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The Spirit of Cuba
The Corporate Battle Over Rum Offers Clues to the Future of Cuba
 Listen to Tom Gjelten's report for All Things Considered
Aug. 13, 2001 -- Fidel Castro turns 75 today. Although he appears to be in good health, the world continues to speculate on what will happen in a post-Castro Cuba. Dissidents and exiles say that his regime cannot survive without him. Supporters insist that the revolution will endure. It's impossible to tell for sure what will fill the vacuum, but some clues may be found in the battles over Cuba's national drink -- rum.
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A boy plays guitar on a stack of rum barrels outside the Havana Club distillery in Old Havana.
Photo: Frank Fleming
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NPR's Tom Gjelten visited Cuba and talked to some of the players in the rum saga, which began before the 1959 revolution, and which will in no small measure shape the future of the island nation. The issues surrounding the rum business are the same issues that other industries will have to contend with after Castro.
Rum is on the vanguard in part because of marketing -- Cuba draws big buzz these days. Thanks to such cultural phenomena as The Buena Vista Social Club, and the recent cigar craze, all things Cuban carry cachet in the advertising world. Pernod Ricard, the French liquor conglomerate that markets Havana Club rum, has picked up on this, and it promotes Cuba as much as it promotes its hooch.
Therein lies the trouble. Havana Club rum "is being produced in an enterprise that was confiscated by the Cuban government without paying the legitimate owners," says Cuba historian Jaime Suchlicki of the University of Miami.
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The Bacardi House, the family's former home in Santiago
Photo: Serge Tkint
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Those "legitimate owners" include the members of the Bacardi family, whose company was the island's dominant rum-maker in 1959 when Castro took power. Soon thereafter, the new government confiscated Bacardi's distilleries and the family went into exile in Florida and beyond.
Nowadays, Bacardi is distilled in Puerto Rico. The company has spent most of the past four decades promoting its rum without referring to Cuba. Behind the scenes, however, the Bacardis have been at work in Washington, especially after Pernod Ricard set up shop in Cuba following Castro's 1993 opening of the island to outside investment. Bacardi's lawyers helped draft the Helms-Burton law, which punishes foreign firms whose Cuban investments involve confiscated assets.
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Making guarapos (sugar cane juice) with a shot of Havana Club rum at a restaurant in Old Havana
Photo: Daniel Llata, Fair Trade Imports
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The company also helped the passage of Section 211, which allows Cuba to register trademarks in the United States, but not those that it confiscated. That law was aimed squarely at Pernod Ricard, which took over the trademarks of a company that had been selling Havana Club rum before the revolution. The World Trade Organization last week handed down an inconclusive ruling on the trademark dispute, siding on some points with the United States, on others with the European Union, which supported Pernod Ricard's position.
The fight will go on, as will the battle to claim the title of the world's maker of Cuban rum. Bacardi, reacting to the recent attention given to Cuba, has been running ads with a distinctly Cuban theme. But for now, Havana Club is the best-known rum actually made in Cuba.
Other Resources:
On Morning Edition last month, commentator Joe Davidson talked about President Bush's decision to strengthen the trade embargo against Cuba.
• Read the news of the WTO's decision last week.
• Cigar Aficionado magazine told the story of Bacardi in this extensive piece from 1996.
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