From Cuba with Sugar: Chocolate, Rum and Iberian Nostalgia in Pennsylvania

In view of the changing relationship between Cuba and the USA, this paper explores the activities of the American entrepreneur Milton Hershey in Cuba during the first half of the twentieth century and a long-lasting impact that these activities left both on the Caribbean island and back home in Pennsylvania. Biographical, social, cultural and artistic issues will be discussed and analyzed. In search of control over a sugar supply for his chocolate production, American industrialist Milton Hershey spread his chocolate empire far beyond his Pennsylvania homestead. He built a highly efficient sugar mill and a refinery in Cuba that were eventually connected to the rum production during Prohibition. The Cuban enterprise included the first electric railroad on the island and a model town that mirrored Hershey, Pennsylvania. Back home, during the Great Depression, the profits from his Cuban enterprises allowed for a building of a luxury hotel in a nostalgic Spanish Revival Style. Even today as the Cuban economy and sugar industry are struggling, the Hotel Hershey in Pennsylvania stands as a monument to American imperialist nostalgia. Biographical data and background are followed by an overview of the Cuban – American relations at the beginning of the twentieth century. Milton Hersheyʼs contribution to Cuban economy and social development are discussed in the Findings that are followed by an analysis of the connections with the Cuban rum industry at the time of Prohibition in the USA. Social impact on Cuban soil is followed by the discussion of the nostalgic recreation of the tropical paradise by designing the Hotel Hershey in the Iberian Revival style and its ever-lasting popularity in the USA