Rum Historian by Marco Pierini
HISTORY OF CUBAN RUM
2. 1739 THE FIRST RUM WAR
For the sake of clarity, aguardiente de caña (sugarcane burning water), is what in Cuba they called the spirit made from sugarcane, our Rum. It is one of the many names that rum has had (and still has, we’ll get back to this) in its long, complex history. The First Rum War in Cuba was about the imported, expensive, grape spirit, a sort of brandy, produced in Spain and the Canary Islands, versus the locally produced, cheap, aguardiente de caña. Moreover, in Cuba they usually called the Canary Islands las Islas (the Islands) and Isleños (Islanders) their inhabitants, and the Islanders were the largest suppliers of grape spirit in Cuba.
Also for this article, I rely mostly on the essay by Manuel Hernández Gonzáles “La polémica sobre la fabricación de aguardiente de caña entre las elites caribeñas y el comercio canario en el siglo XVIII”. When not otherwise specified, the quotes are from this essay; the translation is mine, with a little help from my family. On 5th June 1739 a new law reiterated the prohibition against the production of rum in Cuba. The law commanded also that “within 15 days the Cuban planters should consume all the aguardiente de caña produced by their pot stills, which had to be halted and destroyed, under penalty of a fine of 200 ducados.”
The Havana planters did not respond to the new prohibition with silence and feigned obedience, while managing everything as before in actual fact, as they had done so many times until then. This time their reaction was very different. Already rich and powerful thanks to tobacco and sugar, the Havana planters took a clear, public stand, trying to defend their interests collectively and legally. On July 1739 the Havana planters replied with a “Memorial de los dueños de ingenios de La Habana a Gūemes Horcasitas” (Memoir of the planters of La Havana to Gūemes Horcasitas). Juan Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas (1681-1766) was a Spanish General and the Governor of La Havana.
AGI Memorial
The Memoir tackles head on the prohibition to produce and consume aguardiente de caña: it analyses the facts, attacks the Islanders, protests against the prohibition, offers solutions: in short, it is a veritable, wide-ranging political manifesto. I am not an expert on Cuban history, but I believe it is one of the first instances of the development of a specific self-consciousness by the Havana elite, as a distinct community within the Spanish Empire. It might well be one of the first steps in the complex formation of Cuban national identity.
The text is preceded by a report written by Fray Martín Becquer, prior of the Convent and Hospital of San Juan de Dios in La Havana. In it, it is claimed that the ban on aguardiente de caña would cause irreparable damage to the many poor people of the city and to the sick as well. It is in fact a wonderful remedy for many illnesses and it is cheap, so much so that, while now only 200 pesos is spent to supply the hospital with aguardiente de caña, over 1.000 would be necessary to buy the grape brandy imported from the Islands or from Spain. Not to mention that, writes Bequer, grape brandy often does not even reach the city.
The Memoir points the finger at the merchants of the Islands and accuses them of being primarily responsible for the new prohibition, as a result of their constant pressure on the Crown. And yet, the aguardiente de caña has been produced in Cuba for many years and sold openly without any particular problems, at times by those very merchants of the islands. It is not right to deprive the Havana Planters now of a well-established gain. Moreover, the additional gain from the aguardiente de caña is absolutely necessary to the Havana planters, given the high costs and low revenues of sugar production. You can’t ruin an entire economic sector, it is affirmed, to serve the interests of few merchants and planters of the Islands, who, what is more, conduct themselves unfairly because they “presume to sell us their goods at the highest possible price and buy ours at the lowest” and “take advantage of the limited, clearly defined privileges granted to them by the Crown, whereas the Havana planters can trade only with the Spanish.”
The Memoir here rubs salt in the wound of the numerous illegalities committed by the merchants of the islands. By law, they ought to trade only with few ports of Spanish America, and only a few, specific commodities. On the contrary, it is well known that they avail themselves of their privileges to do business extensively with many more ports and many more commodities than they are allowed under the law. Moreover, they act as intermediaries of foreign ports, smuggling in and out large quantities of foreign goods. “They had never complained about the sale of aguardiente de caña until this activity was tolerated, and they react only now that the Governor has forbidden it.”
The Havana planters drew also on a report written in 1724 for the City Council of La Havana by an important official, José Miguel Pérez de Alas. He had denounced the lack of Canary grape brandy, claiming that the merchants of the islands would rather load onto their ships forbidden goods than the lawful brandy. Then, they would sell these contraband goods at a high price, making a huge profit. Furthermore, he had denunciated that “the same merchants of the Canary Islands usually buy aguardiente de caña, they mix it with a small quantity of the grape brandy they brought, alter the taste and the color, and the barrel which cost them 60 or 70 pesos, they resell it as authentic Spanish brandy at 200, 250 and 300 pesos.”
The Memoir describes the process of aguardiente production too. “A jug full of molasses or juice that has not solidified is put into well cleaned vessels, where common water is added; there it is left alone until by boiling it is purified and looks as if it were wine, having reached this point it is put into the pot still … this is what they call aguardiente de caña, without needing to add any other ingredients. If you want to refine it and extract the quintessence, the aguardiente is put into the pot still again and it is distilled a second time.” Therefore, rather than in special (and large) tanks as in the British Sugar Islands, in Cuba the fermentation took place inside (smaller) vessels; a method similar to the one used in the same years in New Spain (roughly modern-day Mexico), where however leather sacks were used as containers. Does this mean that in Cuba and New Spain a smaller quantity of rum was produced? Maybe yes, but in order to be sure we need further research, and the secrecy of the whole process makes it difficult to estimate today the quantity actually produced.
Anyway, producing aguardiente was for the planters also an effective way to use the cane juice which they didn’t manage to crystallize into sugar and which was often plentiful, due both to the crudeness of the production process and to the fact that in many plantations there were no skilled maestros de azúcar (masters of sugar) They contended that “it is very common during the harvest to lose large quantities of sugar owing to various accidents and mistakes” and that that juice could be used only to make aguardiente which, therefore, was an important part of their earnings.
The Havana planters also point out that, after having forbidden for a long time the cultivation of grapes and the production of wine in Peru, the Crown had eventually consented in exchange for a 2% tax and that, more recently, the production of aguardiente in Cartagena has been allowed in exchange for a certain amount of money paid by the producers.
Then the Memoir puts forward another argument, shall we say, political and military. It argues that aguardiente de caña is greatly appreciated by the Spanish settlers in Florida, Apalaches and other border lands, because it is the only means of taming the “fierceness of those indians”. In other words, after endeavoring to subjugate them by force, at the cost of great expense and sacrifices, the settlers realized that the Indians loved rum to the point that, in order to get it, they were willing to accept Spanish domination. Moreover, according to the testimony of Antonio Parladorio, Director of the company formed to subjugate the Apalaches’ Indians “we have given the Indians various things which we deemed useful and necessary to feed them, clothe them and make them live better, but most of those things were returned to us. In their letters, our agents who reside near them have told us that the only thing the Indians want and vigorously demand is aguardiente de caña; other than that, some tobacco and a few blankets.” And he even said publicly that “the Indians from Florida loathe the brandy from the Islands and from Castilla.”
Therefore, rum is a decisive tool for the conquest of new territories and, what’s more, it is really cheap: “a bottle of cane spirit costs 2 reales, while a bottle of grape spirit from the Islands costs 10, 12 reales and sometimes even more.” Last but not least, if the Indians shouldn’t get the rum from the Spanish, they would go looking for it from the English who have plenty of it, to the detriment of the security of the Empire.
But there are other reasons too to stay friends with the Indians. Many ships bound to Spain with precious cargo have sunk in the channel of Bahama and in other sand banks; these huge losses have been partly recouped thanks to diving, which made it possible to recover a large part of the cargos. Actually, most divers, and the most skilled ones, were Indians from that coast, who did most of the work because they were able to hold their breath underwater much longer than the Spanish. And these Indians want to be paid with rum, otherwise they will leave.
Moreover, many physicians from La Havana advocated the use of rum as a medicine. In particular, the Protophysician of La Habana, Francisco Theneza, made the case for the consumption of aguardiente de caña, which should be given to the slaves “to heal and give greater vigor to their bodies, debilitated by too much toil, the many chores, by nakedness and hunger, lack of sleep, the scorching sun, and to prevent and treat lockjaw.”
Despite the evidence of the facts, the Council of the Indies reiterated the prohibition. The Fiscal (that is, more or less, the Attorney or Prosecutor) was aware that “the previous prohibitions had achieved little to no practical effect”, yet he stated that it was necessary to uphold the prohibition and enforce it. Only, he advised to tolerate small, specified quantities for the hospitals and to allow the planters to distribute it to their slaves and send it to Florida, Apalaches and Panzacola. And yet, the Council did not accept even these recommendations and on 8th August, 1740, ruled to maintain the absolute prohibition to produce and consume aguardiente de caña in Cuba.
Thus ended, without accomplishing anything, the first rum war in Cuba. The aguardiente de caña continued to be prohibited by the Crown, and La Havana planters continued to produce it. In 1749 the law became even harsher because not only was the ban repeated, with the usual penalties, but it was even decreed that the pot stills, and also the trapiches (sugar mills) where the rum was made, should be demolished. The liberalization of production and trade of aguardiente de caña in Cuba would come only later, in 1764.
In the meantime, while in Cuba Islanders and Habaneros quarreled over rum, Big History went on. In 1739 Great Britain went to war against Spain, the war which would later be called “War of Jenkins’ ear”. This war is very important for us Rum Enthusiasts because it is just during this war that the British Vice Admiral Edward Vernon “invented” Grog, the iconic drink of the Royal Navy for more than 200 years (see my article “ORDER TO CAPTAINS” in the June 2020 issue). But this war was very important for the History of Cuba (and of the United States) for other, more eventful reasons, as we will see in the next articles.
Marco Pierini
