Dr. Mock has published Five books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com Excerpt from Cuba Libre, Mentirita Chapter Five In 1843, Facundo Bacardí married a young woman named Amalia, daughter of a French Bonapartist fighter, and began a family. Around this time, his experiments with rum had paid off and he offered samples of his new light rum to relatives and friends. Facundo's secret formula enabled him to ferment, distill, and blend from molasses a rum one could drink neat, almost like wine, without mixers or additives. Since molasses was a byproduct of processing sugarcane, Cuba's largest export, there were ample quantities on the island. On February 4, 1862, Facundo, his brother Jose, and a French wine merchant joined forces to buy Nunes' tin-roofed distillery for $3,500. The facility had the necessities (a cast-iron still, fermenting tanks, and aging barrels) for creating and selling a Bacardi brand of rum. Buying the old distillery lock, stock, and barrel, Facundo also received an added bonus in the deal—a colony of fruit bats that later came to represent the Bacardi name. 
 The Bacardi enterprise was a family affair. As Facundo's three sons—Emilio, Facundo (Jr.), and José—came of age, they joined the company and learned their father's secret formula for making what was fast becoming the Caribbean's finest rum. Emilio, the oldest, worked in the office; Facundo Jr. worked in the distillery; and José, the youngest, eventually promoted and sold his father's products. In honor of his father and to celebrate the new family business, Facundo Jr. planted a coconut palm tree just outside the distillery. As the Bacardi boys learned their father's trade, a young man named Enrique Schueg y Chassin, born in 1862, the same year Don Facundo purchased the Santiago distillery, was maturing, and he would soon join both the business and the family, by marriage. As the business thrived in the ensuing years, young Facundo's coconut palm did, too. The tree became an enduring symbol of the Bacardi family and its of spirits operation. 
 Not long before Don Facundo and his partners bought the Nunes distillery, an Australian named T. S. Mort had perfected the first machine-chilled cold storage unit. Three years after Bacardi was established, Thaddeus Lowe debuted the world's first ice machine. Although these two inventions seemed unrelated to Don Facundo's new premium rum, they later helped Bacardi conquer the social drinking marketplace by making ice and cold mixers commonplace. Such ideas were far from Don Facundo and his family's minds, as they had no idea how widespread the appeal of their smooth, fine rum would become one day. Instead, they greeted Bacardi's increasing popularity in Santiago and the neighboring villages as a pleasant surprise. 
 As was the custom of the day, customers brought their own jugs and bottles to the distillery; and the Bacardi family members promptly filled and returned them. With business booming, Don Facundo decided that method of distribution was not good enough and set out to find an alternative. Meanwhile, back in Spain, Queen Isabella, who ascended the throne in 1843 at the age of 13, was deposed. For Bacardi and his family, as with most Catalans living on the Spanish-controlled colony of Cuba, the insurrection mirrored their own growing unrest. As civil war raged in Spain in 1872, Emilio, who had become a Cuban freedom fighter, was caught and exiled to an island off the coast of Morocco. During his absence, hostilities grew and a rebellion swept through Cuba, although the family business was unharmed. Emilio returned to Cuba four years after his capture and learned that Bacardi rum had earned a gold medal at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876. 

 As the 1880s dawned, Don Facundo retired and turned Bacardi over to Emilio, Facundo Jr., Jose, and Enrique, now his son-in-law. The company's distribution problems had been solved with a suggestion from Doña Amalia that Bacardi products be sold with a distinctive, easily recognized, label. As many of Santiago's residents could not read, Doña Amalia recommended using a symbol to represent Bacardi. The Bacardi logo was born, sporting a most unlikely mascot, the fruit bat. Before the turn of the century, as Bacardi flourished, Cuba was again battling to gain independence from Spain. Fighting for his country, Emilio, was banished a second time and Enrique went with him into exile. In 1901, as Cuba became an independent republic, Emilio returned home to the Bacardi family and business. 

He was elected mayor of Santiago, while Bacardi continued buying sugarcane fields and expanding operation through several bottling facilities. The world's most popular drink was born during the Spanish-American War at the turn of the century when Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and Americans in large numbers arrived in Cuba. One afternoon, a group of off-duty soldiers from the U.S. Signal Corps were gathered in a bar in Old Havana. Fausto Rodríguez, a young messenger, later recalled that a captain came in and ordered Bacardi (Gold) rum with a new American concoction called Coca-Cola, served on ice, with a wedge of lime. The captain drank the concoction with such pleasure that it sparked the interest of soldiers around him. They had the bartender prepare a round of the captain's drink for them. The Bacardi rum and Coke was an instant hit. As it still does to this day, the drink united the crowd in a spirit of fun and good fellowship. When they ordered another round, one soldier suggested they also toast ¡Por Cuba Libre!, in celebration of newly freed Cuba. The captain raised his glass and sang out the battle cry that inspired Cuba's victorious soldiers in the War of Independence.