Bacardi is the world’s top-selling rum with annual sales of 20 million cases in more than 150 countries. But it does not sell a drop in Cuba, where founder Facundo Bacardi first opened a tin-roofed, dirt-floored distillery on Matadero Street in the eastern city of Santiago in 1862.
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With thorough reporting and an eye for rich, often quirky detail, veteran National Public Radio correspondent Tom Gjelten traces the story of the Bacardi family, whose product helped shape Cuba’s soul until Fidel Castro nationalized the company’s facilities in 1960.

The Bacardis took communist Cuba to court to preserve their international trademark and eventually built a rum empire using operations in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Brazil and the Bahamas. “We just didn’t think to register the Bacardi trademark, so we lost it,” Castro said years later. “We had the factory that produced the real Bacardi rum, but we couldn’t keep the name.”

The Bacardis opposed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and supported Fidel Castro. They even granted some workers leave to join his rebel forces, and the company’s chief executive, Jose (Pepin) Bosch, accompanied Castro on his first trip to the United States after Castro took power in 1959. Bosch ducked out early, however, already afraid of where Castro was leading the government.

After nationalizing Bacardi, Cuba began producing Havana Club rum, a brand it usurped from the Arechabala family, Bacardi competitors who did not fight to keep their trademark.

Bacardi eventually bought the naming rights to Havana Club from the Arechabalas and began selling its own version of Havana Club in the United States, touching off legal battles with Cuba that have yet to be resolved.

The case is complicated but, as Gjelten notes, its underlying issues are simple: “When could Cuban rum be sold in the United States, by what company and under what label?” Like so many facets of U.S.-Cuba relations, answering those questions is far from easy.

Original Source: WILL WEISSERT