built a church and a baseball field, which unusually for those times hosted mixed-race games; Senado remained a progressive mill, a place where no child, as the saying went, lacked for shoes. Elsewhere Cubans planted sugar wherever they could. “If things go on at this rate, we’ll be sowing cane in the patios of our houses,” El Mundo remarked. Around the country, the huge trees under whose shade the early Spanish chroniclers insisted one could walk from one end of the island to the other, and which the Condesa de Merlin had described so vividly to her friends in Paris, were burned in a terrible conflagration to clear fresh land. At night the fragrant aroma of smoldering hardwoods—cedar, mahogany, mastic, and pomegranate—covered the island with a smell like church incense.
For a young man seeking his fortune, Lobo’s return to Cuba could hardly have been better timed. He was fluent in English and Spanish, technically up to date—unlike the sons of most local sugar men, he also liked to get his hands dirty—and well connected. He could work wherever he wanted. His first job offer came from Manuel Aspuru, a contemporary and later close business associate, who had inherited the sugar mill Toledo two years before. A second prospect followed soon after. Rionda offered Lobo $500 a month to work as assistant superintendent at the Lugareño, a midsize mill adjacent to Bernabé’s property that had changed hands several times since independence. The Galbán Lobo office balked at the prospect of their president’s son working for the competition and invited him to join them instead. Lobo, just twenty-two years old, named his terms, aiming high: the princely wage of $1,000 a month, 5 percent of profits, and managerial authority to sign off on large deals. The office agreed, Heriberto apparently absenting himself from the negotiations.
On January 2, 1920, Lobo reported for his first day of work. The Dance of the Millions was in full cavort. Any sugar price over five and a half cents per pound was reckoned to be enough to “stimulate the country to extreme prosperity.” By February 1920, sugar traded at nine and one-eighth cents, almost twice as much. As prices rose, planters sought huge advances on future crops. The banks—many of them American—were happy to lend. National City had opened twenty-two branches in Cuba in 1919 alone. When local funds ran low, New York was tapped for more. Every bank had portfolios thick with mortgages on plantations, credit notes on standing and future crops, and liens on bagged sugar. Notoriously, one grower famously planted cane quickly around the edges of his fields. His bank loaned him an advance on the crop on the assumption that all his land was cultivated, and the grower absconded to Paris before the lender realized its mistake.
By the end of March, the sugar price had risen to twelve cents, at the end of April to eighteen cents, and by mid-May it stood at twenty and a half. Up, up, up rose the price of sugar—as did the harvest, to 3.75 million tons, the second highest in history. Then, just as fast, down, down, down the price fell. By August it had dropped to eleven cents, by September to eight cents. November saw it halve again, and by Christmas it had dropped to three and three-quarter cents a pound. During his first year in the business, Lobo, the future King of Sugar, the man who would later say “I am the market,” watched fortunes balloon and collapse. He had missed the biblical seven years of feast. He would witness and sometimes suffer the years of famine that followed.
YOUTH IS A time of promise and ambition. Questions about the costs of that ambition only come later, when its fruits are lost to old age or catastrophe. In his middle age, Lobo occasionally asked himself whether the prize of Sugar King had been worth it. So too in the 1920s did Cuba during the calamity of the ensuing bust.
The banks were the first to go, as in every credit-fueled boom. There
For a young man seeking his fortune, Lobo’s return to Cuba could hardly have been better timed. He was fluent in English and Spanish, technically up to date—unlike the sons of most local sugar men, he also liked to get his hands dirty—and well connected. He could work wherever he wanted. His first job offer came from Manuel Aspuru, a contemporary and later close business associate, who had inherited the sugar mill Toledo two years before. A second prospect followed soon after. Rionda offered Lobo $500 a month to work as assistant superintendent at the Lugareño, a midsize mill adjacent to Bernabé’s property that had changed hands several times since independence. The Galbán Lobo office balked at the prospect of their president’s son working for the competition and invited him to join them instead. Lobo, just twenty-two years old, named his terms, aiming high: the princely wage of $1,000 a month, 5 percent of profits, and managerial authority to sign off on large deals. The office agreed, Heriberto apparently absenting himself from the negotiations.
On January 2, 1920, Lobo reported for his first day of work. The Dance of the Millions was in full cavort. Any sugar price over five and a half cents per pound was reckoned to be enough to “stimulate the country to extreme prosperity.” By February 1920, sugar traded at nine and one-eighth cents, almost twice as much. As prices rose, planters sought huge advances on future crops. The banks—many of them American—were happy to lend. National City had opened twenty-two branches in Cuba in 1919 alone. When local funds ran low, New York was tapped for more. Every bank had portfolios thick with mortgages on plantations, credit notes on standing and future crops, and liens on bagged sugar. Notoriously, one grower famously planted cane quickly around the edges of his fields. His bank loaned him an advance on the crop on the assumption that all his land was cultivated, and the grower absconded to Paris before the lender realized its mistake.
By the end of March, the sugar price had risen to twelve cents, at the end of April to eighteen cents, and by mid-May it stood at twenty and a half. Up, up, up rose the price of sugar—as did the harvest, to 3.75 million tons, the second highest in history. Then, just as fast, down, down, down the price fell. By August it had dropped to eleven cents, by September to eight cents. November saw it halve again, and by Christmas it had dropped to three and three-quarter cents a pound. During his first year in the business, Lobo, the future King of Sugar, the man who would later say “I am the market,” watched fortunes balloon and collapse. He had missed the biblical seven years of feast. He would witness and sometimes suffer the years of famine that followed.
YOUTH IS A time of promise and ambition. Questions about the costs of that ambition only come later, when its fruits are lost to old age or catastrophe. In his middle age, Lobo occasionally asked himself whether the prize of Sugar King had been worth it. So too in the 1920s did Cuba during the calamity of the ensuing bust.
The banks were the first to go, as in every credit-fueled boom. There
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