Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba
by Tom Gjelten
Buy on AmazonThe Bacardis of Cuba, builders of a rum distillery and a worldwide brand, came of age with their nation and helped define what it meant to be Cuban. Across five generations, the Bacardi family has held fast to its Cuban identity, even in exile from the country for whose freedom they once fought. The Bacardi clan--patriots and bon vivants, entrepreneurs and intellectuals--provided an example of business and civic leadership in its homeland for nearly a century. From the fight for Cuban independence from Spain in the 1860s to the rise of Fidel Castro and beyond, there is no chapter in Cuban history in which the Bacardis have not played a role.…
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"This is the most recently published book in my selection. It’s a history of the Bacardi family, beginning in the middle of the 19th century when the famous rum empire was founded in Cuba. If you told me you could sum up 150 years of the island through the story of a single family, I would reply it couldn’t be done. But Gjelten has done it. What makes this possible is that key members of the Bacardi family were at the centre of Cuban political life throughout that time. The period spans the first resistance to Spanish colonialism, the 1959 revolution and the family opposing Fidel Castro in exile. Therefore, the Bacardi family has been central to Cuba’s biography. Gjelten tells the story brilliantly: he’s a wonderful writer. One of the nice things about this book is that the Bacardi family based itself in Santiago de Cuba, not Havana; it’s a story of Cuba beyond its famous capital."
U.S. Relations with Latin America · fivebooks.com