Rum Historian by Marco Pierini
CUBAN RUM
13. TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE:
SUGAR, WARS AND THE US
It is once again time to dedicate an article to Great History, describing, albeit in extreme synthesis, the historical context in which, between 1860s and 1890s, the spectacular growth of Cuban rum occurred. Yes, because in these decades Cuba changed dramatically. Simplifying a lot, this period was marked by the crisis of the Sugar Barons, the growth of the American influence and the Wars of Independence.
Let’s start with some data on the population. After a growth due to both the illegal introduction of slaves and the legal white immigration, the census of 1861 gives us these figures:
Whites
Males 468.087 Females 325.392 = 793.479
Free Coloured
Males 113.806 Females 118.687 = 232.493
Slaves
Males 218.722 Females 151.851 = 370.573
Total
Males 800.615 Females 595.910 = 1.396.525
After a long period of black majority, whites were now again the majority of the population and later the percentage of white population will grow even more.
And now we get to the economic and political crisis of the Cuban Sugar Barons. We already know that in the 1860s numerous, new, modern rum distilleries were operating in Cuba, often founded by Spanish immigrants. These new factories were no longer installed within the plantations, as a sideline of sugar making. They were now built in the towns, far from the sugarcane fields, as real industries, independent of the plantations. They dedicated great attention to the production process, they had long adopted continuous distillation and filtration systems and had also started to experiment with aging. But precisely during those years when Cuban rum start-ed to become great, its parent industry, sugar making, stopped developing; more than that, it lagged behind.
“Among the characteristics of the Cuban sugar industry there was the possibility of the farmers of the island to produce white sugar, thanks to the absence in Spain of a refinery industry.” (Levi Marrero Cuba Economia y Sociedad X, 1984).
But as early as the 1840s “The application of the latest technology, including steam engines, vacuum pans, and railroads, helped propel sugar production to dizzying heights, but also sank Creole planters deeper into debt.” (Luis Martínez-Fernández Introduction to Alexander von Humboltd’s The Island of Cuba, 2001)
Then, from the 1850s “in a process of economic colonization imposed by the closed protectionist policy of the United States and the large European countries, the Island is forced to gradually abandon the manufacture of white sugar (final product), and to concentrate on low-polarization crude sugars that could be used as raw materials by the sugar refineries in the industrial countries. In order to achieve this objective, economic coercion was used against Cuba through tariffs imposed on Cuban sugars in direct relation to their sucrose content. White sugar found tariffs so high that it was not possible to bear them … [moreover] the Creole producers faced a technological revolution that in just ten years made the basic equipment of the sugar mill obsolete and changed the physical characteristics of the product. The consumption of centrifugal white sugar quickly began to spread throughout the world, depressing the price of Cuban purged white sugar. ... the new industry (of which there were already examples in Cuba) began to launch on the market the very pure sugar, of uniform and bright grains, that we consume today.” (Manuel Moreno Fraginals El Ingenio, 1978)
“In the 1860s the crisis of the Creole Sugar Barons was inevitable. Their praiseworthy efforts to mechanize the mills to the maximum, without having sufficient capitalization for them, made them depend more and more on the refaccionistas (merchants that supplied them with goods and money). These merchants were mostly peninsulares (that is, Spanish) and in no few occasions would supplant them, after bankruptcy, as plantation owners. The increasing economic cost of slavery and the excessive expenses demanded by the wasteful social life of many Creole Sugar Barons … aggravated the crisis.” (Marrero)
The Sugar Barons were well aware of the situation. For example, one of them, Justo G. Cantero in his “LOS INGENIOS Colleccion de Vistas de los Principales Ingenios de Azucar de la isla de Cuba” published in 1857, writes “The plantations were first established in order to make white sugar, and most of them continue to produce it; however, for some years now a change has occurred which has led many plantations to produce only muscovado or concentrated molasses, owing to a shortage of labor, the fact that it is easier to sell these lower types of product to foreign sugar factories and above all owing to the difficulty of obtaining, with our equipment, white sugar that can compete with the sugar obtained in European sugar factories.”
In 1866 “The same Sugar Barons who obtained the Royal Order of 23 February 1796 on refineries and aguardiente rum, in the 1850s were humbly asking that Spain establish sugar refineries and that Cuba limit its production to the simple elemental transformation of the cane. ... The Creole Sugar Barons of 1866 are not the proud and arrogant economic oligarchy of 1820s, that threatens and defies, but a eunuch class, liquidated by a slave regime that has gnawed its bases. Even, as sugar producers, they are being quickly replaced by Spanish merchants who now invest in the industrial sector; that is, they build real industries, not manufactures.” (Moreno Fraginals)
The answer could be a new division of labor: many smallholder farmers to grow sugar cane and a few large ingenios to process it and make sugar. In addition, to withstand the competition Cuban Planters would need additional strong investments, but also, and perhaps especially, skilled labor, which could not be the slaves. In short, it was necessary to abolish slavery and replace it with free labor. But this step the Sugar Barons did not have the courage to take for too long. Slavery was abolished only in 1886. Meanwhile, intolerance towards authoritarian colonial rule grew. In 1866 the Spanish government promoted the establishment of a “Junta de información de Ultramar” (Overseas Information Board) which was composed of twenty members elected by the municipalities of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and whose mission would be to define a draft basis for the elaboration of the special laws announced since 1837. The work of the Junta, very important because it represents an exhaustive analysis of the Antillean problems and of the aspirations of the Creoles, had no translation in immediate facts, a circumstance that would favor the uprising of 1868.” (Miguel Artola La burguesía revolucionaria, 1973)
The First War of Independence lasted 10 long years, from 1868 to 1878. Led by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Máximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo, it began and was fought mainly in the East of the Island. It was both a civil war and a race war. In the rebel army there were many mulattos and blacks, both slaves and free, while the numerous Spanish community organized fearsome units of Voluntarios (volunteers) to control the cities and fight the rebels. After years of bloody, but not decisive, clashes, “Céspedes was killed in a skirmish in 1874. The rebels were now divided on both racial and national lines. Many were opposed to Gómez because he was a Dominican and to Maceo because he was black” (Richard Gott Cuba: A New History, 2005). The war ended in 1878 with a compromise that conceded something, but confirmed Spanish rule and disappointed the expectations of many rebels.
Meanwhile, the economic influence of the United States was growing. As we know from previous articles, the American interest in Cuba is older than the USA itself (see my article THE KEY TO THE INDIES in the September 2022 issue) and has always remained very strong. After the American Civil War, the United States experienced a dizzying growth and imposed their economic and commercial domination over Cuba. If in the first half of the century, Cuba exported its sugar to many different Countries, in the second half of the century the American market became the almost exclusive outlet of Cuban sugar. And US direct investment in the island was growing too, including investments in the sugar plantations.
In the 1880s manufacture was definitively liquidated and the modern Cuban sugar industry, subsidiary of the refineries of the United States, emerged. There was also a process of concentration of land ownership that started in the middle of the century and accelerated from the 1880s. This new industry was called, from very early on, Ingenio Central. Already in the last years of the century they were called, simply, Central.
After a period of relative tranquillity, the Second War of Independence began in 1895, led by the most beloved Father of Cuban Independence, José Martì. Unfortunately, Martì died in a skirmish in the first months of the war, depriving the rebels of an authoritative and undisputed political leadership. This time the rebels brought war all over the island, a very hard and bloody war, with terrible human losses and great destruction. Sugarcane plantations became a target and many were set on fire in the so called La Tea, that is, The Torch. The rebel army consisted largely of blacks. “Some leading members of the old plantation class were with them, particularly those ruined in the 1880s, or their sons. Indeed the fundamental differences between the rebellion which began in 1895 and that of 1868 was that the old master class, which had for so long dominated the Cuban economy, was now broken and that already some of the largest plantations were in the hands of planters from the North.” (Hugh Thomas Cuba A History, 1971)
The Spanish army reacted harshly, moving the peasants to concentration camps, where living conditions were appalling and mortality was very high. For three long years, the rebels failed to win and the Spanish failed to crush them. There were also attempts to negotiate for a home rule, but as often in history, what the Spanish government was now willing to concede was too little and too late for the rebels.
In 1898, the situation was a bloody deadlock when the sinking of the Maine occurred in the Bay of Havana. The United States declared war on Spain, the so called Spanish - American war, the first step of a new imperial policy of the US. In a matter of weeks, a Spanish fleet was sunk off Santiago (another had already been destroyed in Manila) and the American army landed in Cuba.
“The US victory by land and sea was now complete, and surrender terms were agreed two weeks later, on 17 July. Decisions had to be made in Havana, Washington and Madrid, and the subsequent detailed negotiations were difficult and prolonged, but he US flag now flew from the palace in Santiago, and General Leonard Wood was appointed as the city’s new governor.” (Gott Cuba)
Soon after, all of Cuba was occupied by the United States, along with Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. At last, after four centuries, the sun set over the Spanish Empire.
Therefore, was Cuba finally free? Well, more or less.
Indeed, “Cuba was liberated from Spanish control by the American invasion in barely three weeks, yet the Cubans had been fighting for more than three years. They watched bleakly from the sidelines as their victory was taken from them. … History, as written in Cuba and elsewhere, has not been overly charitable in its consideration of the eventual results of US intervention. Yet most of Cuba’s rebel leadership welcomed it at the time. Martí and Maceo might well have objected, but both were dead.” (Gott).
TO OUR READERS
With this article, I have reached ten years of collaboration with GOT RUM? They have been exciting and rewarding years for me, and I believe I have contributed to the increase of knowledge about the history of rum and of spirits in general. But now I need a break. My research on Cuban rum has reached 1900 and with the new century many things get a bit complicated. I need time to gather new sources and study them, then go back to writing. With a big difference. If, when studying the past, the problem usually was to unearth the scarce existing sources, now, as for all the historians of the contemporary age, the problem is instead to navigate a sea of sources, without drowning in it. In addition, I also feel the need to delve more deeply into some technical issues. Last, but not least, the years do not pass in vain and, unfortunately, my ability to work is no longer the same as before. If everything goes as I hope, see you in December.
Marco Pierini
