Rum Historian by Marco Pierini
In last month’s article, (HISTORY OF CUBAN RUM 21. UNCLE SAM’S BOOZE COPS) we looked at Prohibition in Cuba from the American perspective. In this article, on the other hand, we’ll try to understand what Cuban people thought about it.
“The Havana business responsible for provisioning, loading and clearing cargo for the rum fleet insisted that they were not violating U.S. liquor laws because their transactions occurred in Cuba, where they were legal. It was not their concern where cargo actually landed if the ships themselves claimed to be headed to destinations where the importation of liquor violated no law. Cuban public opinion was also in their favor.” (Lisa Lindquist Dorr “A Thousand Thirsty Beaches”, 2018)
That’s right. Because in Cuba, and throughout the world, alcohol was and remained perfectly legal. It wasn’t just a question of different laws, but of a profound cultural difference. Cuban people, well known for their moderation in drinking alcohol, did not understand Prohibition. Actually, Cubans, both authorities and ordinary citizens, submitted to Prohibition, but didn’t approve of it. It was something alien to their culture, something imposed from outside, yet another American imposition. In Cuba, as I believe in all Catholic countries, real temperance movements have never existed. Beer and rum were part and parcel of Cuban people’s everyday life and alcoholism was not a particularly felt social problem. In short, Prohibition was for them just one of the many oddities and hypocrisies of the Gigante del Norte (Northern Giant).
Besides, booze smuggling was very lucrative, was interconnected with ordinary economic activities, and the wealth it brought seeped into all layers of Havana society. “Smuggling liquor represented a trade of approximately 500,000 cases of alcohol per month, or about $80 million per year. The Cuban government collected export duties on much of this trade – especially on highly desirable Cuban rum and aguardiente. Moreover, the vast majority of the trade occurred through the port of Havana. The ships were provisioned in Havana, the crews often spent their wages in Havana, and repairs were contracted, completed, and paid for in Havana, all at a time when the larger Cuban economy buckled under the low price of sugar. It was no surprise that Cubans, and especially those in Havana, the seat of national government, resisted U.S. demands that Cuba end the smuggling trade. …
Beyond representing an important element in the overall Cuban economy, the trade in liquor was interwoven into the local economy and fabric of city life in Havana. Captain del Valle, for example, met with his informant boot legger at a bar in what is now old Havana. Smugglers utilized familiar cafés and hotels to conduct their business and took advantage of area roads and beaches. … many Cubans had no interest in helping the United States enforce the Prohibition law. It was certainly not in the economic interest of many Cubans to do so. Havana’s rum fleet was extensive. During the heyday of smuggling, agents mentioned almost 350 separate vessels that at one point or another were implicated in the liquor traffic. These ships were of various sizes and types and used various forms of propulsion. … By the late 1920s, newer boats plied the waters, designed and built specifically for the liquor trade. …
Smuggling, along with most businesses associated with shipping, however, concentrated around the narrow, winding streets of what is now Old Havana near the docks of the harbor. Smugglers rubbed shoulders with tourists and legitimate business people along a wharf that hosted ships of a variety of sizes and designs. Local cafés and bars attracted tourists and also served as places to finalize business transactions or recruit crews. Local hotels housed Americans visiting the tropical island as well as budding and established liquor entrepreneurs. Wholesalers and smuggling alike managed their trades through local offices, while the police, customs agents, and American embassy officials sought to gain a vantage point on the entire market. It was impossible to disentangle legitimate economies of trade and tourism in Havana from the illegal trade in booze as well immigrants and narcotics.” (Lindquist Dorr)
The Rum Treaty of 1926 changed the legal framework, but not the opinion of Cubans and, last but not least, corruption was widespread at all levels, from the lowest officials to the highest authorities of the Republic. So, the efforts of the American agents and of the reluctant Cuban authorities were insufficient in the face of the profitability of smuggling and of the fact that, to put it simply, for the overwhelming majority of Cubans booze smuggling wasn’t a crime and smugglers were looked at with sympathy.
As I have already said several times, often the best historical sources are those that didn’t know they were such, those that the great French historian Marc Bloch called unintentional sources. In this case, luckily, we have a first rate source, Enrique Serpa’s novel “Contrabando” (Smuggling), published in 1938, but written in 1932-33. As far as I know, it has never been translated and published in English. It’s a good novel and I must confess that, beyond our interest in rum and Prohibition, the first thing that struck me was the utmost modernity of the Havana it describes: a vibrant, glittering city, not without poverty, of course, but also full of life: urban traffic, taxis, people, tourists, bars, night clubs, etc.
But back to us. The story is set at the end of the 1920s and is rather simple. The protagonist and first-person narrator comes from a wealthy family, had a good education, worked as a technician in a sugar mill, but, for a sort of existential idleness, he has slowly gone down the social ladder. He still owns three fishing schooners which he inherited from his father, and his house. He knows little about sea, boats and fishing and relies totally on the patrón, Cornúa, a rough sailor with a turbulent past, who oversees the fishing operations and is the de facto captain of the most beautiful and fastest boat, La Buena Ventura (The Good Fortune). Business goes poorly, and it keeps getting worse. Even when they catch a lot of fish it is difficult to sell it and the price keeps dropping because the supply exceeds the demand. This is also due to the arrival of refrigerated ships from the USA which sell their fish at very low prices. At the end of every fishing campaign the protagonist doesn’t earn anything, and his sailors earn very little despite the hardship of their work. At a certain point, with nonchalance Cornúa suggests abandoning fishing and turning to smuggling.
“I say that if I were the master of ‘The Good Fortune’ I would smuggle, no? That, of course, does not mean that you do. But what a bargain for those of us who sell the fish for two and a half cents! There’s no comparison between that and the fish, and nobody gets hurt. A good trip of twenty days can give us thirty thousand pounds of fish, which are, putting it high, at four cents a trip with another, one thousand two hundred pesos. Once the crew has been paid, what’s left? Let’s say two hundred pesos, two hundred five, three hundred? This is bad business! Now take your pencil and calculate how much the boat’s repairs cost, and everything else. There is, I say, no comparison with a journey of alcohol. In Havana, we buy rum for four pesos and sell it in the north for twenty. You do the math! That, putting the fish at four cents. But put it at three. So what! There’s not even enough left to smoke. ... There’s no comparison, I say, with a trip of alcohol. Buy in Havana the four pesos rum and sell it in the north at twenty”
To have an idea of the money involved, according to CoPilot, in 1930 1 peso was equal to 1 dollar, equivalent to roughly 20 dollars today. Moreover, in the novel the protagonist pays one peso for a taxi ride receiving change and he pays five pesos for a night with a cheap prostitute.
The controls of American Prohibition officials are very accurate, says Cornúa. Certainly, they can be bribed, but at a high price, beyond the reach of small traffickers like them.
“That is a resource of the big smugglers, who load cargos for many thousands of pesos. Those are never in danger. Look, I know a distillery that has made more than half a million with contraband, without any danger. He has made a deal with an American firm and sends them rum in cans like canned fruit. There was another one that sent it in barrels with I don’t know what dye and put it in as paint. Then they distilled it again, to remove the dye. You don’t know the tricks that have been invented for this business!”
The protagonist hesitates; the fear of being arrested scares him, but he has no moral doubts (nor do his sailors afterwards), he only considers practical problems, which Cornúa promptly resolves. “- And another thing, how do you do it? We get to the American coast, and then? How are we going to locate the smugglers? We would have, I suppose, to know someone and write to him; because if not, even if we could disembark ... We will go looking for who will buy us?”- Bah, man, don’t be a kid! That works out well in Havana. I can put you in communication with the man we need.”
That same night, in a bar, they meet a Mr Burton, an American buyer who lives in La Havana. He is willing to pay a deposit and the balance upon delivery of the rum at a specific location on the American coast, where they will meet a yacht with his men. The problem is that the rum seems too expensive. The protagonist approaches various distilleries, but the price is still high.
“And all of them had indicated to me the same price for the rum: eight pesos thirty cents a jug, placed in any point of the city. If I had to take it out of Havana, the driving was on me. When, after telling them how many jugs I was going to buy, I asked them for a discount, they took a sheet of paper and a pencil, to show me that, with the exorbitant taxes they paid, they could not sell it at a penny less:-
Note: each jug pays four pesos eighty cents per liter, which is the same as foreign spirits, even cognac. So, actually, what we charge you is three fifty per jug; the rest is tax”
Once again, Cornúa intervenes, and with the same ease with which he had put him in touch with Mr. Burton, now he takes him to Don Lesmes, an underground distiller who doesn’t pay taxes on rum. And after a brief conversation, the deal is done.
“Twenty minutes later we had closed the business in principle. First, the value of rum: four pesos twenty cents a jug; after delivery. Don Lesmes promised to have the shipment ready, four days later, in Boca de Jaruco, where he owned a house to store the alcohol he sold to smugglers. He set us a time to serve us, because then there were only thirty or forty jugs of spirits and about three hundred of rum. -
It is not worth keeping more - lamented Don Lesmes, who, already done the business, allowed himself the luxury of a verbal broadside - Hardly any business can be done. The government is careful not to make a mockery of the stupid Rum Treaty with the United States and you have to take many risks to smuggle. With as much money as this business could give! But they do not let it prosper and you have to take advantage of it by drops. The fact is, there is no spirit of initiative, man. We could get a lot of alcohol into the United States, but the government won’t let us, and we have to be collecting the profits with a sponge. This Government! I’m telling you; they don’t understand anything. It would be enough for the authorities to use their left hand, so that many people could see. But no! The government doesn’t understand. Liquor manufacturers are going broke in Cuba, and meanwhile, Americans are drinking wood alcohol and the crap they send from Nassau.
And Don Lesmes smiled in a grimace of disgust, which concretized his disgust for the government, the wood alcohol, the filth of Nassau, the American consumers and perhaps even for his own rum that he was going to sell us and that, of course, was not the same as he had drunk with us”
POST SCRIPTRUM
Do you remember my article OVERCOMING THE RUM INFERIORITY COMPLEX (ALMOST) in the May 2024 issue? Here is another example:
“- Are you going to drink whiskey? Cornúa smiled:
- Me? No way! I don’t like these slops you swallow. I want rum. - And, addressing the bartender: - Put a bottle of Bacardi here.”
The protagonist, a master, drinks whiskey, whereas Cornúa, a simple mariner, drinks rum, indeed Bacardí directly.
Marco Pierini
