Topping this building’s magnificent art deco turret is a bat, the symbol of the Bacardí family and Cuba’s oldest rum-making company, now headquartered in Puerto Rico. Built in the early 1930s, the twelve-story skyscraper symbolized an apex in the architectural development of Havana as well as the Bacardí family’s ascent as the creator of one of Cuba’s most recognizable brands. After Fidel Castro followed the nationalization of all foreign companies in August 1960 with the nationalization of all large Cuban businesses in November 1960, the Bacardí family fled. The policy provoked shock and outrage, in part because of the Barcardís’ own history of supporting Cuban independence in the Nineteenth Century and the company’s fiscal support of Fidel’s movement during the war against the Batista dictatorship of the 1950s. Ironically, since the early 1990s, the Bacardí building has housed the capitalist business partners Fidel Castro invited to collaborate with the Revolutionary Armed Forces and Communist Party in order to ensure his regime’s survival after soviet aid collapsed. The building still houses such businesses today. Avenida Bélgica, Havana, November 2011.
