The Sugar King of Havana (43 page)

140
arrangements had to be made to transfer his salary to Celia instead:
León to author.

140
“Julio, it is not safe here for you and your daughters”:
González to author.

142
Leonor went on to write a version:
Leonor Lobo Montalvo González,
Mi Ascensión al Pico de Turquino
(Havana, 1946);
Diario de la Marina
also carries an interview, Aug. 10, 1946, 2.

142
“my father called her a quitter”:
José de Córdoba, “Tilting at Mills,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 11, 1999.

142
“They are two characters, wholly opposed”:
Letter to Virginia Lobo, Nov. 1, 1948, LAM.

143
twenty-four gold dinner plates from Tiffany’s:
Diario de la Marina
, Aug. 2, 1946.

144
Caracas
would be Lobo’s largest mill:
Farr’s Manual of Sugar Companies
(New York: Farr & Co., 1959).

144
Lobo meanwhile returned to his office with Carlotta:
Lobo’s memories of the subsequent phone call and the events that followed are contained in his unpublished memoir and in a long letter he sent to Carmen Cecilia González on July 2, 1976. Lobo hoped at one point that González, a Venezuela-based historian, would write his biography. LAM.

144
“killing each other over ideologies more obscure”:
Guillermo Cabrera Infante,
Mea Cuba
(London: Faber & Faber, 1994), 140.

145
“Anonymously”:
A typically skillful reply. A senator further commented that the diamond looked different from the original. “In that case,” Grau responded, “if it is not the same diamond, please give this one to me because it is mine.” Humberto Vázquez García,
El Gobierno de la Kubanidad
(Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente, 2005), 325–32.

148
“Justice comes late, but it comes”:
La justicia tarda, pero llega.
Desiderio Ferreira was Machado’s second-in-command of police.

148
“more dangerous than all the time I fought against Batista”:
Cited in Charles Ameringer,
The Cuban Democratic Experience: The Auténtico Years
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 29. The university was a revolutionary training ground for Castro. While there, he also joined the failed filibustering expedition against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1947. The following year he traveled to Bogotá and was active in the mass riots that convulsed the Colombian capital after the killing of the liberal Colombian politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

150
“To say the name Lobo is to speak of money-changing”:
Prensa Libre
, Aug. 9, 1946.
Bohemia
’s coverage is collected in Enrique de la Osa’s
Sangre y Pillaje
(La Habana: Editorial Pablo de la Torriente, 1990), 53–63.

150
three other businessmen who had fled to New York, fearing for their own lives:
Diario de la Marina
, Aug. 11, 1946.

150
“I feared such terrible conditions would come”:
Cable to Lobo, Aug. 14, 1946, LAM. Berenson was well known in Cuba for having tried to negotiate the landing in Havana of almost a thousand refugee Jews who had sailed from Germany on board the freighter
St. Louis
at the start of the Second World War. He failed to raise enough money to pay for the refugees’ residency visas. A film was later made of their plight,
Voyage of the Damned.

151
“We are not hoodlums”:
De la Osa,
Sangre y Pillaje
, 53–62.

151
“Mr. Lobo may not be an angel”:
Prensa Libre
and
Diario de la Marina
, Aug. 13, 1946. “El señor Lobo no será un arcángel, no tiene halos, ni cacarea la honestidad . . . El central está restaurándose como nunca lo hizo antes una poderosa compañía norteamericano, nunca este central ha tenido un fomento agrícola tan intenso, y este central pertenece a ese señor lobo, tan ‘lobo’ . . . ¿Podría decir el Sr. Piñango qué ha hecho él por Cuba? . . . Nada le conocemos . . . Cuba se sentiría muchísimo mejor con mucho más Julio Lobos y muchísimos menos Piñangos.”

152
The saga’s complexities are worthy of a radio soap opera:
Bohemia
, Sept. 22, 1946.

153
Lobo quarreled with the Cuban doctors over their fees:
Bohemia
, Nov. 10, 1946.

154
“very disagreeable years”:
Letter to Carmen Cecilia González, July 14, 1976, LAM.

154
his biggest fight of all:
a corporate raid: Santamarina,
The Cuba Company
, chapter 3.

155
But it was a “betrayed revolution”:
Tad Szulc,
Fidel: A Critical Portrait
(New York: William Morrow & Co., 1986), 165–67.

155
“Some people have made the country great”:
Enrique León, “Respuesta a José Pardo Llada: mis memorias de Julio Lobo,”
El Nuevo Herald
, Oct. 8, 1990, 11A.

155
He wrote from New York to his mother in Havana:
Letters to Virginia Lobo, April 29, June 15, July 1, and Nov. 1, 1948, LAM.

156
During one trip to Haiti:
Lobo memoir, LAM.

156
he traveled home from the airport in a bulletproof car:
El Crisol
, Jan. 12, 1948.

159
“¿Qué pasa? ”
he asked:
Pérez Veiga, LAM.

159
the single shot woke Lobo:
González to author.

160
“The truth is I have been unlucky”:
Letter to María Luisa, Jan. 19, 1950, LAM.

162
“They say that I was a terrible President ”:
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.,
A Thousand Days
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 216.

162
Prío was cordial until the last:
Carlos Alberto Montaner,
Viaje al corazón de Cuba
(Barcelona: Plaza & Janés Editorial, 1999), 61.

162
“My life alone is no pleasure”:
Letter to María Luisa, Nov. 4, 1950, LAM.

166
“Opulence, the adulation of money-makers”:
Cited in Chancellor,
Devil Take the Hindmost
, 235–36.

166
“Money not only does not bring happiness”:
Letter to María Luisa, April 15, 1950, LAM.

167
“My fame lacked only one thing—misfortune”
: Jean Paul Kauffmann,
The Dark Room at Longwood
(London: The Harvill Press, 1999), 28.

168
Thus there have been Napoleons:
The “Napoleon of Crime” has a curious Cuban connection. Adam Worth, the Victorian master thief that Arthur Conan Doyle took as his model for the evil Professor Moriarty—Sherlock Holmes’s greatest criminal adversary—had two illegitimate daughters with Kitty Flynn, a New York hostess. In 1881, Flynn, an attractive adventurer and opportunist, married Pedro Terry, the favored son of Cuban planter Tomás Terry. Young Terry took Flynn’s two daughters under his wing, and when the elder of these girls married the eminently respectable figure of Charles Trippe, their son Juan inherited some of the Terry sugar fortune. Juan Trippe, grandson of a career criminal and heir to one of Cuba’s largest fortunes, went on to establish an airline operating out of Havana, soon transforming it into one of the world’s biggest—Pan American. Trippe was no Napoleon of the Air, however. Gore Vidal called him the “robber baron of the airways.” Ben Macintyre,
The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997), 129–36 and 293.

168
Orestes Ferrara:
A respected historian of figures such as Machiavelli and the Borgias, Ferrara was also a skillful duelist. He once fenced with General Enrique Loynaz de Castillo, the war of independence hero who had clashed with Bernabé Sanchez, beating Loynaz with a wound to the head. Affronted by the defeat, Loynaz rushed after Ferrara with his usual impulsiveness, shouting, “What no Spaniard ever did in combat, that damned Italian did,” and had to be restrained by spectators.

168
“so that she never forgot the taste”:
Lobo memoir, LAM.

168
“An infinite capacity for taking pains”:
Alistair Horne,
The Age of Napoleon
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004).

168
“had an extraordinary ability to create”:
Rosario Rexach, “El Recuerdo de Julio Lobo,”
Diario las Americas
, June 12, 1983.

169
“an unusual man, whose most memorable quality”:
J. L. Loeb,
All in a Lifetime: A Personal Memoir
(New York: John L. Loeb, 1996), 168.

169
“In addition to his abilities as a soldier”:
Julio Lobo y Olavarría,
La Mascarilla de Napoleón Bonaparte
(La Habana: Ucar García, 1957), 1.

169
Lobo dispatched his assistants to France:
Author interview, Ana María Brules, June 10, 2008.

170
“It was a sacred place for Julio”:
Cited in Sulema Rodríguez Roche, “Un prodigioso legado; la biblioteca Napoleónica de Julio Lobo,” University of Havana, Master’s Thesis, 2006.

170
“this priceless contribution”:
Lettres au Comte de Mollien
, Museo Julio Lobo, Département des Manuscrits à La Havane (Paris: Editions Charles Gay, 1959). The full text of de Gaulle’s letter runs: “Paris, 24 Mai 1960. Monsieur: En réunissant et en publiant ce très intéressant choix de letters de Napoléon 1er au Comte Mollien, vous avez apporté à l’historie de l’époque impériale une inappréciable contribution. Je vous en félicite et je vous remercie de m’avoir mis à même d’en profiter, en me raisant homage del ouvrage consacré à cette correspondance. Veuillez croire, Monsieur, à mes sentiments les plus distingués et les meilleurs. Le Général de Gaulle.”

171
imperial dignitaries were known to suspend a piece of sugar:
Horne,
Age of Napoleon
, 100.

171
found a complete ten-volume edition of rare Egyptian drawings
: “Biblioteca Nacional Cubana expone libro Bonapartista sobre Egipto,”
World Data Service
, Aug. 22, 2006.

171
One of Lobo’s few surviving extended disquisitions:
Julio Lobo y Olavarría,
La Mascarilla de Napoleón Bonaparte
. See also Francesco C. Antommarchi,
The Last Days of the Emperor Napoleon
, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1825).

172
At 5:51 p.m., the thirty-two-year-old Corsican-born doctor:
Frank McLynn,
Napoleon: A Biography
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1997), 655.

172
Burton smashed it on the floor:
Julia Blackburn,
The Emperor’s Last Island
(New York: Vintage, 1997), 172.

174
“in gratitude for the operation on his mother’s eyes”:
Emilio Bacardí y Moreau,
El Dr. Francisco Antommarchi: sus días en Cuba
(Madrid: Playor, 1972), 161–81.

175
“I really loved her”:
Kauffmann,
Dark Room at Longwood
, 74.

176 (
Mademoiselle George later observed):
Horne,
Age of Napoleon
, 45.

176
“like a pain under the heart continually”:
Cited by Sally Beauman, afterword to
Rebecca,
by Daphne du Maurier (London: Virago Press, 2003).

177
“majestic stride and presence”:
Herald Tribune
, Oct. 16, 1979.

178 (
“I am certain both will become part”):
Letter to Lillian Fontaine, dated only Thursday, 1954, LAM.

178 (
“rather unusual; I trust you will like it ”):
Letter to Lillian Fontaine, March 5, 1954, LAM.

178
“So beware!”:
Letter to Lillian Fontaine, Nov. 20, 1953, LAM.

179
a person among his “first row”:
Letter to Joan Fontaine, March 31, 1977, LAM.

179
“As you know, early in the 1950s”:
Letter to Joan Fontaine, Feb. 1, 1982, LAM.

179
“Like you, I am a loner”:
Letter to Julio Lobo, March 5, 1981, LAM.

179
“I am so glad you were touched”:
Letter to Julio Lobo, Feb. 11, 1982, LAM.

179
“The sadness which envelopes my heart”:
Letter to Joan Fontaine, May 31, 1977, LAM.

180
“Years ago, when I was still at MGM”:
Esther Williams,
The Million Dollar Mermaid
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 291.1.

180
Lobo’s hospitality grew out of the traditional generosity:
Ely,
Cuando reinaba su majestad el azúcar
, 691.

181
“You know I am modest in my habits”:
Letter to María Luisa, Oct. 4, 1950, LAM.

182
“When Hollywood stars visit”:
Hipólito Caviedes, from an otherwise undated 1959 article published in
ABC
, LAM.

182
Lobo was always at work:
See, for example, interview by Roberto Bourbakis, “El Museo Julio Lobo,” in
Cubazúcar
, Feb. 1958, 8–10.

182
“land was bad, the cane was bad, the mill was bad”:
León to author.

183
“A sugar factory should be as clean”:
Julio Lobo y Olvarría, “Tinguaro,”
Compendio anual de la revista Cubazúcar
, Año IV, Diciembre 1958, No. 1.

183
“ We spent a lovely weekend at Tinguaro”:
Letter to María Luisa, May 4, 1950, LAM.

184
“Was it possible for the spirits of the young people”:
Cirilo Villaverde,
Cecilia Valdés
, trans. Helen Lane (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 142.

185
“The Cuban people should not accept”:
Raúl Cepero Bonilla,
Escritos históricos
(Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1989), 244.

185
Lobo knew that to achieve his ideas:
Lincoln, “Julio Lobo, Colossus of Sugar.”

185
when he imported an experimental cane-cutting machine:
Thomas,
Cuba
, 1144.

186
“One has to modernize or disappear”:
Lobo, “Tinguaro.”