The Sugar King of Havana (40 page)

In Madrid: Juan Arenas, Víctor Batista, Victoria Fernández; and Laura Galbán and Eugenio Suarez-Galbán for sharing Luis Suarez-Galbán’s
Memorias.

In Paris: Richard O’Connell.

In the United States: Pedro Arellano Lamar, Julieta Cadenas, Bruce Chappell at the University of Florida, Carlos de la Cruz, Enrique Fernández, all the de Córdoba clan—especially Macky and José, who again scooped history’s first draft; Wendy Gimbel, Enrique León for his patience and help, Carlos Alberto Montaner, the staff at the New York Public Library, Angela Sanchez—who buttressed the work on Bernabé Sanchez’s letters with enthusiasm and expertise; Francisco Sanchez, Juan C. Santamarina—for an early draft of his forthcoming book
The Cuba Company
; Rachel Schneiderman, Judith Thurman, Jennifer Ulrico at the Columbia University Alumni Association, Magda del Valle, and Antonio Zamora. I am saddened that Muriel McAvoy, who took such care to forward me rare Lobo material that she uncovered from her research on Manuel Rionda, did not live to see the finished book.

In Cuba: Many people helped with the project, even if they may not have agreed with where I was coming from or perhaps where I arrived. I therefore want to underline that this work is solely the author’s responsibility. With that in mind, I would like to extend my deepest thanks for their hospitality, time, and conversation; to Natalia Bolívar Arostegui, Argel Calcines, Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Roland Ely, Guillermo Jiménez Soler, Zoila Lapique Becali, Reny Martínez, Roberto Méndez Martínez, Natalia Revuelta Clews, Sulema Rodríguez Roche, Ileana Sánchez, and Joel Jover. Manuel Alfonso Gil helped with research.

My agents, Deborah Rogers and Melanie Jackson, gave the kind of support most authors probably wish for. At The Penguin Press, I want to thank my publisher, Ann Godoff, and my editors Vanessa Mobley, who helped me first run with the ball, and Laura Stickney, who helped me carry it across the line—magicians both.

I owe particular debts of gratitude to Hugh Thomas, who encouraged the project from start to finish; G. B. Hagelberg, my sounding board on all matters to do with Cuban sugar and the most punctilious of readers; and William Hobson, who helped me see my pages more clearly. Any remaining errors or shortcomings are the author’s own.

Finally, thanks to Serenella Cazac,
beija-flor
; Ruby and Mo, for their sustaining good cheer; Margarita, my beloved mother, the source from whence it all sprang; and Tim, dearly missed father and best friend.

This book is based on two collections of previously unresearched documents. The largest is the Lobo family archive. While the record is far from complete, lost or presumably destroyed in Cuba many years ago, Lobo—the great administrator—was a thorough filer and stored originals of many important documents, or copies of them, abroad. His archive, therefore, consists of some four dozen boxes of personal papers, letters, and newspaper clippings that date mostly from after the revolution but contain many earlier documents too. Of particular interest is the correspondence with his father; also the memoir that Lobo began to write toward the end of his life, even if its disjointed fragments sometimes left this researcher feeling like an archaeologist, trying to reassemble whole skeletons from fragments of bone. I enjoyed partial access to the Lobo archive in Miami (Lobo Archive Miami: LAM). A near-replica of the collection exists in Vero Beach, Florida; occasional documents were sourced from there (Lobo Archive Vero Beach: LAVB). Other papers are kept in Geneva (Lobo Archive Geneva: LAG). In Copenhagen, Varvara Hasselbalch kindly made available to me her correspondence with Lobo. In Havana, sadly, neither I nor any other researcher has yet found a trace of any Galbán Lobo document—not even an income statement or balance sheet lying in a deep cellar of the national library.

The second collection of documents on which this book is based is the five hundred letters that Bernabé Sanchez wrote from Camagüey between 1898 and 1900. I fortuitously happened upon them during a trip to Cuba in 2004 and extricated them from the undergrowth—both literal and metaphorical. They are now kept in the Department of Special Collections at the University of Florida’s George A. Smathers Library in Gainesville, pending their eventual return to Camagüey, a condition of the deed of gift. Copies of the originals and a typed transcript can be viewed at
http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/lac/introduction.html.

Research in public archives was carried out at the University of Florida’s Braga Brothers Collection; the UK’s Public Records Office in Kew; the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library at Hyde Park; and classified CIA and FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Throughout the book, descriptions of events have been double sourced, following normal journalistic practice. Press clippings are detailed in the endnotes. Quoted dialogue is drawn from letters, reported conversation, and author interviews: Leonor Lobo Montalvo de González, Vero Beach, FL, Aug. 3–4 and Nov. 11–12, 2005; Enrique León, Miami, FL, Dec. 11, 2004; April 4, April 11, and Aug. 22, 2005; Roland Ely, Havana, Sept. 27, 2005; Varvara Hasselbalch, Copenhagen, Jan. 20–21, 2006; Fichu Menocal, Havana, April 29, 2006; Eusebio Leal, April 2007; Joan Fontaine, phone interview, May 13, 2007; Carlos de la Cruz, Miami, Aug. 2007; Ana María Brule, phone interview, June 10, 2008; Victoria Fernández, June 26, 2008. Other interview subjects did not wish to be mentioned by name.

5
Some writers believed Lobo was Dutch:
José Pardo Llada, “¿Quién recuerda a Julio Lobo?,”
El Nuevo Herald,
Aug. 30, 1990, 13A; Enrique León, “Respuesta a José Pardo Llada: mis memorias de Julio Lobo,”
El Nuevo Herald,
Oct. 8, 1990, 11A.

6
more [cinemas] than New York:
Havana had 135. Bertrand de la Grange and Maite Rico, “La Habana: ruinas y revolución,”
Letras Libres
, Mexico, January 2009.

7
“I am enchanted”:
Condesa de Merlin, 1842,
Viaje a la Habana
(Editorial de Arte y Literatura: La Habana, 1974), 77.

7
a significant symmetry:
G. B. Hagelberg, “Reversal of roles in US and Cuba,”
Financial Times
, Jan. 7, 2009.

8
“with its flickering lamp”:
cited by Hugh Thomas, prologue to María Luisa Lobo Montalvo,
La Habana: Historia y Arquitectura de una Ciudad Romántica
(New York: Monacelli Press, 2000), 15.

11
Ernesto “Che” Guevara summoned:
The principal source describing their meeting is Lobo’s memoir of the event. Further details were corroborated by Enrique León. See also Hugh Thomas,
Cuba: or The Pursuit of Freedom
(Updated edition, London: Da Capo Press, 1998), 1298–99, which draws from a 1968 interview with Lobo, and Jon Lee Anderson,
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
(London: Bantam Press, 1997), 483–84.

12
“ We are going through very difficult times”:
Letter to Varvara Hasselbalch, June 23, 1959.

12
“I often feel like”:
Letter to Varvara Hasselbalch, July 1, 1959.

12
controlled fourteen sugar mills:
Lobo did not own all his mills outright; he often had coinvestors, although he always operated with a controlling interest. In chronological order of purchase: Agabama, also known as Escambray (1926); Pilón, also known as Cabo Cruz (1943); San Cristóbal (1944); Tinguaro (1944); Unión (bought 1945; interest sold 1953); Caracas (bought 1946, sold 1953); Niquero (1948); La Francia (bought 1950); Perseverancia (1950); El Parque Alto (1951); Tánamo (1951); El Pilar (1951); Araújo (1953); San Antonio (1958); Hershey (1958); Rosario (1958).

13
Lobo “doesn’t sense a trend”:
Dana Thomas,
The Money Crowd
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 147.

13
Lorenzo Montalvo, the Julio Lobo of his day:
Roland Ely,
Cuando Reinaba Su Majestad el Azúcar
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1963), 93.

13
“We didn’t care”:
Thomas,
Cuba
, 1019.

14
“The long city”:
Greene,
Our Man in Havana
, 53.

14
“In Batista’s day, I liked the idea”:
Quoted in Anderson,
Che Guevara
, 377.

15
“Gracious living”:
letter to Varvara Hasselbalch, Jan. 25, 1960.

16
“less gaiety, less freedom”:
Simone de Beauvoir,
Force of Circumstance
(London: Penguin Books, 1965), 569.

16
My mother’s family, Sanchez y Sanchez:
Which, by tradition, did not use an accent, unlike the normal Sánchez spelling used elsewhere in the book.

19
In another paean to sugar:
Lobo Montalvo,
La Habana
, 26.

20
“For the shit we’re going to be guarding”:
Anderson,
Che Guevara
, 453–55.

20
“Señor Lobo, it is good of you to come”:
Lobo memoir, LAM.

21
“a dovecot”:
Thomas,
Cuba
, 936, n.12.

21
“I lost hope”:
Anderson,
Che Guevara
, 213.

22
His bedroom had once been a reconstruction:
Varvara Hasselbalch,
Varvara’s Verden
(Copenhagen: Aschehoug Publishers, 1997), 107.

23
“Not a stain, or a blemish”:
Lobo memoir, LAM; corroborated by León to author.

23
“One of the most human of all desires”:
Letter to Varvara Hasselbalch, July 1, 1959.

25
Acosta’s poem is an emotive portrait:
Antonio Benítez-Rojo,
The Repeating Island
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), 115–21.

26
“All that talent”:
Anderson,
Che Guevara
, 484.

26
he cornered the global sugar market:
Thomas,
The Money Crowd
, 147–48.

29
Sicily—an important sugar producer:
The invention of the first vertical three-roller sugar mill, an important technological innovation, is sometimes attributed to Pietro Speciale, prefect of Sicily, in 1449. Either way, Sicily had one of the world’s earliest sugarcane industries, with a record of export from around A.D. 900. Sidney W. Mintz,
Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History
(London: Penguin, 1985), 27.

29
“Uncle, you’re looking wonderful”:
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa,
The Leopard
, trans. Archibald Colquhon (London: Collins Harvill, 1986), 165–83.

30
Leonor banged on his door:
González to author, Aug. 3, 2005.

31
The powerful Falla Guttiérez family had moved $40 million abroad:
Thomas,
Cuba
, 1150, n.60.

31
Conversations Lobo said he had had with Allen Dulles:
León to author.

32
“Chico
, I was born naked”:
Lobo memoir, LAM.

36
Bernabé’s mill was also among the first:
Spanish law provided for a
patronato
, a transition period that amounted to eight years of indentured servitude. Hence 1888, rather than 1880, is often given as the date of the abolition of slavery in Cuba, although the
patronato
officially ended in 1886, two years earlier than decreed, by general agreement.

38
“So many feats they did to admiration”:
Robert Graves, “Ogres and Pygmies,” in
The Complete Poems
, edited by Beryl Graves and Dunstan Ward (Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 2000).

40
Martí also had a wonderful sense of humor:
Alfredo José Estrada,
Havana: Autobiography of a City
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 114.

40
“Without Camagüey”:
Luis Álvarez Álvarez and Gustavo Sed Nieves,
El Camagüey en Martí
(Havana: Editorial José Martí, 1997), 74.

41
To the west, closer to Havana, planters were wont:
Edwin F. Atkins,
Sixty Years in Cuba
(Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1926), 76.

41
a “special, freedom loving mentality”:
Manuel Moreno Fraginals,
El Ingenio
(Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978), Vol. I, 146.

41
“as if just one body”:
Guillermo Cabrera Infante,
View of Dawn in the Tropics
(London: Faber & Faber, 1988), 20–28.

42
In the twenty-eight volumes of his collected works:
Álvarez Álvarez and Sed Nieves,
El Camagüey en Martí
, 17.

42
“my mind is not here with me”:
Ibid
.
, 16.

43
“I love my duty more than my son”:
Cited in Rafael Rojas,
Motivos de Anteo
(Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2008), 124.

44
Their unsigned letter:
Álvarez Álvarez and Sed Nieves,
El Camagüey en Martí
, 69–71.

44
“in a rough line, like a squadron of rebels”:
Enrique Loynaz del Castillo,
Memorias de la Guerra
(Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1989), 58–59.

45
“No well-established person in Camagüey”:
La Tribuna
, May 30, 1895.

45
Loynaz wrote to the revolutionary junta’s:
Loynaz del Castillo,
Memorias de la Guerra
, 80–82.

45
“The main reason for the setback”:
Álvarez Álvarez and Sed Nieves,
El Camagüey en Martí
, 108.

45
“Martí was very clear about that”:
Ibid., 134, for the text of the letter; Thomas,
Cuba
, 303, comments on it.

46
“Climbing hills together”:
José Marti,
Selected Writings,
trans. Esther Allen (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 380–412.

46
Francisco Vicente Aguilera:
Former president of the Republic Under Arms, had an estimated personal fortune of $3 million when the Ten Years’ War broke out in 1868; also owned three mills—the Jucaibana, Santa Isabel, and Santa Gerturdis; 10,000
caballerías
of land (332,000 acres), 35,000 head of cattle, 4,000 horses, 500 slaves (subsequently freed), coffee estates, retail and warehouse interests, all inherited from his father, who had Camagüey roots. Travels in Europe as a young man exposed him to progressive ideals. A freemason, he built Bayamo’s local theater at a cost of $80,000. Died penniless in New York in February 1877, aged fifty-six. Guillermo Jiménez,
Los Propietarios de Cuba, 1958
(Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2006), 7.