The Sugar King of Havana (41 page)

47
the culmination of an impulse that had been building:
Joshua Jelly-Shapiro provides a historical synthesis in “An Empire of Vice,”
The Nation
, June 10, 2009.

48
a “countr y wrapped in the stillness of death”:
Louis A. Pérez,
On Becoming Cuban
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 101.

50
“enemy of the revolution”:
Loynaz del Castillo,
Memorias de la Guerra
, 84.

50
At the very least, autonomy would have preserved:
Hugh Thomas suggests that in the long term autonomy might even “have been the solution to guarantee a permanent political and economic structure better designed than independence to secure a consistently rising standard of living, accompanied by cultural and social homogeneity.” Thomas,
Cuba
, 380.

50
“You know that abandoning my interests and family”:
Pérez,
On Becoming Cuban
, 103.

51
the women wearing white muslin, the men dressed in frock coats:
Merlin,
Viaje a la Habana
, 101.

51
Habaneros looked on with bemusement:
The atmosphere is evoked by Tom Gjelten,
Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba
(New York: Viking, 2008), 81.

51
“desolation, star vation and anarchy”:
Cited in Estrada,
Havana
, 145.

52
“Neither a colony nor a free state”:
Cited in Marta Bizcarrondo and Antonio Elorza,
Cuba/España: El dilema autonomista, 1878–1898
(Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2008), 408.

52
Les charmes de l’âge d’or:
Merlin
, Viaje a la Habana
, 97.

53
“a veritable Klondike of wealth”:
Pérez,
On Becoming Cuban
, 107.

55
“whistling, happy, clean dressed, as if for a party”:
Nemecio Parada,
Vísperas y comienzos de la revolución de Cipriano Castro
(Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1973), 34. The
cubanos
were probably surplus rifles that filtered into Latin America over the course of Cuba’s struggle for independence.

55
“ruin the bank”:
Heriberto recalled his meeting with Castro and subsequent departure from Venezuela in a speech he gave four decades later in Havana,
Apuntes Autobiographicos de Heriberto Lobo
(mimeo, 1937), LAM.

55
an American banker read an interview:
New York Herald
, May 5, 1900, with subsequent coverage in the
New York Tribune
, May 6–7.

56
“Come in, don’t worr y”:
Virgilio Pérez Veiga,
Heriberto Lobo: un gran carácter que supo sonreír
(mimeo, 1951), LAM.

57
a small Venezuelan earthquake:
The October 29, 1900, earthquake did little damage to Caracas. Nevertheless, perhaps thinking of the devastating 1812 earthquake, Castro was so unnerved by the tremors that he jumped from the first-floor balcony of the Palace and broke a leg on the flagstones of the Plaza Bolívar below.

57
He sped through customs:
New York Times
, Feb. 27, 1913.

57
When Castro appeared, she rushed him:
Letter to Carmen Cecilia González, Nov. 10, 1978.

58
“Do you see any change in me?”:
Pérez Veiga,
Heriberto Lobo
.

63
They eventually found the hoard:
José de Córdoba, “Cuba through the eyes of an exile,”
Wall Street Journal
, Sept. 9, 1987.

64
“I was here first”:
“A Woman in Her Garden: An Appreciation of the Life and Work of Dulce María Loynaz,” by Judith Kerman, has recordings of interviews with people in Havana who remembered her.
http://www.loynazenglish.org/
.

66
Domina tus pasiones
:
Letter to Julio Lobo, 1919, LAM.

67
When the games ended:
González to author.

67
He also showed an unusual interest in Napoleon:
“El Museo Julio Lobo de la Habana,”
Vida Universitaria,
Vol. IX, May 1958.

67
in 1910, just before his twelfth birthday:
Lobo recalled the moment in a rare interview with Juan Emilio Friguls, his semiofficial public relations agent,
Diario de la Marina
, Sept. 11, 1958. Friguls is still alive in Havana at time of writing, but not talking much. Tate Cabré and Argel Calcines, “Juan Emilio Friguls: el decano se despide,”
Opus Habana
, March 20, 2008.
http://www.opushabana.cu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1079&Itemid=45
.

67
one of the six youngest boys:
Columbia University Alumni Register, 1932.

67
Cubans still settled their differences with swords:
Although duels were illegal, notices invariably appeared in the newspapers the next day, detailing seconds, the reason for the fight, and the loser, always wounded while “examining his weapons.” Ruby Hart Phillips,
Cuba: Island of Paradox
(New York: McDowell, Obolensky, 1958), 209.

67
“I decided to become a sugar expert”:
“
Hacerme fuerte en el azúcar,
” Lobo memoir, LAM.

68
A patrician Spaniard with dark hair:
Muriel McAvoy,
Sugar Baron: The Life and Times of Manuel Rionda and the Fortunes of Pre-Castro Cuba
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003).

69
On both sides of the Gulf of Mexico:
Rebecca Jarvis Scott,
Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 1–5.

69
“Once that perfume”:
Lobo memoir, LAM.

70
Less innocently, he made hand copies of the refineries’ balance sheets:
Ibid
.

70
“Your average mark in October”:
Letter to Julio Lobo, 1917, LAM.

71
One Easter, Lobo canoed:
Lobo memoir, LAM.

71
“full of fire”:
Ibid
.

71
an “individualist, who does not spare himself ”:
José Tiglao,
Sugarland
(Bacolod City, Philippines: Sugarland Publications, Sept. 1964).

72
Lobo imagined an improved model that would explode:
Lobo memoir, LAM.

74
“Why unhappy
mi corazón?
”:
Letters to Julio Lobo from Virginia, April 24, 1919; Oct. 5, 1922; Oct. 16, 1925.

74
“Do not concern yourself ”:
Letter to Julio Lobo from Heriberto, dated only 1919, LAM.

74
it was called the “Dance of the Millions”:
The name was taken from a 1916 musical production that played at the Teatro Nacional and then the Alhambra. Ned Soublette,
Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo
(Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004), 347.

74
Small-time sugarcane farmers . . . shopped:
John H. Parker’s wonderful book,
We Remember Cuba,
2nd ed. (Sarasota, FL: Golden Quill, 1993), 25.

75
¿Qué sucederá si no deja Ud. un testamento?:
Cited in Wendy Gimbel,
Havana Dreams: A Story of Cuba
(London: Virago, 1999), 75.

75
in the pages of
Social:
María Luisa Lobo Montalvo and Zoila Lapique Becali, “The Years of
Social
,”
The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts,
Vol. 22, 1996.

75
no child, as the saying went, lacked for shoes:
Nicolas de Rivero, editor and publisher of the
Diario de la Marina
, described life in Senado after one visit at the time as the “greatest happiness one can find, or very close,” a compliment that went beyond the usual courtesies of the age. Nicolas de Rivero, “Nuestro director en el central Senado,”
Diario de la Marina,
undated article c. 1916, author’s collection.

75
“If things go on at this rate”:
El Mundo,
April 30, 1916, cited in Thomas,
Cuba
, 539.

76
At night the fragrant aroma:
Teresa Casuso,
Cuba and Castro
(New York: Random House, 1961), 9.

76
Lobo, just twenty-two years old, named his terms:
Lobo memoir, LAM.

76
“stimulate the country to extreme prosperity”:
Quoted in Thomas,
Cuba
, 543.

76
National City had opened:
Harold Van B. Cleveland and Thomas F. Huertas,
Citibank, 1812–1970
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 106.

77
As much as 80 percent of National City:
Ibid
.
,106

77
José (“Poté”) López Rodríguez, the wealthiest man in Cuba:
Leland Hamilton Jenks,
Our Cuban Colony: A Study in Sugar
(New York: Vanguard Press, 1928), gives a lively discussion of the fates of this and other Cuban speculators in the bust, 244.

77
Before the crash, Cuban-owned mills:
Cesar Ayala, “Social and Economic Aspects of Sugar Production in Cuba, 1880–1930,”
Latin American Research Review
, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1995), 95–124.

78
The firm had sold the three mills it owned:
Guillermo Jiménez,
Las Empresas de Cuba, 1958
(Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2004), 56.

78
“consequently the greatest one to blame”:
McAvoy,
Sugar Baron
, 186.

78
“paradox of artificial limitation in Cuba”:
John Maynard Keynes,
Stocks of Staple Commodities
(London & Cambridge Economic Service, August 1929). See also the collected writings, Vol. XII,
Economic Articles and Correspondence: Investment and Editorial
(London: Macmillan Press), 551; and J. W. F. Rowe,
Studies in the Artificial Control of Raw Material Supplies: Sugar
(London & Cambridge Economic Service, Special Memorandum 31, September 1930).

79
“the bankruptcy of Cuba was inevitable”:
Letters to Julio Lobo from New York, June 29, July 1, July 5, 1927, LAM.

79
On Waldorf-Astoria Hotel–headed paper, Heriberto wrote:
Letters to Julio Lobo sent by Heriberto from Paris on July 13, July 21, Aug. 2, Aug. 11, Sept. 14, Oct. 4, 1927, LAM.

79
In 1921, showing early promise:
Letter from Julio Lobo to Maurice Varsano, Jan. 14, 1977. Lobo added that in 1933 he also had “the distinction, if you can call it that” of making the lowest ever priced sale of sugar, at less than 0.5 cent per pound.

80
“an Anglo-Saxon frame of mind”:
El Camagüeyano
, Sept. 27, 1926.

80
The news came as a thunderclap to
El Viejo
:
McAvoy,
Sugar Baron
, 197.

81
“The sale was solely due to your skill and hard work”:
Letter to Julio Lobo, Oct. 31, 1927, LAM.

81
“He sees advantage in getting down from his high horse”:
Letter to Julio Lobo, Oct. 2, 1928, LAM.

81
“This is a very delicate time”:
Ibid.

81
“Mr Tarafa . . . did not think it advisable”:
Braga Brothers Collection, University of Florida, Series 1, Box 40, letter from Domingo A. Gáldos to James M. Gruber, April 2, 1923; cited in Juan C. Santamarina’s forthcoming book
The Cuba Company,
155.

82
Heriberto drily suggested:
Letter to Julio Lobo, Nov. 2, 1928, LAM.

82
“In civilized countries, they create occupation”:
Julio Lobo y Olavarría,
El Plan Chadbourne: nuestro cancer social
(Havana: Maza Cabo Impresores, 1933).

83
“dark night of the soul”:
Lobo memoir, LAM.

83
“the disastrous results suffered by the house”:
Lobo letter of resignation, April 25, 1932, LAM.

84
“Morris of Lykes Brothers”:
Phillips,
Cuba: Island of Paradox
, 97
.

85
“All our misfortunes in Cuba”:
Letter to Varvara Hasselbalch, May 2, 1962.

86
The sugar price fell and unemployment grew:
For more on the depressed Cuban economy in 1933, and the strikes and rebellions that it fomented, see: Brian H. Pollitt, “The Cuban Sugar Economy and the Great Depression,”
Bulletin of Latin American Research,
Vol. 3, No. 2 (1984), 3–28; Barry Carr, “Mill Occupations and Soviets: The Mobilisation of Sugar Workers in Cuba, 1917–1933,”
Journal of Latin American Studies
, No. 28 (1996), 129–56; Barry Carr, “Identity, Class, and Nation: Black Immigrant Workers, Cuban Communism, and the Sugar Insurgency, 1925–1934,”
The Hispanic American Historical Review
, Vol. 78, No. 1 (1998), 83–116.

86
literally feeding his opponents to the sharks:
Frank Argot-Freyre,
Fulgencio Batista: From Revolutionary to Strongman
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 38.

86
“. . . good looking young fellows, wore good clothes”:
Ernest Hemingway,
To Have and Have Not
(London: Arrow Books), 3–5.

87
“not one minute more, not one minute less”:
Argot-Freyre,
Fulgencio Batista
, 44.

87
“Outwardly Havana was a tomb”:
Carleton Beales,
The Crime of Cuba
(Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1933), 445.

87
“As he crossed the street”:
Ruby Hart Phillips,
Cuban Sideshow
(Havana: Manzana de Gomez, 1935), 67.

88
“Who is ruling Cuba?”:
Cited in Luis E. Aguilar,
Cuba 1933: Prologue to Revolution
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), 167.

89
The first confrontation:
Argot-Freyre,
Fulgencio Batista
, 94.

89
“one of the soundest, if not the soundest ”:
Lobo was meanwhile judged “almost as able as his father,” although Welles was cautioned against confidential conversations because of Lobo’s youth. “Memorandum for Ambasador Welles,” August 1933; Folder: Cuba—State, legal communications; Box 37, papers of Charles W. Taussig; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.