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SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2010
CIRCA 1960, WORKERS CUT SUGAR CANE STALKS IN CUBA/GETTY IMAGES BIOGRAPHY REVIEW BY ANN LOUISE BARDACH
Revolution dissolves a sweet empire “T
o be as rich as Ju- lio Lobo!” goes the refrain, still heard in Miami and Havana, usu-
ally with a sigh of envy or nostal- gia. And while the list of Fidel Castro’s enemies is long and sto- ried, few can lay claim to a more fabulous tale than the legendary Lobo. Consider that Castro’s revo- lutionary government ejected the fabled sugar czar from Cuba in 1960, dispatching him into exile with only “a small suitcase and a toothbrush.” Not long before, Lo- bo had an estimated fortune (in 2010 dollars) of $5 billion. In “The Sugar King of Havana,”
John Paul Rathbone, an editor at the Financial Times, has pulled off a splendid trifecta. He has pro- duced a long-overdue biography of Lobo along with a perceptive and unsentimental rendering of pre-revolution Cuba, as well as his own family story — tracing his mother’s trajectory from dazzling Havana debutante to toy-store clerk in London. Rathbone’s nu- anced blending of familial and national history lends this work poignancy and depth. (Castro, not one to be outdone, published yet another tome of his memoirs — 833 pages! — to mark his 84th birthday on Friday.) Curiously, early in his life, Lobo
was exiled by another Castro. In 1900, his parents, a Sephardic
Jewish self-made businessman and his Venezuelan-Basque wife, were expelled from Caracas by its newly installed tyrant, Cipriano Castro (no relation) and arrived in Havana when Lobo was 1 year old. Later, Lobo — backed by his
banker father — invested his cap- ital and his genius in the indis- pensable commodity of sugar. Very quickly, he dominated not only Cuban sugar but often the world market. And while Lobo was ruthlessly competitive (his name means “wolf” in Spanish), he also implemented progressive worker reforms in an industry once synonymous with slavery. He was a renaissance man, boundlessly curious, with a com- mand of business, politics, history and culture. He assembled a price- less collection of art, most notably Napoleonic memorabilia, and he courted movie stars, including Joan Fontaine and Bette Davis.He was reputed to have filled the swimming pool at one of his es- tates with perfume for swim diva and film star Esther Williams. “Such are the legends from which revolutions are made,” Rathbone dryly notes, “and then justified.” Contrary to popular myth, many of Cuba’s business elite were ap- palled by the slavishly corrupt gov- ernment of Fulgencio Batista, and none more so than Lobo. While other sugar barons sensed trouble in Castro’s fiery speeches (the pow-
mills for the revolutionary govern- ment for a modest monthly salary. Though Lobo wondered at the time if his refusal “had consigned him to prison or worse,” he opted to leave — with nothing. Rathbone offers nicely etched
THE SUGAR KING OF HAVANA The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba’s Last Tycoon By John Paul Rathbone Penguin Press 304 pp. $27.95
JULIO LOBO/PENGUIN PRESS
erful Falla-Gutiérrez family stowed $40 million in foreign banks on the eve of the revolution), Lobo, ever the Cuban patriot, made a fateful miscalculation. He stayed put and continued to invest in the country’s sugar business, main- taining his vast holdings, art col- lections and properties in Cuba. After all, he had outwitted his ri- vals for half a century, survived an assassination attempt that took out a piece of his skull and reason- ably believed he could do business with Castro. Indeed, Lobo had gen-
erously aided the rebels. It was none other than Che Gue-
vara who disabused him of this quaint notion. “It is impossible for us to permit you, who represent the very idea of capitalism in Cu- ba, to remain as you are,” the rebel commander informed Lobo after summoning him to a midnight meeting. But in recognition of Lo- bo’s savvy and indispensability, Che made him an offer: Though his properties and assets would be seized in a matter of days, Lobo could stay on and run his sugar
portraits of Lobo’s two daughters, who had a lifelong adversarial re- lationship with each other. Leonor, the eldest, scaled Pico Turquino, Cuba’s tallest peak, as a young woman, while the more intellectu- al María Luisa, a friend of Rath- bone’s mother, became an art col- lector in Miami. It was María Luisa who began to visit Cuba in 1975, seeking some rapprochement with the Castro regime, as well as the return of some of the family’s con- fiscated art. She was bitterly dis- appointed in both pursuits. In exile, Lobo had occasional successes as a sugar trader work- ing out of his New York office, but he never replicated his past tri- umphs. He was, after all, a sugar king who had been divested of his sugar mills. Still, he remained an impulsive Romeo, even propos- ing to Bette Davis. When he died in Madrid in 1983, his fortune had dwindled to $200,000. Rathbone’s own family never regained the status they enjoyed in Cuba. “Indeed, very few . . . prospered in exile,” he writes. His grandparents lived in a cramped two-room apartment near the air- port in Miami, and some of his
cousins settled in Queens. Only one omission in this book
strikes me as significant: the fact that the finca (property) of the Castro family abutted two famous foreign-owned sugar conglomer- ates, United Fruit and West Indies Sugar, both Lobo rivals. Certainly, the irony that members of the Bush family were major share- holders of the latter (George Her- bert Walker Jr., uncle of George H.W. Bush, served as a director of West Indies Sugar until its con- fiscation in 1959), and thus Lobo competitors, merited mention. In another stroke of historical
irony, Lobo’s forced exile turned out worse for Cuba than for him. Fifty years after his departure, the Cuban sugar industry, regard- ed as the backbone of the coun- try’s economy, is in shambles. Fewer than one-third of its mills are operational, and those that do run do so at a fraction of their previous productivity. As it turns out, the fates of sug- ar and Cuba appear to be the same.
bookworld@washpost.com
Ann Louise Bardach, a reporter for the Daily Beast, is the author of
“Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Washington and Havana” and “Cuba Confidential.” She is a member of the Brookings Institution’s Cuba Study Project.
ARCHITECTURE
GOLDEN GATE The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Bridge By Kevin Starr. Bloomsbury. 215 pp. $23
Its towers are bigger, badder and bol- der than the Washington Monument or the Statue of Liberty, and as far as Kev- in Starr is concerned, the Golden Gate Bridge is America’s premier “triumph of engineering” and a “work of art.” In his new book, Starr eloquently retraces this industrial achievement from planning and construction up to the present day, with its $6-and-up tolls. Completed in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge is now crossed by more than 40 million vehicles and 10 million pedestri- ans a year. The single-span suspension bridge extends 4,200 feet (the second longest, by a mere 60 feet, in the United States behind the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York); its towers climb 746 feet (taller than two Lady Libertys); and its cables are wound with more than 80,000 miles of wire capable of en-
EDUCATION
THE GREAT BRAIN RACE How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World By Ben Wildavsky. Princeton Univ. 240 pp. $26.95
Globalization is changing the food we
eat, the way we communicate and, in- creasingly, the way we go to college. Nearly 3 million students were enrolled in universities outside their borders in 2009, a 57 percent increase over the previous decade, according to the Insti- tute of International Education, which fa- cilitates exchange programs. “The Great Brain Race,” by Ben Wil-
davsky, takes a comprehensive look at today’s worldwide marketplace for col- lege students — with stops in such places as Singapore, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, where western schools, in- cluding the University of Chicago and po- tentially George Mason University, are opening satellite campuses or where lo- cal governments are making heavy in- vestments in American-style research universities. The author, a former educa- tion editor at U.S. News & World Report, also explores the latest attempts to rate the world’s top colleges now that more
students are degree-shopping across borders. These rapid changes are provoking anxiety in some politicians, particularly in the United States, where the higher edu- cation system has attracted the world’s top academic talent for more than half a century. In India, which sends more stu- dents to American universities than does any other country, lawmakers have been anxious to stanch the brain drain but re- luctant to open the market to foreign col- leges that they fear will cater only to the elite. Many would rather seek investment for their own overwhelmed education sys- tem.
But Wildavsky emphasizes that great- er competition for scholars is not to be feared. “Increasing knowledge is not a zero-sum game,” he writes. Better edu- cational opportunities around the globe, he predicts, will lead to greater innova- tion and economic growth worldwide. —Michael Alison Chandler
chandlerm@washpost.com
during gale-force winds and earth- quakes.
But this book is about more than just statistics. Starr tells the story of the bridge’s masterminds — the bankers, builders, egos and engineers — and de- votes a chapter to a tragic side of the bridge’s history as a frequent site of Bay Area suicides.
Starr writes adoringly about the bridge and all its wonderment, including its distinctive paint scheme. “Interna- tional Orange” was the tint of the anti- corroding primer that covered the steel to shield it from the salty Pacific breeze during construction; but the color was so compatible with the golden gate mo- tif that it was retained and is now an in- dispensable part of the bridge’s look. —T. Rees-Shapiro
shapirot@washpost.com
FOREIGN AFFAIRS REVIEW BY ANN SCOTT TYSON Day by day with the Taliban
CAPTIVE My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban By Jere Van Dyk Times. 269 pp. $25
I
n the opening pages of jour- nalist Jere Van Dyk’s stark ac- count of his ill-fated foray into Pakistan and capture by the Taliban, he takes readers back to 1973, the year he drove an old Volkswagen across Asia to Ka- bul. That trip marked the start of Van Dyk’s lifelong fascination with Afghanistan, where he covered the mujaheddin leaders during their war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s and the Taliban insur- gency since 2001. The insights that he has drawn from his decades of experience in Afghanistan and his familiarity with Pashtun culture in particular make his account of 45 days of captivity with the Taliban rich and revealing. Van Dyk’s history with mujahed-
din figures such as Jalaladin Haq- qani and Gulbadeen Hekmatyar, who are now allied with the Tali- ban, served as background for his plan to disappear into Afghan soci- ety and then secretly cross the bor- der into the tribal areas of Pakistan. “I wanted to explain the Taliban to the outside world,” he writes. “I wanted to go deep into the heart of Taliban country, to get to their lead- ers, men I knew from the 1980s, and through them, perhaps even to find Osama bin Laden himself.” He grew a beard, stayed away
from officials and other journalists and set off with his interpreter and guide to meet a contact in the east- ern city of Jalalabad who would lead them to the Taliban. But only a few hours into the journey, walk- ing in the mountains of Pakistan, they were surprised by a Taliban group armed with rifles and rock-
et-launchers, who sprung out from behind rocks and apprehended them. “I couldn’t run. I couldn’t do anything. I was dead. I was going to die,” Van Dyk writes. The first section of the book, leading to his capture, is called “The Way of the Pashtuns,” and in it Van Dyk deftly weaves lessons on tribal culture into his narrative. For example, he describes how af- ter his blindfold is untied in a small mud hut, one of the first questions his Taliban interrogator asks him is “What is your father’s name?” “This was deep Pashtun culture, where it was necessary to know a man’s father’s name, and his grand- father’s name, to know who he was, where he fit in society, and what kind of a family he came from. These were Taliban. They wanted to create a new world where the equality of Islam overruled rigid, tribal hierarchy, but they were still Pashtuns.” This theme — of the tension and interplay between Islamic law and ancient Pashtun tribal codes in the Taliban mentality — is one of the most compelling of the book. The author provides a detailed com- parison of the two belief systems and where they dovetail and di- verge. Under the Pashtun code of honor, he writes, “a man must nev- er let an insult go unpunished. Sharia, or Islamic law, on the other hand, is interested in arbitration, settling a dispute.” Once Van Dyk is captured, a Taliban leader de- scribes how his fate dangles be- tween the Pashtun tradition of hospitality and Islamic law. “If you have been invited . . . you will be free to go on your way,” the leader says. “If you haven’t been invited, we will judge you under Sharia.” Another theme is the author’s
struggle to come to grips with his own morals and the Christian faith of his youth as he comes under in-
tense pressure to adopt the Islamic beliefs and rituals of his mercurial captors. Van Dyk calibrates his ev- ery move for its potential to allow him to survive. “The Maulavi want- ed me to become Muslim and to take their message to the world. If I could only do that, I wouldn’t have to try to find a million dollars,” the amount the Taliban wanted for his ransom, he wrote. “But I couldn’t convert.” Beyond the harrowing experi- ence of his kidnapping, and ques- tions of trust between him and his Afghan interpreter and guide, Van Dyk also offers insights into the competing interests and loyalties of Pakistani, Afghan and U.S. mili- tary and government organiza- tions. “The Pakistanis are using the Taliban, I believe, trying to de- stroy the tribal structure. They are deeply involved in backing the Tal- iban. They are, I believe, using U.S. taxpayer money to kill U.S. sol- diers,” he writes, based on impres- sions from sneaking across the border of Afghanistan into Paki- stan four times before his capture. The book, drawn largely from notes that Van Dyk’s Taliban captors allowed him to write, is organized as a daily diary of 45 days in a make- shift Taliban prison. As such, it moves slowly in places. And, while undoubtedly authentic, Van Dyk’s constant wondering whether he will be taken out and shot or otherwise executed can become slightly te- dious for the reader who obviously knows the outcome. On the whole, however, this first-hand account of- fers a rare and complicated portrait of the Taliban mentality seen through discerning Western eyes.
tysona@washpost.com
Ann Scott Tyson is a staff writer for The Washington Post who has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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