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The Emilio Bacardi Moreau Museum

The Emilio Bacardi Moreau Museum

Emilio Bacardi Moreau, the Cuban rum executive, founded a museum to house his collection of artifacts in 1899. For many years his museum was a small-scale operation. By 1922, however, the museum’s collection had grown large enough to be housed in a Palladian-style building in Bacardi’s hometown, Santiago de Cuba. The museum opened in the fall of 1927 and continued to operate into the twenty-first century.

The museum displays a variety of artifacts in three dedicated exhibit areas: the Art Room, the History Room, and the Archaeology Room. Its collection includes an Egyptian mummy and two Peruvian mummies that Bacardi had collected, as well as artifacts highlighting the aesthetic development of Cuban arts, representative items from major world cultures, textiles, and items that once belonged to Cuban patriots, including Antonio Maceo and Carlos Manuel de Cespedes. Museum guides generally describe the holdings as “eclectic,” since they appear to be items that Bacardi either liked or was able to obtain in world art markets. In 2006, eighty-four items were stolen from the collection, only to be recovered three days later.

The museum has played a significant role in promoting Cuban art. Before the country became independent, Cuban art either was religious in nature or consisted of decorative objects reflective of Spanish traditions. By collecting paintings by Cuban artists, Bacardi expanded the range of the nation’s artwork. Although artistic patronage was a feature of Cuban society from the seventeenth century, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a new era in private collecting, particularly of imported artworks from major dealers in Europe. By 1913, there were three public art museums in Cuba including the Emilio Bacardi Moreau Museum—the Museo Nacional in Havana and a museum in Cárdenas—and these institutions followed the Bacardi tradition of exhibiting Cuban regional art as well as international works.


See Also

Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy

Emilio Bacardi

by Beverly Schneller

Cuban liquor company executive

Bacardi used his influence with Cuban insurgents and the Spanish colonial government to maintain and expand the fortunes of his family’s rum-distilling business during long periods of rebellion in Cuba. He established the Emilio Bacardi Moreau Museum to house his extensive collections of art and artifacts.

Sources of wealth: Manufacturing; sale of products

Bequeathal of wealth: Spouse; children; charity; museum

Early Life

Emilio Bacardi Moreau (eh-MEE-lehoh bah-KARD-ee MOH-roh) was born in 1844 in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, the eldest of four children of Facunda Bacardi Massó (1813-1866). When Emilio was a child, his father Facundo, a successful retailer, entered the fledgling rum business by purchasing a distillery for 3,000 gold pesos (almost $6,000). At twenty-one, Emilio entered the family business, but he was divided between his duties to the family and his desire to be a leader in the Cuban independence effort.

First Ventures

The period between 1868 and 1878 was marked by internal strife in Cuba that adversely affected the nation’s sugar plantations. Bacardi was active in Cuba’s effort to gain independence from Spain at the same time he worked in the family business. In 1874, Facundo Bacardi bought out his partners and with his sons formed a new corporation, Bacardi y Compania. Soon the company’s products gained international recognition by winning major prizes at world’s fairs. Key to the products’ successes were the oak barrels in which the rum was cured, the quality of the Cuban sugar and molasses used in the blends, and the secret family recipe that made Bacardi’s taste uniquely desirable.

At thirty-three, Bacardi became president of the firm, and he used his connections as a patriot and prominent businessman to promote a product that was distinctly Cuban. In September, 1879, Bacardi was arrested for his involvement in the Cuban independence movement. He was tried and deported to penal institutions in Spain and North Africa. The year 1880 proved deadly for Bacardi’s business, and his company, which was nearly $40,000 in debt and lacked cash flow, declared bankruptcy. By 1883, however, Bacardi y Compania had returned to some of its former stability, posting a profit of nearly 23,000 pesos. During this period, Bacardi was torn between his Cuban independence efforts and his partnership within his family company, but he managed to balance both and earn a great deal of respect as a Cuban entrepreneur.

Mature Wealth

Despite the death of his wife in 1885 and his father in 1886, Bacardi began a corporate reorganization that would lead to his company’s worldwide fame. Bacardi, as head of both the firm and family, hired Enrique Scheug as the company’s financial manager and redistributed ownership of the remaining Cuban distillery to prevent the Spanish government from seizing its operations. In 1888, the Bacardi company’s rums won international acclaim in spirits competitions. Profits trebled to nearly 65,000 pesos in 1891. As another period of political instability emerged in 1895, Bacardi kept positive working relations with Cuban sugar planters. However, in 1896, he was arrested and again sent to North Africa after he was found guilty of participating in political activities.

In 1898, Bacardi went to Jamaica, where his family had gone for safety, and in August, 1898, he returned to Santiago de Cuba to resume work. The Bacardi brothers and Scheug managed to survive the political uprisings, but the company earned only marginal profits between 1891 and 1893. However, Bacardi rums proved popular with the American soldiers who came to Cuba at the end of the nineteenth century to fight in the Spanish-American War. American efforts to annex Cuba were under way and General Leonard Wood set up operations there. Wood appointed Bacardi the mayor of Santiago de Cuba. Bacardi became active in rebuilding and restoring Cuba after many years of strife. He was elected mayor of Santiago de Cuba in 1901, and the following year Cuba gained independence from Spain. Bacardi was elected to the Cuban senate in 1905. Ten years later, exhausted from wrangling with the United States and disappointed by aspects of the new Cuban government, Bacardi resigned from politics and fully devoted himself to the family business.

Bacardi led the company into the twentieth century by introducing new rum drinks, ably marketed by Scheug, including a mixture of rum and Coca-Cola known as the Cuba Libré (free Cuba) and the daiquiri. The Cuba Libré was named after the slogan of the Cuban independence movement and was a particularly popular drink in the United States. The daiquiri initially was a drink popular with miners and was made from crushed ice, rum, and lime juice. At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Bacardi rums beat the competition and the company expanded into more global markets. During this time, Emilio Bacardi continued to lead the business from strength to strength with new rum blends and new methods of distilling.

With Bacardi as Santiago de Cuba’s mayor and one of Cuba’s leading businessmen, philanthropy and corporate growth occurred simultaneously. Bacardi used high-visibility public events, including sponsoring a baseball team, to position his rum brands with the public and to make drinking his company’s beverages appear both fun and patriotic. Bacardi moved easily in government circles and his company enjoyed sufficient growth to enable it to add new operations in New York, Puerto Rico, and Barcelona, Spain.

As the business expanded, Emilio’s brother, Facundo, Jr., created more new tastes, such as sipping rums that are not mixed with other liquids, promoted more rum-based cocktails, and updated distillation techniques. When certain doctors in Cuba indicated that rum drinking was medicinal, the Bacardi company promoted the health benefits of its products. In 1913, company profits were estimated at more than 175,000 pesos, and they would quadruple by the end of World War I.

In 1919, the company reorganized and incorporated under the name Compania Rum Bacardi, S.A. The company’s partners, the Bacardi brothers and Scheug, were all millionaires, and they managed operations valued at roughly $4 million. In the 1920’s, Emilio, who was remarried to Elvira Cape, enjoyed world travel, and on his trips he began to collect items for his museum, including an Egyptian mummy. In February, 1922, the company opened another distillery. The firm remained strong because its ownership continued to be held by the Bacardi family, with Emilio and his descendants, as well as those of his brothers, holding $10,000 worth of company stock per person.

Legacy

Emilio Bacardi died on August 28, 1922, and the city of Santiago de Cuba engaged in two days of public mourning for one of its patriots, philanthropists, and leading businessmen. Bacardi was also a journalist and an author of fiction, memoirs, and essays on Cuban politics. When his brother, Facundo Bacardi, Jr., died in 1926, The New York Times reported that the family’s company was worth $50 million.

Further Reading

1 

Calvo Ospina, Hernando. Bacardi: The Hidden War. London: Pluto Press, 2002. Translated by Stephen Wilkinson and Alasdair Holden. Provides a short history of the Bacardi firm and is a source of financial information about Emilio Bacardi’s period of management.

2 

Coulombe, Charles. Rum: The Epic Story of the Drink That Conquered the World. New York: Kensington, 2004. A history of rum that includes information on Bacardi’s involvement in the Cuban independence movement.

3 

Gjelten, Todd. Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause. New York: Viking, 2008. A history of the Barcardi rum company and its involvement in Cuban politics. Depicts the distiller as a model corporate citizen and its family managers, including Emilio, as leaders in both the Cuban independence movement and Fidel Castro’s subsequent insurrection.

4 

Haig, Matt. Brand Loyalty: How the World’s Top One Hundred Brands Thrive and Survive. London: Kogan Page, 2004. A capsule examination of how the Bacardi family established their company and how the firm maintains its quality spirits and reputation.

5 

Perez, Louis A., Jr. Cuba Between Reform and Revolution. New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1988. Offers detailed information on the independence movement and its impact on sugar production in Cuba.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Schneller, Beverly. "Emilio Bacardi." Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy, edited by Howard Bromberg, Salem Press, 2010. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLIW_1033369001033.
APA 7th
Schneller, B. (2010). Emilio Bacardi. In H. Bromberg (Ed.), Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Schneller, Beverly. "Emilio Bacardi." Edited by Howard Bromberg. Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2010. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.