57: Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba

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4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Since its founding nearly 160 years ago in Cuba, one family has run Bacardi. They fought for Cuba’s freedom, fostered an artistic community in the country, and rebuilt their business after fleeing the country because of Fidel Castro. Even today, they continue the struggle for Cuban identity from abroad. It’s the history of Cuba and what it means to be Cuban, distilled into a glass of Bacardi rum.

Thanks to Tom Gjelten for letting us use the title of his book, "Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba": https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/296309/bacardi-and-the-long-fight-for-cuba-by-tom-gjelten/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	When Fidel Castro, sometimes called Cuba's maximum leader, was alive, well to put it mildly,
0:10.9	he had a lot of enemies, especially in the Cuban ex-out community in Miami, Florida.
0:16.7	After Castro rose to power in 1959, tens of thousands of Cubans fled their homes for
0:21.7	the United States.
0:23.2	One of them was Jose or Papine Bosch.
0:26.2	He was one of Castro's fiercest opponents.
0:28.8	He also ran Picardi, you know, the company that makes rum.
0:31.4	There's no Picardi executive or family member who feels more personally betrayed by Fidel
0:35.3	Castro than Papine Bosch himself.
0:37.4	This is Tom Jelton, author of Picardi and the Long Fight for Cuba.
0:41.6	Originally Bosch actively supported Castro, but that changed when he saw how the Cuban leader
0:46.8	was a massing power and from his perspective, turning into a dictator.
0:51.3	Within a few years, Bosch did a complete 180 and actively supported overthrowing Castro.
0:56.6	I was just reading the other day a memoirs of his lawyer who talked about how the CIA approached
1:02.4	Papine Bosch and got him to rent a boat that became later used by the CIA to sabotage
1:08.7	sugar exports from Cuba.
1:10.9	This is just one of several examples of how Bosch tried to bring down Castro's communist
1:15.2	government.
1:16.2	He bought an airplane and he based it for a time in Nicaragua and for a time in Costa Rica
1:22.6	and had it outfitted with bombs.
1:26.0	And his idea was that he was going to recruit a pilot who was going to fly the plane to
1:31.6	Cuba and bomb oil refineries in Cuba.
	...

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