Bacardi’s long fight for a free and independent Cuba continues

 NBC’s The Today Show featured a segment looking back at the spirited history of BACARDI on April 3, 2025, from the company’s founding in Santiago de Cuba in 1862, expropriation by Castro’s communist dictatorship, to their ongoing success, but much was left out.

Bacardi’s history is intrinsically related to the fight for Cuban independence from Spain, the defense of democracy during the Republic, and the ongoing struggle for the restoration of democracy and the rule of law under the current communist dictatorship. The Bacardi family arrived in Colonial Cuba from Spain in the early 1800s. In 1828, Don Facundo Bacardi Massó joined his older brothers in Santiago, Cuba, where Bacardi Limited was founded by him on February 4, 1862. Don Facundo had three sons who went into the family business: Emilio Bacardi Moreau, Juan Bacardi Moreau, and Facundo Bacardi Moreau.

Emilio Bacardi Moreau was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 5, 1844, the son of Facundo Bacardí Massó,who together with his father was arrested by Spanish loyalist forces for their support of Cuban independence. Don Facundo was released shortly afterwards, but his son Emilio spent four years imprisoned, and then forced into exile. Don Facundo passed away at age 71 on May 9, 1886.

Emilio Bacardi Moreau’s son, Emilio Bacardi Lay, actively took part in Cuba’s war of independence. In 1895, he was a field officer for Gen. Antonio Maceo during the invasion of Cuba by independence forces. He reached the rank of colonel by the age of 22. After a life of entrepreneurship and patriotic service, Emilio Bacardi Moreau died on August 28, 1922, of a heart ailment. He was 78 years old. The city of Santiago suspended all public events for two days to mourn and celebrate his life. He had been nicknamed “Cuba’s foremost son.”

Emilio Bacardi Lay, who had fought for Cuban independence and been opposed to the dictatorships of Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista but remained in Cuba and repeatedly resisted authoritarianism, was forced to flee when Castroism consolidated control in 1961. Emilio Bacardi Lay, who was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 12, 1877, died in exile in Miami on October 14, 1972 at the age of 95. He was the last surviving ranking officer from Cuba’s war of independence with Spain.

Emilio Bacardi Lay ( Source: Cuba en la memoria )

A history of the Bacardi family written by Tom Gjelten, a reporter for National Public Radio, titled “Bacardi and The Long Fight for Cuba :The Biography of a Cause,” led to renewed interest in their role in Cuba’s independence.  A 2008 review of the book in The New York Times by Randy Kennedy touches on the figure of Emilio Bacardi Moreau.

Emilio Bacardi, especially, comes to life as the book’s most powerful character, though one so strange that Gabriel García Márquez might have invented him. Emilio was imprisoned twice by Spain off the coast of Morocco for his revolutionary activities. But he still managed to hold the company together, to serve as Santiago’s mayor during the unsettled years of the American occupation, to help found a salon called the Victor Hugo Freethinker Group, to practice theosophy in a predominantly Catholic country and to track down a genuine mummy on a trip to Egypt, which he bought as the centerpiece for a museum he had founded in San­tiago. (Modest he was not; he signed his revolutionary correspondence with the name Phocion, after the Athenian statesman known as “the good.”)

Bacardi Imports, Inc., re-established its headquarters in Miami in 1963 after having been based for a century in Santiago de Cuba.

This is the history that the Castros would like to erase but have been unable to. Meanwhile, to all who read this, please consider that if you wish to make a toast to freedom with alcoholic spirits, do it with Bacardi or the real Havana Club.

However, it is important to point out that Bacardi, in addition to having a great history, also retain an enlightened vision for the future that is human centered.  Today, an article appeared that revealed how Bacardi is putting money behind people to make sure artificial intelligence doesn’t replace human bartenders.

Bacardi also has a positive track record on environmental stewardship that has been repeatedly recognized. Bacardi USA was awarded the SmartWay® Excellence Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the fourth time in 2020.

In contrast, the Cuban dictatorship continues to sell their stolen version of Havana Club, that today “pumps 1,288 cubic meters of waste liquids into the Chipriona inlet in Cuba every day, mostly vinasse (a residual liquid remaining from the fermentation and distillation of alcoholic liquors). It has been doing that since the 1990s, although the problems became more acute starting in 2007,” according to Julio Batista in his 2017 report described the impact of this pollution as follows:

“The Chipriona inlet is a place where no one goes, where no one fishes, that doesn’t need a fence because no one wants to swim in the boiling filth that flows into its waters every day. The waters of what used to be a beach are now soupy and have the sour smell of decomposition. No studies about the marine life in the inlet are publicly available, but fishermen say there’s no fish there.” …”In the last decade, Chipriona has become the drainage point for the Ronera Sana Cruz, the biggest distillery in the country and one of the four owned by Cuba Ron S.A. It’s the end point of the sewage of the only place where the white and 3-year-old brands are distilled by Havana Club International (HCI). And the dumping ground for a company that earned $118.5 million in profits in 2016 from the sale of 4.2 million boxes each with nine liters of rum.”

 Bacardi has recognized the work of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and in 2017 that of his daughter, Rosa María Payá and they are supporting the Cuba Decide initiative to push for a democratic transition in Cuba.

Bacardi is synonymous with the best of Republican Cuba. Generations of the Bacardi family fought for Cuban independence with one family member fighting alongside General Antonio Maceo, and during the Republic the family not only had enlightened business practices but also engaged in civic activities that promoted a democratic culture based in the rule of law. Through their marketing, Bacardi put Cuba on the map. They continue in the long fight for a free and independent Cuba.