Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba

by Gjelten, Tom

  Fidel Castro and his team had already made clear they intended to implement sweeping economic and political changes in Cuba, but the country’s most prominent businessman was not alarmed. Back in Santiago after his meeting with López-Fresquet, Pepín Bosch dictated a series of letters to friends expressing nothing but enthusiasm for the new government. “It pleases me to inform you that things in Cuba are very good,” he wrote to a friend in Tampa. “I can tell you with all sincerity that the people are very happy and that if we stay on this path I foresee an excellent future for Cuba.” He also shared his views on Fidel Castro’s administration with his friend Luis Muñoz Marín, the governor of Puerto Rico. As a politician who considered himself a socialist in his youth, Muñoz Marín had taken great interest in Fidel Castro and his revolution and was making it known to his Cuban friends that he would help in any way he could. His comment to reporters on the mass executions was that it amounted to “a bad thing happening in the midst of a great thing.” In his letter to Muñoz Marín, Bosch expressed cautious hope that Fidel Castro would be an effective leader for Cuba. “To judge Dr. Castro’s capacity for governing is difficult,” Bosch observed, “because he has no history as such. But I have always said that a man who has known how to do what he has done and has known how to maintain discipline among a number of more or less great men necessarily has to have superior qualities, and it can be expected that he will have success.”

  The winter 1959 issue of Bacardi Gráfico, the company’s quarterly magazine, opened with a feature article titled “Crusade of Freedom,” celebrating the triumph of the revolution, with a full-page picture of Fidel Castro atop a tank holding a Cuban flag. “The people of Cuba found in Fidel Castro the exceptional figure they needed in their hour of distress,” the photo caption read. “At a time when most people doubted, he knew how to maintain faith and revive spirits.” The short editorial that ran opposite the picture left no doubt that Fidel and his revolution were admired within the Bacardi family:The first of January of 1959 brought a climate of freedom back to Cuba. In the Sierra Maestra and the Sierra Cristal, Fidel and Raúl Castro created a rebel army. The army was not defeated, and with the help of almost the entire Cuban population, a military and economic situation was created such that the dictatorship had to collapse.... Today we Cubans are happy. We have faith in our nation, and we hope that our country can be organized for the benefit of all and not just for the few, as it has been until now.

  The company magazine devoted two pages to profiles of Bacardi workers who had joined the revolution, and more such profiles were promised for the next issue. “We congratulate Dr. Fidel Castro and the people of Cuba,” the article concluded, “for this glorious victory that brings us so much happiness.”

  Pepín Bosch himself approved every word that went into Bacardi Gráfico, and there is no reason to think the published tributes to Castro and his revolution were anything but sincere. The new government included men Bosch had known and respected for years, beginning with Manuel Urrutia, the Santiago judge who had been with Bosch at the country club dinner in June 1957. The prime minister was José Miró Cardona, formerly the head of the Cuban Bar Association. Felipe Pazos, whom Bosch had installed as president of Minera Occidental, was once again in charge of Cuba’s central bank. Finance Minister Rufo López-Fresquet was another highly regarded economist, generally considered probusiness, as was his vice minister, Antonio Jorge. The new foreign minister, Roberto Agramonte, had been the Ortodoxo candidate in the 1952 presidential election and would probably have won that year were it not for Batista’s coup.

  With his outspoken support for Castro’s revolutionary government, Pepín Bosch was daring to challenge the more conservative views of many people in Washington. The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Cuba, Earl Smith, opposed the U.S. decision to extend diplomatic recognition to the new regime, because—according to his later testimony—he feared Castro was a Marxist whose succession to power “would not be in the best interests of the United States.” Members of Congress were also quick to criticize Castro’s conduct. In mid-January 1959, Republican senator Homer Capehart of Indiana said the firing squad executions “create the spectacle of a bearded monster stalking through Cuba,” while Democratic representative Wayne Hays of Ohio asked State Department officials what they planned to do “to calm down Fidel Castro before he depopulates Cuba.”

  Bosch was clearly aware of such negative comments and did his best to spread the word that the developments in Cuba were no cause for worry. “The situation in Cuba is very sound,” he assured a Bacardi colleague in Nassau on January 23, referring to the uproar over the summary executions by firing squads. “While it is true that the prosecution of the murderers does create an international worry, internally it seems that the majority of the people are in favor of the procedure which is being followed.” In a January 27 letter to Alberto Parreño, the president of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce in New York, Bosch was determined to defend his country from those who were criticizing it abroad. “Now it’s your turn to help,” he told Parreño. “Maybe you could invite some pre-eminent person from Cuba to one of your lunches, to present the Cubans’ side of the story. Herbert Matthews would do it well.” (emphasis added) Bosch at the time was well aware that Matthews had written adulatory stories in the New York Times about Castro and his triumph and that he was being harshly criticized for them by Ambassador Smith and his allies in Congress.

  One U.S. politician whose views on Cuba matters aligned with Bosch’s own was Charles O. Porter, a liberal Democrat from Oregon who had been one of the leading congressional critics of U.S. arms shipments to Fulgencio Batista and who, after the rebels’ victory, became one of Fidel Castro’s strongest supporters in Washington. Porter visited Santiago in February 1959 and spoke at a banquet offered in his honor by local civic leaders, including Daniel Bacardi and Pepín Bosch. “Fidel Castro,” Porter said, “has done more than any other Cuban to move the consciences and the emotions of Americans and to remind your friends to the north of the historic and profound ties of friendship that unite Cuba with the United States.” Porter said the U.S. criticism of the summary trials and speedy executions in Cuba showed that Americans “did not comprehend how the indignation that was bottled up in a morally sensitive and oppressed people had to find some outlet, nor that the public judgments against known assassins was, in effect, a safety valve for a nation demanding retribution.” He praised Castro’s proposals for land reform, for reducing unemployment, and for reorganizing the Cuban military. At the same time, Porter was a cold warrior, and he warned his Santiago audience to “be careful with the Communists, who will try to make you believe that they speak as Cubans devoted to Cuba.” He suggested that Cubans should reach out to the United States for assistance and court constructive U.S. investment.

  Pepín Bosch was so pleased by Porter’s analysis of the Cuba situation that he had the complete text of his remarks translated and published in the Bacardi magazine. Like Porter, Bosch was prepared to believe that Castro could be good for Cuba, as long as he could be moderated. Bosch knew that radicalizing influences were at work in the country, and he recognized that Castro slipped easily into anti-U.S. rhetoric. But criticism of U.S. foreign policy was standard fare for a populist politician in Latin America. Bosch himself had not forgotten how in 1950 Wall Street bankers and their allies in Washington had opposed the National Bank of Cuba, for fear its creation would weaken the position of U.S. banks in Cuba. As a result of that experience, Bosch had concluded that Washington was sometimes more concerned about protecting U.S. investments in Cuba than about promoting Cuba’s own economic and political development. He was allied with Felipe Pazos and others on Castro’s team who wished the United States were more helpful. Among them was Finance Minister Rufo López-Fresquet, who in early February scolded a Wall Street Journal reporter in Havana for grilling him about the firing squads. “You Americans!” López-Fresquet said, shaking a finger at his visitor. “Instead of criticizing the executions, you ought t
o be doing everything you can to support our new government. We’ve just had the only non-Communist revolution of the 20th century!”

  The new authorities in Havana did indeed seem committed to bringing about sweeping social, political, and economic change in Cuba without veering in the direction of totalitarian Communism or alienating the United States. The question was whether it would be possible to maintain such a careful course. The inclination of reformers, including auténtico veterans such as Pepín Bosch and his friends, was to back the new government and urge the United States to do the same, while simultaneously pressing Fidel Castro and other revolutionary leaders to avoid sharp turns. Former President Ramón Grau San Martín, the founder of the Auténtico Party, went so far as to suggest that the United States give the Guantánamo naval base back to Cuba, a measure that would have helped satisfy the nationalist demands being made in the heat of the revolutionary moment. The U.S. government, wary of Fidel Castro and his intentions, refused to consider the idea.

  Conflict between the United States and the new Cuban regime was probably inevitable, notwithstanding the hopes of Cuban liberals for harmonious relations. Cuban nationalism for more than fifty years had been fueled by resentment of the U.S. domination of the country, and even a moderate revolutionary government was likely to challenge U.S. interests and provoke a negative reaction from Washington. Fidel Castro, moreover, appeared set from the beginning on having a combative relationship with the United States. After taking power, he refused for weeks to have a serious conversation with the new U.S. ambassador, and he seemed to go out of his way to pick fights with Washington. Those who knew Castro best could not have been surprised. He felt most comfortable operating in an atmosphere of confrontation, and the hegemonic power ninety miles to his north was his ideal adversary. In June 1958, while still in the Sierra Maestra, he had written to his aide Celia Sánchez that “the Americans are going to pay dearly for what they’re doing. When this war is over, I’ll start a longer and bigger war of my own: the war I’m going to fight against them. I realize that will be my true destiny.”

  It also became apparent that Bosch and other liberals were overestimating their influence in the new Cuba. As a former finance minister, respected businessman, and possible presidential contender, Bosch had been one of the country’s opinion leaders, and in early 1959 he had little reason to think his views no longer mattered. When Bosch objected to an item on the nightly “Hatuey Newsreel” on CMQ-TV, he could expect as the program’s sponsor that any changes he requested would be made. Thus, on January 27, displeased that the program producers were using film of firing squads at work, he sent a one-line note to the CMQ owner, Abel Mestre, a longtime business associate.

  My dear Abel,

  I beg you not to show any executions in the Hatuey newscast.

  Yours affectionately,

  José M. Bosch

  Bosch apparently did not realize that Mestre and other broadcast outlet owners now had to answer to Fidel Castro and his associates, and not just to commercial sponsors, if they wanted to stay in business. What Fidel wanted broadcast would be broadcast.

  Two weeks later, Bosch got another lesson in how Cuba was changing. Friends in Puerto Rico alerted him that unnamed Cuban emissaries were inserting themselves into the longstanding debate over Puerto Rico’s proper status with respect to the United States. On February 9, Bosch wrote to Cuban prime minister José Miró Cardona, an old acquaintance, to advise him of the developments. “It seems that some member of the [Cuban] government declared that Puerto Rico was a colony that had the right to be independent,” Bosch said. “You know well that the situation in Puerto Rico is the product of the free will of the people of that island, and a declaration by Cubans about its status could be used in such a way as to hurt our friends. Your efforts to avoid such frictions will be much appreciated.”

  Bosch was assuming that Miró Cardona controlled his own administration. But the “prime minister” had no such power. Even without a formal political office, Fidel Castro was the supreme authority in Cuba, and his government cabinet was fast becoming irrelevant. On February 13, four days after Bosch wrote to him about the Puerto Rico comments, José Miró Cardona resigned as prime minister, saying Castro held all the power in Cuba as the “chief of the revolution” and should therefore take the office for himself in order to avoid confusion over who was in charge. President Manuel Urrutia promptly appointed Castro to Miró Cardona’s old position. “Now the Government, the revolution and the people will take the same path,” declared the newspaper Revolución, the official organ of the July 26th Movement. New York Times correspondent Ruby Hart Phillips put it more simply, saying the appointment of Castro showed he was to be regarded by Cubans from then on not just as the head of the government, “but as the very government itself.”

  What this meant in practice became clear almost immediately. In early March 1959, a military tribunal in Santiago unexpectedly acquitted forty-three airmen from Batista’s air force who had been charged with mass murder in connection with the bombing of civilians in three eastern provinces during the anti-Batista struggle. Defense attorneys had argued that the air crews were innocent of the charges against them because they had dropped their bombs on unpopulated places and falsified their mission reports to their commanders. Castro, however, was outraged by the verdict and demanded that a new trial be held. His word being law, another military court was hastily organized, and although no new evidence was presented, the airmen were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms. “Revolutionary justice is based not on legal precepts, but on moral conviction,” Castro explained, in a sweeping declaration that shocked even some of his own supporters. He was saying that whether the pilots had actually bombed civilians was not even relevant. “Since the airmen belonged to the air force of ... Batista,” Castro said, “they are criminals and must be punished.”

  Even after this brazen demonstration of his authoritarian rule, Castro remained popular. The Cuban revolution held out the promise of long overdue social and economic changes, and Castro was still seen by many Cubans as a force for good, no matter his excesses.

  Pepín Bosch was working in his Havana office one day in April 1959 when he received a call from Celia Sánchez, Fidel’s aide and confidant. Castro had accepted an invitation to speak before the American Society of Newspaper Editors later that month in Washington, and Sánchez was helping him arrange his trip. “Dr. Castro asked me to call you,” Sánchez said. “He would like you to accompany him to the United States.”

  Bosch’s admiration for the “Maximum Leader” had diminished with Castro’s creeping usurpation of state authority, his increasingly hostile attitude toward the United States, and his continued use of firing squads (at least 475 executions as of April 11). Bosch was keeping an open mind—Bacardi was still the commercial sponsor of Castro’s regular appearances on CMQ-TV’s Meet the Press program—but he was worried by the signs of a developing dictatorship in Cuba. He told Sánchez to thank Castro for the invitation but explain that he was buried under work obligations as a result of having been in exile for the previous two years.

  Later that day, Bosch’s telephone rang again. This time it was Castro himself. “Señor Bosch,” Fidel said politely, bringing the full force of his persuasive power down on the Bacardi president. “You cannot refuse me. It is your obligation to come with me to Washington.” Bosch then agreed to go. “I had to give him the benefit of the doubt,” he explained later. “I wasn’t sure whether I was right or wrong.”

  Bosch had never met or spoken with Castro, and the U.S. trip taught him much about Castro’s ideas and style. Fidel arrived two hours late for the flight to Miami, keeping Bosch and the rest of his entourage waiting at the airport. Bosch noticed immediately that he was the only businessman in the group. Castro apparently saw him as someone whose presence in the official delegation would send a message that the new Cuban government would be respectful of the business community and willing to work with those capitalists who
genuinely wanted the best for their country. Bosch would have felt more comfortable, however, if he had had some company. Castro showed up looking as if he had just come down from the mountains, poorly groomed and wearing a worn and wrinkled uniform, with a pistol on his belt. His appointment secretary sat next to him on the flight out of Havana, cleaning Castro’s fingernails. Bosch took a seat alongside Ernesto Betancourt, a bright young economist who had been the July 26th Movement’s official representative in Washington and then the managing director of the Cuban Bank of Foreign Trade. Finance Minister Rufo López-Fresquet and Bosch’s friend Felipe Pazos, the central bank president, were also on the trip. Neither Raúl Castro nor Che Guevara came along.

  On the flight to Washington, Castro moved up and down the aisle, chatting with members of the delegation. When he came to Pepín 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. “Señor Bosch,” Castro said, “Tell me what do you think we can do for the economy in Cuba.” The unkempt guerrilla 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.