre.

  At El Cristo, about seven miles outside Santiago, Emilito got off the train, “borrowed” a horse, and headed to the Cape plantation, known locally as Santo Domingo. A black muleteer by the name of Sixto who worked on the plantation but had ties to the mambises put Emilito in touch with a nearby unit. Thanks largely to his father’s position and reputation in the revolutionary movement, Emilito was soon given a rifle and his own horse. Within weeks, he was participating in combat actions.

  After a few months in the field, he was assigned to General Antonio Maceo himself, the “Bronze Titan.” Emilio, an old acquaintance, had written Maceo a letter: “General, my son has gone off to the war, and I would like him to fight under your command.” It was hardly a move that would ensure Emilito’s safety. Maceo’s battlefield exploits were legendary. Those who fought alongside him were inspired by his fearlessness and tended to follow his lead, so going into combat at Maceo’s side would be risky. On the other hand, Maceo was certain to take special care of his good friend’s son. Upon receiving the letter, Maceo sent immediately for Emilito, had him commissioned as a second lieutenant, and made him an aide-de-camp.

  “It was the most emotional moment in my life,” Emilito recalled later of his commissioning by Maceo, “finding myself so near to him, shaking his hand, hearing his voice. I had already been part of the forces under his command, and I had been admiring him for a long time, in all the grandeur of his military genius.”

  This was the ideal of the Cuban revolution: a young white man from a privileged background feeling honored to serve under a dark-skinned commander who was descended from slaves and had once been a mule driver. For a true revolutionary, racism was not just wrong; it was unpatriotic. Cuba Libre was to be a land governed by Cubans, for all Cubans.

  Emilio Bacardi wanted to go to the mountains himself to join Maceo and the others he had known and conspired with for years, but he was quickly dissuaded by his wife Elvira and his friends. He was fifty and in no shape for the rigors of guerrilla duty. His eyesight was poor, and he was lost without the thick glasses he wore. He and Elvira now had three young daughters of their own, in addition to Emilio’s six children from his marriage to María. There was the family business to manage. His brother-in-law Enrique Schueg was proving to be a huge asset, but the rum company teetered constantly on the edge of insolvency and still required close attention. Finally, Emilio had his underground responsibilities in Santiago, where he was the linchpin of the entire conspiratorial network. No one else had his contacts or knowledge or organizational skills. José Martí might not have been able to resist the call to arms, but Emilio was a much more practical man. It made no sense at all for him to go to the mountains, and he knew it.

  In September 1895, five months after Emilito left home, the Bacardi Cape household was shaken again. Emilio’s second son, sixteen-year-old Daniel, died from a chronic illness that had plagued him since childhood. Disconsolate, Emilio initially decided to withdraw from all revolutionary work, but in the end he concluded he had to persevere. His role in the underground had become even more important after his close friend and coconspirator Federico Pérez Carbó sneaked out of town to join Maceo, his former commander, leaving Emilio with enormous responsibilities to handle on his own. He dared not dwell long on the loss of Daniel nor on the absence of news from Emilito.

  Santiago was more militarized by the day. Spanish soldiers on horseback were on the streets day and night, and uniformed police manned guard posts in each of the public squares. On the outskirts of town, members of the “Civil Guard” patrolled by foot. After 10 P.M., people were not allowed to gather in gr
oups, either outdoors or in homes, not even for a funeral wake. The perimeter was sealed with a series of trenches and barbed-wire fences, which were monitored constantly. Agents reported every development that was slightly unusual, and within the revolutionary movement the need for secrecy was greater than ever. Only a few people beyond his immediate family circle were aware of Emilio’s activities. One was his brother-in-law Ramón Martínez, married to Elvira’s sister Herminia. Martínez, who knew José Martí from having shared a berth with him on a voyage to Jamaica, was gravely ill and confined to his bed by the time the new revolution broke out, but he told his wife to “do for Cuba’s freedom what I cannot.” Emilio suggested that Herminia bring Ramón to stay with him and Elvira in his last days. All the visitors coming to the Bacardi house to see Martínez, Emilio figured, would be a cover for the couriers and revolutionary agents who showed up almost every day.

  As the rebels’ intermediary, Emilio managed the correspondence between them and their outside allies and coordinated arms shipments and rebel supply requests. He oversaw the smuggling of ammunition rounds in bags of beans and rice and even arranged deliveries of dynamite, used by the rebel army to blow up bridges. Avoiding suspicion required constant effort and ingenuity. Emilio signed his correspondence “Phocion,” for the Athenian general and statesman known as The Good for his honesty and his commitment to democracy. When he dispatched money or supplies to the rebels in their mountain camps, he sent along half of a newspaper page, keeping the other half. If a different courier returned to make contact, he had to bring the missing half to verify his rebel identity.

  The strengthened ideological foundation of the second independence war meant that it had to be fought with attention to social and political objectives as well as military ones. The new Cuba was to be a nation with more equality and opportunity for its previously marginalized citizens of color, and this would require a realignment of social and economic relations. General Máximo Gómez felt that one of the mistakes of the Ten Years’ War had been the reluctance of the revolution’s leaders to challenge powerful economic interests, especially in western Cuba. By not taking the war to the sugar heartland, they had compromised the revolution’s commitment to the transformation of the country. Gómez also argued that more should be done to disrupt the economy and thereby cut off the revenue Spain needed from Cuba in order to finance the war.

  The strategic calculations were complicated, however. How would the commanders deal with the big landowners, for example? The destruction of sugar and coffee plantations would also hurt ordinary Cubans, and the commanders could not agree among themselves on how far to go with economic sabotage. In July 1895, Gómez issued a sweeping order: “The sugar plantations will stop their labors, and whoever shall attempt to grind the crops, notwithstanding this order, will have their cane burned and their buildings demolished.” The order also prohibited the transport of industrial, agricultural, and animal products to towns occupied by Spanish troops. But other commanders favored a more lenient approach. Antonio Maceo argued that planters should be allowed to continue grinding cane and producing sugar as long as they paid a war tax to the rebel army and did nothing to hurt the revolutionary cause. Across eastern Cuba, where he was in command, Maceo made several such agreements with planters and mill operators, and the taxes collected under the arrangement became a valuable source of revenue for the revolution.

  In Santiago, Emilio Bacardi supported Maceo’s position. Emilio himself, in fact, was collecting war taxes from several plantation owners in the Santiago region, beginning with his own mother-in-law on the Santo Domingo plantation. In some months, his collections totaled several hundred dollars, a significant amount for a cash-starved movement. Emilio’s opposition to the extreme measures favored by Gómez was also consistent with his family business interests. Bacardi & Compañía would have been shut down by a strict implementation of the ban on sugar production and the prohibition of commerce in Spanish-occupied areas. Without a steady supply of molasses, the Bacardis could not make rum, and if they could not move their product through Havana and other Spanish-controlled cities, they could not continue operations.

  Several of the Bacardis’ Cuban competitors, in fact, were already closed. Some distilleries were attached to sugar plantations and burned along with other plantation buildings; some distillery owners were targeted as “enemies” of the revolution; some got in trouble with the Spanish. One of the most successful rum producers in eastern Cuba, Brugal, Sobrino, & Compañía, moved operations out of Cuba in the midst of the war and never came back. The owner, Andrés Brugal, was solidly pro-Madrid, but his two sons were rebel sympathizers, and the authorities caught them smuggling machetes out of their father’s metalworking shop. Had it not been for Don Andres’s friendship with the Spanish commander in Santiago, the two young men probably would have been shot. As it was, the whole Brugal family was forced to move to the Dominican Republic, where their relocated rum company ultimately prospered.

  Given the wartime conditions, Bacardi & Compañía was able to maintain operations only through deft political maneuvering, shrewd management, and the good fortune of having a network of buyers and suppliers. Emilio knew which planters were continuing to grind cane—partly because he was dealing with them on behalf of the revolution—and was thus able to secure enough molasses to satisfy the distillery’s minimum needs. The factory workforce stayed relatively intact, even when many Santiago men went to join the rebel army. Emilio’s underground work earned his company an exemption from the revolution’s restriction of economic activity, while to the Spanish authorities the Bacardis’ determination to maintain operations suggested faith in the status quo. The risks associated with revolutionary activity, however, were underscored every time that work at the distillery on Matadero Street was interrupted by the sound of gunfire from the slaughterhouse down the street as someone else was lined up against the wall and shot. The death of Daniel, the dangers surrounding Emilio’s work, and the fear for Emilito’s safety weighed heavily on the family.

  Two days after becoming an aide to Antonio Maceo, Emilito and the rest of Maceo’s troops—including Federico Pérez Carbó, who had risen to the rank of colonel—embarked on what became known as the “invasion” of western Cuba, a march across the length of the island into the main sugar-growing areas and the fortified defensive positions of the Spanish army. Most of the rebel fighters were on horseback and carried machetes. In close fighting, the rebels used their machetes like swords, waving them above their heads as they charged, screaming, into the Spanish lines. Spanish soldiers who saw arms and heads lopped off with a single machete blow were terrified by the weapon. Time and time again, the rebel army forced the Spanish troops to retreat. By December 1895, Maceo’s forces were in Matanzas province, east of Havana. Eighteen-year-old Emilito Bacardi was wounded in close fighting around a Spanish-held fortress, though the wounds were relatively minor and he was able to rejoin Maceo after a short recuperation. A short time later, however, Federico Pérez Carbó was shot in the neck, and his injury was more serious. Maceo left him in the care of a sympathetic sugar mill owner, who eventually got him to Havana and aboard a ship to the United States for medical treatment.

  In January 1896, General Arsenio Martínez Campos, the Spanish commander during the Ten Years’ War, resigned in frustration just nine months after being called back to lead Spanish troops in Cuba again. He was replaced by General Valeriano Weyler, who was known for his ruthlessness when he served in Cuba during the first independence war. In spite of their stunning advance, however, the Cubans were still significantly short of victory. The Spanish troops remained firmly in control of Havana. Most of their losses were due not to combat but to yellow fever and other tropical diseases to which the Spanish soldiers were especially vulnerable. Overall, the war was largely stalemated. On his first day in command, Weyler issued a proclamation to all Cubans, warning he was taking charge of their island “with the determination that it shall never be given up by me, and that I
shall keep it in the possession of Spain.... I shall be generous with the subdued and to all those doing any service to the Spanish cause. But I will not lack the decisiveness and energy to punish, with all the rigor the law allows, those who in any way help the enemy.”

  Inevitably, Emilio Bacardi again became a target of Spanish suspicions. One day in May 1896, a unit headed personally by Santiago’s police chief showed up at Emilio and Elvira’s house to carry out a search for anything that might link them to the rebels. Emilio had just written a series of coded letters to Maceo, Pérez Carbó, Emilito, and other rebels, and he was waiting for a courier 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 thirty years, was holding Lalita, 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 María, 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 rapped on the front door.