Bacardi accused of bankrolling CIA mission to assassinate Castro

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles. The Guardian. London, Thursday 22 August 2002

The Bacardi rum company has been engaged for more than 40 years in clandestine attempts to overthrow the Cuban government by both violent and other means, according to a new book. The company is accused of bankrolling extreme rightwing groups and American mainstream politicians in an effort to remove Fidel Castro and re-establish its profitable empire on the island.

Bacardi is the world’s largest rum company, with annual sales of more than 240m bottles in 170 countries. Its history stretches back to 1862 when it was founded in Santiago de Cuba by a Frenchman and a Catalan. But behind its image of a fun drink for partygoers lies an empire that has devoted millions of dollars towards removing Mr Castro and the Cuban government, which nationalised its properties, according to the Colombian journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina in his new book, Bacardi, The Hidden War*.

Initially, Bacardi supported the Cuban revolutionaries of 1959, who nationalised the company along with other private industries in 1960. Other countries and companies have since reached settlements with the Cuban government over the nationalisation, but the United States and Bacardi never have.

The book alleges that in the 1960s the then head of Bacardi, the late José Pepin Bosch, planned to bomb Cuba’s oil refineries, hoping to create a blackout in the country and thus stimulate "a state of national subversion". His plan, and a picture of the bomber aircraft he intended to use, was exposed in the New York Times and the enterprise abandoned.

A more elaborate plot to kill Mr Castro was suggested in 1964, according to documents not released by the national security council until 1998. Details of the CIA plot "to assassinate Castro, which would involve US elements of the mafia and which would be financed by Pepin Bosch" are contained in documents sent by a CIA agent, Gordon Chase, to his superiors. According to the documents, Pepin Bosch contributed $100,000 of the $150,000 requested by the people linked to the mafia who had offered to kill Mr Castro, his brother Raul and Che Guevara.

Directors and leading shareholders in Bacardi were instrumental in the formation in 1981 of the Cuban American National Foundation (Canf), which was to become one of the main bodies coordinating efforts to overthrow Mr Castro. It was also used as a conduit in the secret war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua waged by the Reagan administration until the exposure of the Iran-contra affair.

The Canf made no secret of its operations, referring at the time to its "active participation in the Central American conflict and our efforts to inform and guide those who have pledged their allegiance to the cause of a Free Nicaragua". Canf was instrumental in the fight to keep Elian Gonzalez, the shipwrecked Cuban boy, in Miami against his father’s wishes.

Senior Bacardi figures have been instrumental in supporting the 1996 Helms-Burton legislation, which outlined what Cuba must do to be regarded as a democracy by the US and attain diplomatic recognition. The law made it an offence for foreigners to invest in properties nationalised by Mr Castro, and denied US visas to the directors of any firms that did so.

In congressional circles the legislation was referred to as the Bacardi bill. Top Bacardi figures mounted fundraisers for Senator Jesse Helms, one architect of the law. In 1975 the head of Bacardi’s Miami subsidiary co-hosted a $500-a-plate fundraiser for Mr Helms that netted $75,000.

Instrumental in building that legislation was Otto Reich, who this year was appointed by President George Bush as the assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, despite opposition from the Senate foreign relations committee. Before taking this job Mr Reich worked for the firm of lobbyists used by Bacardi to advance its aims. He has been an active proponent of toppling the Cuban government and "has been more helpful than any other diplomat on behalf of the Canf, and particularly the Bacardi multinational", writes Calvo Ospina.

The book is published as the Bush administration has been attempting to link Cuba to the "war on terrorism", and the US state department has listed Cuba as one of seven state sponsors of terrorism. But the House of Representatives has just voted 262-187 to relax travel restrictions imposed as part of the US embargo on the island, and a growing number of Republicans have urged the opening up of trade with Cuba.

A Bacardi spokeswoman said: "No one at Bacardi believes this book is worth commenting on."

* Bacardi, The Hidden War, by Hernando Calvo Ospina (Pluto Press)