HISTORY | THE SUGAR KING OF HAVANA
Books
Biography of a sugar baron in '50s Cuba
THE SUGAR KING OF HAVANA: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last
Tycoon. John Paul Rathbone. Penguin. 320 pages. $27.95.
Julio Lobo was the richest man in Cuba, the equivalent of a modern-day
billionaire, before Fidel Castro's revolution forbade such wealth. As
British financial journalist John Paul Rathbone points out in this
ambitious, atmospheric biography, Lobo's life provides the perfect lens
through which to examine the rise and fall of the Cuban Republic.
Lobo was born in 1898, the year Cuba won its independence from Spain.
And in October 1960, at 62, he was run off after a murky midnight
meeting with Ernesto ``Ché'' Guevara. The next day, Ché turned the
entire sugar industry into a Soviet-style collective.
Rathbone portrays Lobo as an audacious risk-taker and a disciplined
multi-tasker who treated his workers better than most of the
exploitative sugar barons treated theirs. At the peak of his empire,
Lobo handled half of the 6 million tons of sugar Cuba produced annually
-- the island produces a fraction of that amount today -- owned 14 mills
and hundreds of thousands of acres. A masterful trader, Lobo twice
cornered the world sugar market. He also owned a bank, an insurance
company, shipping and telecommunication interests.
Lobo's life provides Rathbone with plenty of drama. Besides his
late-night encounter with Ché, Lobo spent a night at La Cabana fortress
prison in 1933 and was almost shot by a military coup firing squad. He
also almost died in 1946 when he was shot in the head during a
gangland-style assassination attempt.
Lobo left behind a vast art collection as well as the largest
accumulation of Napoleon memorabilia outside of France, including the
diminutive emperor's death mask, some teeth and a lock of hair. Lobo's
eldest grandson was christened with cane juice in the same baptismal
font that Napoleon used to christen his son, the future king of Rome.
Lobo's extramarital dalliances and post-divorce pursuits were legendary.
He once drained a swimming pool and refilled it with perfume for
Hollywood bathing beauty Esther Williams. He begged Joan Fontaine and
Bette Davis to marry him.
A former World Bank economist and currently The Financial Times' Latin
America editor, Rathbone does an excellent job of detailing how Lobo
built the empire and the inner machinations of the international sugar
market. Lobo, the fervent capitalist, was so disgusted by the corrupt
regime of Fulgencio Batista that he contributed $25,000 to the rebels
who would later strip him of his fortune.
But The Sugar King of Havana is far from a straight biography of Cuba's
``last'' tycoon. One-third of the narrative is Rathbone's family
history. His late mother, Maria, was a member of Havana's high society,
who ran in the same social circles as Lobo's daughters. Rathbone uses
this connection to let the narratives dovetail and, occasionally, wander
into digression.
While he touches on familiar themes -- the injustice and struggle,
intrigue and betrayal -- Rathbone's views of the exile experience will
be unfamiliar to those expecting the stereotypical prism of hothouse
Miami politics. Rathbone was born in New York, raised and schooled in
London. His father was a British advertising executive, and his paternal
grandfather elected to Parliament during World War II.
While he is no fan of the Castro brothers, Rathbone does not identify
with the ``feverish hatred of many exiles' anti-Castroism. From England,
the vehemence of their passions, their bitterness and rage, sometimes
had the feeling of a flat-earth society.''
His more tempered view of the island's turbulent history and of his
once-wealthy Cuban relatives struggling in middle-class Miami and New
York produce some of the book's more poignant passages. ``In time,'' he
writes, ``I came to see that exile imposed a kind of selective
censorship, a critical numbing that might otherwise tarnish glorious
memories, which can be all that is left when everything else is taken
away . . . ''
Larry Lebowitz is a Miami Herald staff writer.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/15/1774796/books-biography-of-a-sugar-baron.html
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