The Sugar King of Havana (45 page)

223
“That can only be taken as a sign of confidence”:
This, and Lobo’s other comments at the time, are gathered in
Bohemia
, May 5, 1959.

223
“We must modernize or die”:
Herald Tribune
, March 21, 1959.

224
“Maybe when the time comes to apply the law”:
Cited in Gjelten,
Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba
, 226.

225
“ We have been going through some ugly times”
and
“I have just begun to fight ”
: Letters to Varvara Hasselbalch, June 23 and July 1, 1959.

225
From there he traveled to Tangiers:
Cable between Czarnikow Rionda’s Havana and London offices; to author from McAvoy, sourced Braga Brothers Collection, Nov. 23, 1959.

226
“There were more empty seats on the bus”:
Carlos Eire,
Waiting for Snow in Havana
(New York: The Free Press; Simon & Schuster, 2002), 237.

230
most other Cubans had kept what money they had on the island:
There was much capital flight during the last months of Batista, yet Cuba ended 1959 with some $350 million in gold reserves, among the highest in Latin America, which suggests the amount of money withdrawn was not particularly high. Many Cubans also owned real estate in New York and Florida—most famously José Manuel Alemán, a spectacularly corrupt minister under Grau and then Prío. Some Cubans had also invested in Canada, Europe, and parts of Latin America, especially Venezuela. Even so, Cuban wealth invested abroad was then estimated at around $400 million—a fraction of the $10 billion Latin Americans as a whole were thought to keep abroad. Thomas,
Cuba
, 1182–187.

230
“I crapped out ”:
Lacey,
Little Man
, 258.

230
These were valued at some $4 million:
Memo by John H. Groh, Feb. 20, 1980, LAVB.

233
Alvaro acted as Donovan’s translator:
Pablo Pérez-Cisneros, John B. Donovan, and Jeff Koenreich,
After the Bay of Pigs
(Miami, FL: Alexandria Library Inc., 2007), 93.

234
“Premier Castro, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking”:
Ibid
.
, 182.

235
“What the hell is this all about”:
B. D. Hyman,
My Mother’s Keeper
(London: Michael Joseph, 1985), 84–88.

236
“F lowers are magnificent”:
Cable to Lobo, May 20, 1963. LAM.

237
According to an interview Lobo had with the FBI:
Federal Bureau of Investigation DBA 80042, 14 July 1964; FBI, DBA 77673, 15 July 1964; and
Plans of Cuban Exiles to Assassinate Selected Cuban Government Leaders
, memorandum, Central Intelligence Agency, DD/P 4-2944, 10 June 1964.

238
“I want all the mills to be destroyed”:
New York World Telegram and Sun
, May 15, 1964.

238
“I left Cuba on October 14”:
Undated 1963 newspaper clipping, LAM.

239
“$25m ahead of the game”:
Groh memo, LAVB.

239
“We are witnessing history”:
Investment column,
Fortune
, March 1963.

240
“I know what I’m doing”:
LAM.

240
Now “that damned Hershey deal” returned to haunt him:
To upack the deal-math somewhat: Lobo bought Hershey for $24.5 million, of which $15 million was in cash and $9.5 million in debt. These debts were paid down at a fast rate, thanks to forward sales of Hershey sugar and other quick assets, so that at the end of 1959 total debt had fallen to $6.75 million. In the United States, after leaving Cuba, Lobo arranged a moratorium with City Bank on Dec. 29, 1961. The bank agreed to the moratorium on the conditions that: a) Lobo would trade his way to success and eventually pay down the debt; and/or, b) Castro might fall, in which case Lobo would regain his property and also be able to pay off the debt. On October 28, 1963, City Bank agreed to restructure the debts again. This time the Moorings, the Florida real estate company owned by his daughters, would assume $3.7 million, payable in five annual installments of $740,000, a cost that would be assumed by Galbán Lobo. Galbán Lobo Nassau would meanwhile assume the balance of the debt. After allowing for an immediate payment by Lobo of $1 million, this left $2 million, payable in five annual installments of $400,000. Combine that with the $3.7 million held by the Moorings, but paid by Lobo, and his total City Bank debt was $5.7 million. Groh memo, LAVB.

240
On July 23 Lobo declared bankruptcy:
The most comprehensive round-up of events is in
BusinessWeek
, “The Bet That Failed,” July 23, 1964, although all major papers—including the
Financial Times
, the
Wall Street Journal
, and the
New York Times
—covered the story.

241
William Zeckendorf, who filed for bankruptcy on the same day:
New York World-Telegram
, July 23, 1964.

243
“people that left work with the same trudge”:
Gabriel García Márquez, 1958, “Un Sábado en Londres,” in
Obra periodística. Vol. 4. De Europa y America: 1955–60
, ed. Jacques Gilard (Barcelona: Bruguera, 1983).

245
“where Cubans of all races and creeds can meet”:
Diario de las Americas
, Oct. 28, 1966.

246
José R. Fernández, a founding member of the center, recalls
: In a memoir of the Cuban center at
http://www.asociacioncaliope.org/historiacc.htm
.

246
The days were long gone when he could afford to misplace six officers’ uniforms:
Correspondence between Lobo and TWA, March 28–April 28, 1965, LAM.

246
“What is more absurd than avarice in old age”:
Letter to Alexander Herman, Nov. 11, 1972.

246
the Commerce Ministry gave Lobo the necessary import permits out of charity:
Private information to author.

246
“since leaving New York, I’ve not touched a grain of sugar”:
Letter to Maurice Varsano, Jan. 14, 1977, LAM.

246
Maurice Varsano:
See Jacques Lamalle,
Le Roi du Sucre
(Paris: Lattés, 1979), 77–88.

247
took in lodgers to pay her bills:
José de Córdoba, “Tilting at Mills,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 11, 1999.

247
“I am completely retired from business”:
Letter to Lillian Fontaine, April 14, 1972, LAM.

247
“It’s painful to be selling the remains”:
Letter to Dominique Vincent, May 21, 1980, LAM.

247
In addition to two crates of Napoleon papers that Leonor had got out of Cuba:
Leonor and Jorge, her husband, had piled assorted Napoleon documents and accoutrements, such as Josephine’s tiara, into four roughly built wooden crates. They had then driven around Havana at dawn, the boxes sticking out the back of their Renault. Leonor left two of the crates with Norberto, the resourceful butler of the Bacardi family, who later smuggled them out of the country. The other two they left for safekeeping at the French embassy after the British ambassador, disturbed from his sleep, had refused them help while standing on the steps of his residence in his dressing gown.

247
María Luisa was living in London then:
She had set up base in London in 1973, after moving from Peru.

248
Their trip was never going to be routine. It turned into a disaster:
Deposition by Julio Enrile, Lobo memorandum, 1978; and letters from Lobo to Celia Sánchez, April 24, 1978, and June 12, 1978, LAM.

250
there the matter rested, and with it a portion of Lobo’s lost wealth:
Lobo memoranda Aug. 1, Aug. 23, and Dec. 10, 1966, LAM. Others took the matter further. See Timothy O’Brien, “The Castro Collection,”
New York Times
, Nov. 21, 2004; Sunday Business, Section 3.

250
“ When you lose your wealth you lose nothing”:
Letter to Alexander Herman, Oct. 27, 1972, LAM.

250
“acuity, even though he was only making do”:
To the author.

251
“Of Cuba I know little”:
Vision
, March 15, 1975.

251
“Strange things happened”:
Lobo memorandum, 1981, LAM.

252
“He has been looking for sinners—and money”:
Hasselbalch,
Varvara’s Verden
, 114.

252
“I want to go back to Cuba, to die there”:
Letter to Carlotta Steegers, Jan. 15, 1982, LAM.

256
“Soon we, as Cubans, will probably have annexed Miami”:
Lobo memoir, LAM.

259
When they arrived at Lobo’s old mill, the workers seemed to have fallen under a melancholy spell:
Linda Robinson, “The Final Homecoming of Cuba’s Sugar Queen,”
U.S. News and World Report
, March 22, 1999.

263
“Three generations of Cubans have fought and died”:
Luis Machado was also head of Cuba’s Chamber of Commerce at the time. Cited in Marifeli Pérez-Stable,
The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, Legacy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 19.

263
Cuba is rather large:
The point is made by G. B. Hagelberg and José Alvarez in “Cuba’s Economic Culture and Reform Process,” Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, proceedings, August 2008,
http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/asce/pdfs/volume18/pdfs/hagelbergalvarez.pdf
.

263
Few countries—perhaps none—waged three successful African campaigns:
Jorge I. Domínguez, “Hello from Havana,”
Harvard Magazine
111, no. 6 ( July–August 2009), 24–27.

263 t
he first person to refer to Cuba as “a country”:
Gustavo Pittaluga,
Diálogos sobre el destino
(Miami, FL: Mnemosyne Publishing, 1954 [1963]), 120.

264
down to his last two hundred thousand dollars:
Last will and testament of Julio Lobo Olavarría, LAM.

265
“I am happier now with nothing”:
Letter to Hilda Krueger, Aug. 1974, LAVB.

Aguilar, Luis E. 1974.
Cuba 1933: Prologue to Revolution
. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Álvarez Álvarez, Luis, and Sed Nieves, Gustavo. 1997.
El Camagüey en Martí.
Havana: Editorial José Martí.

Alvarez Díaz, José R. 1963.
Estudio Sobre Cuba: Colonia, República, Experimento Socialista: estructura económica, desarollo institutional.
Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press.

Alvarez Tabío, Pedro. 2004.
Celia; ensayo para una biografía.
Havana: Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado.

Ameringer, Charles. 2000.
The Cuban Democratic Experience: The Auténtico Years.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Anderson, Jon Lee. 1997.
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life.
London: Bantam Press.

Antommarchi, C. Francesco. 1825.
The Last Days of the Emperor Napoleon
. 2 vols. London: Henry Colburn.

Anuario Azucarero de Cuba
. 1960. Havana: Cuba Económica y Financiera.

Arenas, Reinaldo. 1993.
Before Night Falls.
London: Viking.

Argote-Freyre, Frank. 2006.
Fulgencio Batista: From Revolutionary to Strongman.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Atkins, Edwin F. 1926.
Sixty Years in Cuba.
Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press.

Ayer, Pico. 1995.
Cuba and the Night
. London: Quartet.

Bacardí y Moreau, Emilio. 1972.
El Dr. Francisco Antommarchi: sus días en Cuba
. Madrid.

Bardach, Ann Louise. 2002.
Cuba Confidential
. New York: Penguin.

Beales, Carleton. 1933.
The Crime of Cuba.
Philadelphia and London.

Beauvoir, Simone de. 1965.
Force of Circumstance.
London: Penguin Books.

Beauman, Sally. 2003. Afterword in
Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier. London: Virago Press.

Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. 1992.
The Repeating Island
. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Blackburn, Julia. 1997.
The Emperor’s Last Island.
London: Vintage.

Brenner, Joël Glenn. 1999.
The Emperors of Chocolate.
New York: Random House.

Cabrera Infante, Guillermo. 1971.
Three Trapped Tigers.
New York: Harper & Row.

Cabrera Infante, Guillermo. 1988.
View of Dawn in the Tropics
. London: Faber & Faber.

Cabrera Infante, Guillermo. 1994.
Mea Cuba.
London: Faber & Faber.

Calzadilla Fierro, Luis. 2000.
Yo soy el Cabellero de Paris
. Badajoz, Spain: Grafícas Diputación de Badajoz.

Carpentier, Alejo. 1978.
La Consagración de la Primavera.
Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas.

Carr, Barry. “Mill Occupations and Soviets: The Mobilisation of Sugar Workers in Cuba, 1917–1933,”
Journal of Latin American Studies
, No. 28, 1996, 129–56.

Carr, Barry. “Identity, Class, and Nation: Black Immigrant Workers, Cuban Communism, and the Sugar Insurgency, 1925–1934,”
The Hispanic American Historical Review
, Vol. 78, No. 1, 1998, 83–116.

Casuso, Teresa. 1961.
Cuba and Castro.
New York: Random House.

Cepero Bonilla, Raúl. 1989.
Escritos históricos.
Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Chancellor, Edward. 1999.
Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation
. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Cirules, Enrique. 2004.
The Mafia in Havana.
New York: Ocean Press.

Cleveland, Harold Van B., and Thomas F. Huertas. 1985.
Citibank, 1812–1970.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Conte Agüero, Luis. 1955.
Eduardo Chibás, el adalid de Cuba
. Mexico: Editorial Jus.

Dana, Richard Henry. 1859.
To Cuba and Back.
London: Smith, Elder & Co..