Hernando Calvo Ospina
Translated by Stephen Wilkinson and Alasdair Holden
London and Sterling,VA.: Pluto Press, 2002, pb, £10.99
This is the first book to document the on-going attempt by the Bacardi company to both help overthrow the Fidelista Cuban Government and sabotage the commercial interests of competing, Cuban-sourced, rum companies. It also documents the intertwining of the exile Cuban financial interests, including Mafioso and former dictator Batista’s henchmen with rightwing US politicians, in particular in Florida, home to many Cuban exiles.
Throughout the period following Castro’s seizure of power, there has been a bloody war being fought clandestinely and more openly in the form of propaganda pumped from the USA seeking to undermine the government of Cuba. Bacardi have been at the forefront of these attempts, being linked to convicted terrorists and mainstream think tanks and educational foundations – all the while trying to regain ‘their’ property that was nationalised by the Cuban Government in the post-revolutionary period.
One of the more interesting aspects was the focus on Bacardi’s attempts to stop Havana Club Rum being marketed: the Helms-Burton law (passed in the USA after intense lobbying from Bacardi); and the attacks on international free trade by the US government wishing to punish companies trading with the revolutionary government in Cuba again instigated, in part by funding from Bacardi.
As a text it succeeds in getting over the basic facts but – whether this is due to the translation or the original text I don’t know – I often felt it was confusing, with the alphabet soup of exile organisations and their overlapping memberships causing me to lose track of what or who was being talked about. I am sure others, more familiar with the material, will find it a much easier read; but newcomers may struggle.
That said, the text is supplemented by a series of schematic diagrams showing linkages between various individuals and organisations and where Bacardi fits into these. (With the usual caveat that a static diagram with lines linking people can be misleading if it does not have explicit dates and an explanation of exactly what is signified by the lines funding, influence, ownership, membership, employment etc.)