Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba

by Gjelten, Tom

  Discouraged by the political situation, Emilio and his brother Facundo Jr. finally turned their attention to their father’s rum business, as he had long wanted them to do.

  With reform forces frustrated, many Cubans concluded that their nation would gain its independence only through a revolutionary war like the ones fought by other Spanish colonies in Latin America fifty years earlier. Before the Cubans moved to armed revolt, however, they would have to deal with the issue of race. The prospect of an empowered black majority on the island had for years kept many white Cubans from pushing for independence, because they figured that without Spanish colonial authority behind them they would lose their privileged place in the country. Now that it appeared there might be no alternative to independence, white liberal Cubans had to face their racial fears squarely. It was unrealistic to think an independent Cuba could keep a large part of its population enslaved. Moreover, it was clear that an independence war could not be won without the active participation of black fighting forces, and Cuban blacks and mulattoes would not support any movement that did not promise an end to slavery. The only revolution with any prospect of success in Cuba would be one whose goals included democracy and racial equality as well as independence.

  This would be an ambitious project for a society in which slavery was entrenched and in which blacks and whites did not yet freely mix. Most upper-class Cubans in the 1860s owned slaves. A wealthy Santiago woman would have a female slave attendant to help her dress in the mornings, run errands for her during the day, and even crouch behind her during a theater performance that night. Slaves cooked and cleaned houses and drove the family carriage. Many were well treated, but they remained vulnerable to their masters’ whims. The slightest transgression of “slave law,” as defined by the slave owner, could bring a severe flogging for even a trusted horseman or a woman’s devoted attendant. Male slave owners could take sexual liberties with their female slaves without fear of the legal consequences. José Bacardi Massó, Don Facundo’s unmarried brother and business partner, is believed to have fathered two children by slave women, a son named Juan and a daughter named Carmen.3 Slaves could under some conditions earn their freedom, but even emancipated slaves had severely restricted rights.

  Still, the color lines were not drawn as sharply in Cuba as they were in the Southern United States at the time. Slaves had the legal right to purchase their freedom, and through frugality and enterprise many managed to do so. Freed blacks worked as artisans, shopkeepers, or musicians, often devoting a share of their earnings to guilds that were set up to help those still enslaved. There were numerous social events where Cubans of all colors were well represented, and interracial cooperation in the anti-Spanish cause was evident from the beginning. Antonio Maceo, a politically aware young mulatto in Santiago who had worked as a mule driver, caught the attention of a liberal lawyer in the city who introduced him to a group of white merchants active in anti-Spanish plotting. In 1864 they invited Maceo to join the local Masonic lodge. Like other Masonic lodges around the country, the Santiago temple served as a center of revolutionary planning, due largely to the secrecy around lodge membership and operations. Maceo, the son of a black Dominican woman and a Venezuelan soldier, eventually became a revolutionary hero, known as the Bronze Titan. He commanded white Cuban officers and a large multiracial army, holding a position of authority that would have been unimaginable for a black U.S. soldier at the time.

  The first Cuban war for independence began in the fall of 1868 when a plantation owner freed his slaves and invited them to join him in taking up arms against the Spanish military. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, who raised sugar near the eastern town of Yara, was an advocate of democracy and liberal ideas who, like Emilio Bacardi, had been educated in Spain. In the predawn hours of October 10, 1868, Céspedes was meeting at his home with a small group of like-minded growers to discuss plans for an armed revolt when word arrived that the Spanish authorities had learned of their conspiracy and put out an order for their arrest. Knowing they had little chance of escape, Céspedes told his coconspirators it was time to move, and then he summoned his slave overseer, a man named Borrero.

  “Ring the bell and call the fila, Borrero,” he said, meaning the slaves were to be assembled in rank and file, as they were each day when an assignment was to be given. The slaves, both men and women, came stumbling sleepily out of their huts, still weary from the previous day’s labor, and lined up obediently in front of their master. Céspedes then addressed them in a booming voice.

  “Citizens,” he said, “up until now you have been my slaves. From this moment on, you are as free as I am. To win its independence and freedom, Cuba needs every one of its sons. Those of you who want to follow me, follow. Those who want to stay here, stay. Everyone will be equally free.”

  The declaration became known as the Grito de Yara (the Cry of Yara), and it was repeated across the island as a proclamation of Cuba’s independence and an invitation to all Cubans to join in a revolutionary struggle to free their country from Spanish rule. Céspedes appointed himself commander of his little revolutionary army, which at first consisted of just 147 fighters, including his own liberated slaves. But the Grito de Yara drew an immediate response, and by the end of the month Céspedes had twelve thousand men under his command. Many were dressed poorly and armed only with machetes, the long, heavy, curved knives used to cut cane and clear underbrush. But their ranks grew each time they entered a city shouting “¡Viva Cuba libre! ¡Independencia o muerte!” (Long live free Cuba! Independence or death!).

  In Santiago, Emilio and Facundo Jr. joined their friends in cheering the early success of the fledgling rebel army, though they were not personally convinced the time was yet right for an armed revolt, nor were they prepared to answer the call to arms themselves. Others in their La Flor del Siboney circle had no such qualms. Pío Rosado, the high-strung arithmetic teacher who was always ready for adventure, wanted to fight but had no weapon. Clever as a fox, Rosado figured the easiest way to get one was to enlist in the voluntarios. As soon as the militia leaders gave him a rifle and a safe conduct pass, he deserted his unit and headed for the hills.

  The Bacardi brothers held back partly out of respect for their father, who remained a loyal peninsular Spaniard. By the time the independence war broke out, Don Facundo was a respected merchant in Santiago known for his honest dealings and his years of service to the community. With his roots in Catalonia, a semiautonomous and linguistically distinct region of Spain that had long suffered under Madrid’s administration, he knew that rule from the metrópoli could be arbitrary, but he was totally against the idea of an armed insurrection. Indeed, his response to the independence movement was to join the Círculo Español, a charity and recreation group set up to protect and promote the peninsular element in Santiago. Emilio and Facundo Jr. therefore found themselves in a difficult position, committed to the Cuban cause but reluctant to upset their father. Facundo Jr. in particular was troubled. Four years younger than his brother and not having had Emilio’s experience living away from his family, Facundo Jr. was less independent of his father than Emilio was. By 1868 he was working at his father’s side in the distillery, learning the art and craft of rum making and preparing to follow in his footsteps. Young Facundo was just twenty years old at the time, and the thought of crossing his stern father still unnerved him.

  For his part, Emilio feared that an armed struggle would set Cuban against Cuban in a bloody conflict with devastating consequences. The real enemy, he argued, was not so much the government in Madrid as it was the Spanish colonial administration in Cuba. A few months earlier, liberal forces in Spain had managed to remove Isabella II from the throne and install a provisional government that promptly drafted a new constitution establishing universal male suffrage and freedom of the press. In a message to his governors around the island, however, the Spanish captain-general in Havana ordered that repressive policies should be continued, “no matter who is in power on the peninsula.” When
discussing politics among his friends, Emilio took the position that Cuban nationalists should declare their solidarity with the reformers in Madrid and then work to install a new colonial administration that would honor the constitution enacted back in Spain.

  Though he was just twenty-four and had no formal leadership role in the revolutionary movement, Emilio came up with a brazen plan to unseat the colonial governor in Santiago. His idea was to spark a mass uprising in front of the governor’s palace at the Plaza de Armas on the night of December 4, 1868. The plaza that night would be full of people assembling for a retreta, a musical promenade held two nights a week. Emilio’s idea was to disrupt the gathering with a short but fiery speech in which he would urge his fellow townspeople to move en masse on the governor’s palace, which faced the plaza. His brother Facundo Jr. and a few close friends agreed to help.

  By 8 that night, a crowd had begun to assemble at the plaza. Gas lanterns cast soft halos on the square, illuminating the greenery, the gravel walkway around the plaza perimeter, and the benches alongside. The governor’s military band was seated off to one side, playing a variety of operatic selections and Cuban dances. Gentlemen in white twill suits and panama hats strolled leisurely around the plaza, smoking cigars. The ladies came in dresses of delicate muslin or linen, with long folds that swept the ground, and they carried fans, which they fluttered constantly.

  Emilio and his brother had been to many retretas to watch the girls parade, but on this night they stood nervously on the edge of the plaza, keeping an eye on the Santiago governor, who was watching from his palace balcony. Other conspirators were in position opposite the government building. Emilio had even recruited some guards from the customshouse, and they stood on an adjacent corner, waiting to help lead the uprising. According to the routine of past retretas, the military band would stop playing at 10 P.M. and move to the front of the governor’s palace, where they would play the “Himno de Riego,” a favorite Spanish anthem, and then depart the square in a procession. On this night, the playing of the “Himno” was to be the signal for the uprising. Emilio would make his speech, and his coconspirators, strategically positioned around the plaza, would begin shouting “¡Libertad!” and “¡Viva Cuba libre, unida a España!” (Freedom! Long live a free Cuba, united with Spain!) Emilio was to urge the crowd to converge on the governor’s palace and demand that he resign. Several of the band members had agreed beforehand to stay in place rather than depart the square, and a unit of military engineers and the crew of a visiting war frigate were also supposed to support the action.

  Almost nothing, however, went according to plan. The band did not move toward the governor’s house as it normally would have. The townspeople began leaving the square before the band began playing the “Himno,” unaware of anything out of the ordinary. The frigate crew was nowhere to be seen. Emilio, noticing the crowd in the plaza dispersing, began hollering to get their attention and managed to make a short speech. Facundo Jr. and the other conspirators responded with their “viva”s but to no effect. Those townspeople who had stopped to listen seemed confused by what was happening. Several policemen on the scene, suspecting an effort to incite a disturbance, moved quickly toward the Bacardi brothers, who then turned and fled. One officer managed to grab Facundo Jr. by the arm, but he was able to break loose and run away.

  Writing in retrospect, Emilio acknowledged that his plan was nothing but “foolish audacity.” It’s not easy to arrange spontaneous uprisings beforehand. The townspeople who assembled to watch the retreta hardly represented the most rebellious element in Santiago, and Emilio and Facundo and their friends had not thought their plot through very carefully. The Bacardi brothers were fortunate to avoid imprisonment. Both were well known in the city, and given the authorities’ well-organized intelligence network, it was inconceivable that the two had not been identified in the square. The prominence of their social position may have saved them. Spanish officials may also have considered the Bacardis’ advocacy of reform over revolution and concluded that it was not in the regime’s interest to radicalize them and like-minded reformistas. At the time, the armed insurgency was heating up in the countryside, and the authorities did not want to fuel it.

  Within weeks, combat was taking place in the outskirts of Santiago. On Christmas Eve, Spanish troops and militia members took up positions on street corners around the city, and word spread that the rebels were about to arrive in the city. The heightened security, however, was actually for a meeting between the governor and a rebel emissary. The insurgent representative, accompanied by a Spanish cavalry officer, rode into town on horseback, evidently unconcerned that he could be captured and killed. To the astonishment of old friends, students, and neighbors, it turned out to be none other than Pío Rosado, the former schoolteacher, already a colonel in the revolutionary army barely two months after heading to the mountains. Rosado carried a letter from Carlos Manuel de Céspedes with a complaint that Spanish soldiers were summarily executing captured rebels. Céspedes warned that if the governor did not order an end to the practice, the rebel forces would institute the same policy. The governor rejected the complaint but ordered that Rosado be given safe passage out of the city. When he left the governor’s palace, Rosado found that a group of voluntarios had cut the stirrups off his saddle. “Idiots,” he muttered, and then he leaped deftly onto his horse’s back and rode haughtily out of town.

  The volunteers were key to the Spanish counterrevolutionary effort, but their fondness for violence sometimes embarrassed even the colonial administration. Any Spanish official who did not take a hard line with the Cuban rebels could find himself in trouble with the voluntarios, whose preferred solution to the insurgency was to smash it militarily and terrorize its civilian base. Some of the voluntario units could be considered an early Cuban version of the fascist paramilitaries that in later years would make their appearance in Nazi-controlled Europe or the racist white militias that battled native Algerians or black South Africans. Their recruitment methods were not subtle, as Emilio Bacardi himself discovered. When a group of local voluntarios showed up at his family’s house to demand his enlistment, Emilio refused to let them in. “If you call yourselves volunteers, what are you doing here?” he said. “I haven’t asked for any weapon!” An angry exchange and a shoving match ensued. It ended only when Emilio grabbed a rifle that the quartermaster had brought for him, threw it out the window into the street, and ordered the voluntarios out of his family’s house.

  Competing social and political pressures were putting Emilio in an impossible situation. Now twenty-four, his adolescence and early adulthood had been shaped by conflict. He was torn between his devotion to his own slave-owning family and his personal antislavery views, between his commitment to his father and the enterprise that was his father’s life work and his dedication to the struggle for a free Cuba, which was taking more of his time and energy. The tensions in his life appeared again and again, especially as Emilio took on more responsibility in the family and in his father’s rum business, where commercial considerations regularly crossed with political realities. His instinct always was to seek compromise solutions, but the Spanish authorities were taking such an intransigent line that any middle ground between the colonial regime and the insurgency was fast disappearing.

  A turning point for Emilio came in the spring of 1869. On March 26, Good Friday, a solemn religious procession through downtown Santiago was interrupted when someone suddenly shouted “¡Viva Cuba libre!” Police immediately rushed into the crowd in search of the provocateur, causing pandemonium. A young slave named Cornelio Robert, the property of a prominent anti-Spanish activist in Santiago, was arrested and subjected within hours to a court-martial by Spanish military commanders. Mindful of the slave rebellion that had led to France losing Haiti, the Spanish colonial authorities were determined to show no leniency toward suspected black rebels in Cuba. Though no incriminating evidence was presented against him, Robert was immediately found guilty of infidencia (unfa
ithfulness or treason) and executed by firing squad early the next morning. “The Spanish authorities wanted to send a message,” the Santiago historian Ernesto Buch López wrote of the episode, “and they were not to be deterred by mere legalities. Their intent was to carry out a series of ‘legal murders’ that would sow terror in the population.” Over the next week, several more alleged rebel sympathizers were arrested and immediately shot. The authorities officially defined the crime of infidencia to include providing refuge or intelligence to rebels, expressing subversive or seditious sentiments, spreading propaganda, “and anything else with a political end that disturbs peace and public order or in some way undermines the national integrity.”

  Disgusted by the bloody crackdown, Emilio Bacardi gave up the reformista path and became a revolutionary, devoting himself to underground activities. He was given the assignment of soliciting funds to purchase arms and ammunition for the rebel army, and he served as an intermediary among the fighters in the hills, their supporters in Santiago, and the overseas exiles supporting the revolution. According to Bacardi lore, Emilio himself wanted to join the combatants in the hills, but his comrades argued that he would be more useful in Santiago. It was probably just as dangerous an assignment, given the network of Spanish spies in the city and the consequences of being identified as a supporter of the rebel cause.

  Soon it was Don Facundo who was in an awkward position. He did not support revolution, but neither did he endorse the oppressive policies of the colonial administration. When he discovered that some of his peninsular compatriots in the Círculo Español were financing voluntario death squads, he separated himself from the organization. That action, and his unwillingness to denounce Emilio, soon got Facundo himself in trouble with the authorities. He and his wife were summoned to the palace in Santiago one day to meet with the governor, who heatedly demanded to know why they were allowing their sons to involve themselves with subversives. Don Facundo sullenly refused to answer, but Doña Amalia was not in the least intimidated.