Ron Bacardi (Cuba) check 1950

Very rare Cuban bank check from the Ron Bacardi Company, maker of rum alcohol. This is from pre-Castro Cuba before they mved to Puerto Rico.  Checks issued against the Royal Bank of Canada, Santiago De Cuba.  Nice vignette of the Bacardi Factory of 1862.  Nice Bacardi logo underprinted at the bottom.

Bacardi Limited is the largest privately held, family-owned spirits company in the world. Originally known for its eponymous Bacardi white rum, it now has a portfolio of more than 200 brands and labels. Founded in 1862, and family-owned for seven generations, Bacardi employs 6,000 people, manufactures at 27 facilities in 16 markets on four continents, with sales in more than 150 countries. Bacardi Limited refers to the Bacardi group of companies, including Bacardi International Limited. The company sells in excess of 200 million bottles per year. The company's sales in 2007 were US$5.5 billion, up from $4.9 billion in 2006. Bacardi Limited is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda, and has a 16-member board of directors led by the original founder's great-great grandson, Facundo L. Bacardí.

Facundo Bacardí Massó, a Spanish wine merchant, was born in Sitges, Catalonia, Spain, in 1814, and emigrated to Cuba in 1830. During this period, rum was cheaply made and not considered a refined drink, and rarely sold in upmarket taverns. Facundo began attempting to "tame" rum by isolating a proprietary strain of yeast still used in Bacardi production. This yeast gives Bacardi rum its flavour profile. After experimenting with several techniques he hit upon filtering the rum through charcoal, which removed impurities. In addition to this, Facundo aged the rum in white oak barrels, which had the effect of mellowing the drink. The final product was the first clear, or "white" rum in the world.

Moving from the experimental stage to a more commercial endeavour, he and his brother José set up a Santiago de Cuba distillery they bought in 1862, which housed a still made of copper and cast iron. In the rafters of this building lived fruit bats – the inspiration for the Bacardi bat logo. The 1880s and 90s were turbulent times for Cuba and the company. Emilio Bacardi, Don Facundo's eldest son, was repeatedly imprisoned and was exiled from Cuba for having fought in the rebel army against Spain in the Cuban War of Independence.

Emilio's brothers, Facundo and José, and his brother-in-law Henri (Don Enrique) Schueg, remained in Cuba with the difficult task of sustaining the company during a period of war. The women in the family were exiled in Kingston, Jamaica. After the Cuban War of Independence and the US occupation of Cuba, "The Original Cuba Libre" and the Daiquiri were both born, using Bacardi rum. In 1899 US General Leonard Wood appointed Emilio Bacardi Mayor of Santiago de Cuba.

In 1912, Emilio Bacardi travelled to Egypt, where he purchased a mummy (still on display) for the future Emilio Bacardi Moreau Municipal Museum in Santiago de Cuba. In Santiago, his brother Facundo M. Bacardí continued to manage the company along with Schueg, who began the company's international expansion by opening bottling plants in Barcelona (1910) and New York City (1915). The New York plant was soon shut down due to Prohibition, yet during this time Cuba became a hotspot for US tourists.

In 1922 Emilio opened a new distillery in Santiago. In 1930 Schueg opened the Art Deco Bacardi building in Havana and the third generation of the Bacardí family entered the business. Facundito Bacardí was known to have invited Americans (still subject to Prohibition) to "Come to Cuba and bathe in Bacardi rum." A new product was introduced: Hatuey beer.

Bacardi's transition into an international brand was due mostly to Schueg's "business genius"; Schueg "branded Cuba as the home of rum, and Bacardi as the king of rums" and expanded overseas, first to Mexico (1931), then to Puerto Rico (1936), under the brand name Ron Bacardi. (Ron is the Spanish word for rum). Post-Prohibition production in Puerto Rico enabled rum to be sold tariff-free in the US. He then expanded to the United States (1944). During World War II, the company was led by Schueg's son-in-law, José "Pepin" Bosch. Pepin founded Bacardi Imports in New York City, and became Cuba's Minister of the Treasury in 1949.

Portuondo and other Bacardí family members initially supported the Cuban revolutionaries, including Fidel Castro and the broader M-26-7 movement: Bosch personally donated tens of thousands of dollars to the movement, and acted as an intermediary between the revolutionaries and the CIA to assuage the latter's concerns. Family members, employees, and facilities were put to use by the movement and the company supported the revolution publicly with advertisements and parties. But their support turned to opposition as the pro-Soviet Che Guevara wing of the movement began to dominate and as Castro turned against their interests.

The Bacardí family (and hence the company) maintained a fierce opposition to Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba in the 1960s. In his book, Bacardi, The Hidden War, Hernando Calvo Ospina outlines the political element to the family's money. Ospina describes how the Bacardi family and the company left Cuba after the Castro regime confiscated the company’s Cuban assets on 15 October 1960, particularly nationalizing and banning all private property on the island as well as all bank accounts. However, due to concerns over the previous Cuban leader, Fulgencio Batista, the company had started foreign branches a few years before the revolution; the company moved the ownership of its trademarks, assets and proprietary formulas out of the country to the Bahamas prior to the revolution and also built plants in Puerto Rico and Mexico after Prohibition to save import taxes on rum being imported to the U.S. This helped the company survive after the communist government confiscated all Bacardí assets in the country without any compensation.

Ospina also explains the close ties Bacardí family members had to the U.S. political elite as well as to organizations of state such as the CIA. The family funded various Cuban exile organizations, such as CANF.

More recently, Bacardi lawyers were influential in the drafting of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which sought to extend the scope of the United States embargo against Cuba. In 1999, Otto Reich, a lobbyist in Washington on behalf of Bacardi, drafted section 211 of the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Appropriations Act, FY1999, a bill that became known as the Bacardi Act. Section 211 denied trademark protection to products of Cuban businesses expropriated after the Cuban revolution, a provision keenly sought by Bacardi. The act was aimed primarily at the Havana Club brand in the U.S. The brand was created by the José Arechabala Company and confiscated without compensation in the Cuban revolution. The Havana Club trademark had been registered by the Cuban government in the United States without permission of the rightful owners. The new law invalidated the trademark registration. Section 211 has been challenged unsuccessfully by the Cuban government and the European Union in U.S. courts. However, the act has been ruled illegal by the WTO (August 2001). The U.S. Congress has yet to re-examine the matter.