July 18, 2023 • 43 mins
Host Celeste Headlee goes on the hunt for the Fanjul brothers in Palm Beach, Florida and uncovers an even more devastating truth about the American sugar industry’s past. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and the movie The Godfather play a part in our story.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Check check. Okay, this is Peter Hayden in Cloudy South Florida.
We are outside of the holiday an.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
When you land in West Palm Beach, you see about
what you'd expect from a large city in South Florida.
Palm trees, firebush, seagulls, and lots of people wearing shorts
and flip flops, even in February.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This last headway, I presume. Welcome to Cloudy South Florida.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I've come here from my home in Maryland, and I'm
meeting up with a local reporter, Peter Hayden. But the
scene changes dramatically when you cross from one side of
Lake Worth Lagoon to the other.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
So the bridge is down and we are now crossing. Officially,
Welcome to Palm Beach Island.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, when your car tires hit the pavement on the island,
you almost expect to hear canned laughter or maybe some
audience applause. Everything is so staged, so perfect, you could
be on the set of a sitcom, a very expensive sitcom.
I mean, in some places, even the palm trees that
grow kind of bended naturally are all miraculously standing up straight,
(01:10):
like they've grown them with a scoliosis brace on. They're
that manicured. Palm Beach Island is a super exclusive area,
the kind of place where there's only one gas station
and they don't advertise the price of gas.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
There's the only gas station on the island of Palm Beach,
the Sinoco station, and they never put the price to the.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Gas because well, if you've got to ask, you can't
afford it. And it's not just secret prices, it's also
a history of unspoken restrictive rules. There were never signs
posted saying white Christians only. But we pass by an
elite club that never in its history welcomed a black
or Jewish member. I'm doubly out. I'm black and Jewish,
(01:52):
so I'm really excluded. And to really drive home the point,
this strip of houses is called Billionaire Row. But we're
not aimlessly driving around. We're on a mission. We want
to take a look at Alfi Vanjol's house. First, from
across the Inder Coastal Waterway.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, dead in front of us, across the water I
believe that's Alfy Finals.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So we're looking at Alfi's house and it's huge. I mean,
it looks like a hotel that's a big house. It's
a vision of graceful arches and white brick atop a
carefully manicured lawn surrounded by palm trees and thick hedges.
If you stand on your toes and look carefully, you
(02:37):
can just make out the large swimming pool, a placid
expanse of cerulean water cut out of bright white ceramic tile.
It's a nine thousand square foot mansion with six bedrooms
and a deep water dock. According to public records, it's
valued at around twenty four million dollars. As a very
much non billionaire. Just checking things out from the street,
(03:01):
I couldn't get a good look at Alfie or Pepe's houses.
But one thing I could see very clearly from the
path that runs along the jetty outside Alfi's house was
a yacht, Alfi's twenty three million dollar one hundred and
fifty seven foot yacht. Crily. This is the yacht, and
it's massive. It looks like a battleship, right, it.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Does look like a battleship. The bow of it looks
like a battleship or an ice curvage.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And if you see the people working on it, like
they're like little ants, it's difficult to come up with
an apt metaphor for just how massive this boat is.
If it were a strip mall, it could comfortably house
five stores.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
You work on a crely.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
A crew member walked by us and confirmed the yacht
is one hundred and fifty seven feet and sleeps more
than twenty people.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Ah, it's like around twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Like that's how many people live in whole apartment buildings.
I made the point it's bigger than my house, which
he thought was pretty funny. But the wealth of the
fund Hools is serious. Together, the brothers are worth around
eight point two billion dollars, more than the gross domestic
product of sixty seven nations. So when we left Pepe
(04:22):
and his brother Alfi Fundhul in the last episode, they
had just fled Cuba and were freshly landed in Florida
with their Famili's historic sugar empire in tatters. So how
did they go from there?
Speaker 5 (04:35):
The mansions were gone, the assets were gone.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
To this. This is a massive boat.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
Massive.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I don't even know if you say boat craft. How
they can now afford a yacht that measures half the
length of a football field has a lot to do
with their nickname.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
The First Family of corporate welfare.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
The dollars that paid for Alfie's super yacht they may
have come from.
Speaker 7 (04:58):
Your pocket, and that is strictly due to the onwitting
generosity of federal taxpayers.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
The backdrop to their journey to riches and how these
Cuban brothers ended up at the center of a multi
million dollar lawsuit is winding, complicated, and fascinating. It includes
everything from the FBI to the Godfather. I'm Celeste Hedley,
and from iHeartMedia, Imagine Audio and the teams at Weekday
Fun and Novel. This is Big Sugar episode five, The
(05:28):
American Dream. You might be wondering why you're not hearing
from Alfie and Pepe themselves in this series. Well, look,
(05:51):
we've been trying. Hi, this is Saskia, the podcast produce
coaling again, and I mean really trying. My name's Nadia.
Speaker 8 (06:00):
I'm a reporter who's been leaving Gastons voicemails recently.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Thank you for calling the United States Sugar Corporation to
dial by name Press.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
Warren following Sugarcane Growers Cooperative of Florida.
Speaker 9 (06:11):
Our office hours.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Are eight am to twelve pm. If this is an emergency,
Please hang up in dial nine one one. We've tried
to call the major sugar companies, their lawyers, and their
Florida trade group to offer them a chance to tell
their side of the story, to do an interview. We
want to talk to them about the allegations of how
their workers are treated and paid, and we also want
to talk to the fun Huel brothers about their lives.
(06:35):
But it was hard to get very far. Let's just
say the production team spent a lot of time being
shuffled from media rep to voicemail to assistant bopping along
to this tune. One representative of US Sugar even said
podcasts weren't on her radar because she has a job,
(06:56):
a family, and a life. It became very clear that
no one from US Sugar, Florida Crystals, or any of
the other companies wanted to talk to us. So what
other option did we have? My producer Saskia, I.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Don't think we have another option other than going to
Florida and trying to find them ourselves.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I wasn't just in Palm Beach to admire mansions and
super yachts. I was there to try to find the
Fanjuls on their home turf. I mean it's unlikely that
they'll talk to us. I get that, but unlikely doesn't
mean not possible. So the local reporter, Peter and I
jump in the car and head to the headquarters of
Florida Crystals.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So the first place that we are to go is
to Florida Crystal's headquarters office. Yes, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
The building is a light peach cement block with wheat
colored trim, and it has a somewhat elaborate entrance, a
checkerboard of caramel and cream diamonds with carved columns facing
a huge bonyon tree at the center of a quaint
brick traffic circle. Like the faun holes themselves, the Florida
Crystal HQ is protected and comfortable.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Check check. Okay, I'm going to roll on this before
we get out, I guess let's talk about.
Speaker 6 (08:23):
What we stut.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
I mean, our hope is that we can at least
get onto their floor, right, I mean, we'll go to
the security desk. See what that's what the deal is.
We can be as charming as we can be. Are
you not charming?
Speaker 6 (08:39):
Peter?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I love to smile.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I'm always smiling.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
We will turn on the charm. There are employees heading
into work with lunches and laptops. As we exit the
parking structure and walk the short distance to the front doors,
letter in hand, we're hoping to speak with Alfie of
Florida Crystals. Security. Gud is friendly, but really has no
intention of letting us get more than a few feet
(09:04):
inside the building. They don't ever let anybody through. Instead,
she tells us we could leave the letter with her
and she'll add it to the stack of mail for
Florida Crystal staff to collect later in the day. So
they'll have a runner that'll come down to collect things
for them, and you can include this with them.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Do you know when that person might deliver these letters?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
So apparently that letter asking for an interview was to
be delivered to Alfie and Pepe that day, And we
also put one letter in Alfie's mailbox just to be
sure we're going to stick it to the mailbox here.
That's a sturdy mailbox. It was pretty frustrating, if I'm
being honest, how impenetrable the barriers that the fun holes
(09:45):
had cocooning them are. Whether they are cameras, security guards
or hedges driving away I kept thinking about it. When
you have enough money, you literally can build enough barriers
between yourself and the outside world that you never have
to be confronted if you don't want to, you never
have to be questioned. I mean, it obviously is quite
(10:07):
expensive to do so, but if you have enough money,
you can isolate yourself from pushback. I find that the
only time when a corporation will feel they need to
reply to a story they do not want to talk
(10:27):
about is when they think it's going to look worse
for them to have not said something than to have
said something right. Otherwise, they'll issue a very carefully worded statement.
But if they can get away with not doing that,
then they absolutely will. The phone Holes didn't seem to
(10:50):
have any interest in speaking with us or telling their
side of the story. But then Peter and I took
a short drive to bell Glade, Sugar Country, the town
and hour away from where the fun Holes live. The
streets in Belglade are a stark contrast to Billionaire's Row.
Some of these homes that we're passing by right now,
they're so dilapidated. There's plants growing in the living room
(11:13):
of that one.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Some are abandoned and vacant, and some are not. But
right on the.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Edge around this area is where many of the fun
Hole's farms are located. While there we did find people
who were willing to talk with us. We came across
a group of people relaxing behind the local market.
Speaker 9 (11:32):
People yea, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
There's a couple of metal tables and a collection of
various chairs beneath a tree and a smoldering fire inside
a steel can nearby. They're chatting casually.
Speaker 10 (11:44):
Majority of these people that you see around here, with
family members and themselves have worked for the sugar cane industry. Well,
the toughness actually bring us together. This would make us strong,
This was make This wouldn't make us nick.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Another guy we spoke to, Michael, seemed to be in
his forties. Maybe he didn't want to give us too
many personal details, but he says he's never worked in
the fields. At first, he was pretty reluctant to talk
about the growers, the people like the Van Hools, whose
businesses the sugar cane farms represent the biggest industry in town,
pretty much the only industry. But then it started pouring
(12:25):
out his feelings about the inequity, the difference between his
life and theirs.
Speaker 8 (12:30):
It's good for dim, it's not good for us, cause
we are the one that fucking bottle.
Speaker 6 (12:38):
We are the.
Speaker 8 (12:39):
One that's struggling to keep their pockets fat. We the
one who fucking trying to make it is me. Look
at the town. You see the town speak for itself.
Now you go where they where they stay at, You
go where they stay at. You see the big difference. Yeah,
it's good for Dial, but it ain't good for us.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
The fifty seven foot yacht.
Speaker 5 (13:02):
Yesterday, goddamn robu.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
It's kind of cinematic to imagine when the sugar princes
Pepe and Alfi fun who first arrived in Florida in
the nineteen fifties as young men. Well, Pepe was still
a teenager. Actually, the Cuban Revolution had just concluded, Fidel
Castro was Prime Minister, and their families lost everything. Generations
of immense wealth, more than one hundred thousand acres of land,
(13:47):
ten sugar mills, all now taken by the new communist
government and nationalized. Castro is even living in one of
their seized houses. Picture him tucked up in Alfi's old bed.
Their fortune is in ruins. Well, kind of.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
They had a lot more money in America than a
lot of other Cuban refugees.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Did Marie Brenner, who interviewed the Fanhol brothers for Vanity Fair.
But still you can imagine them disembarking from the nineteen
fifties airplane, a couple of suitcases in hand, with the
instruction from their grandfather echoing in their minds.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
The grandfather had said to them, you have an imperative
to build up this business again.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
So Alfi's able to secure a four thousand acre parcel
of land in one of the most fertile parts of Florida,
the Everglades Agricultural Area. Then he enlists a couple of partners,
buys three dilapidated sugar mills from Louisiana for one hundred
and sixty five thousand dollars and has them dismantled and
taken by barge to Florida.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
So now it is nineteen fifty nine and the sugar
industry in Florida was relatively small, but there was new
types of sugarcane and improve fertilized that were being developed
that was soon going to change all of that.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Not to mention that the US wasn't buying sugar from
Cuba anymore. The US doesn't typically buddy up with communist regimes,
so there was a gap in the market for domestic producers,
and the brothers get to work on their new farm.
This part really sings in the Rags to Rich's yarn.
(15:25):
Alfie told Marie.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
Brenner, so young Alfi fan Hule sets up in a
small office in a deserted school house downwind from the plant.
He said, the smell and the dust blowing in for
months on me was horrendous.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
But after a year of struggle it paid off all
that grit.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
Their first crop came in nineteen sixty one. It brought
in a million dollars, which was astonishing.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
They were making good on their commitment to their grandfather.
But the good times didn't last.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
The second year, the Everglades flooded and they lost everything,
and then.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Some They were down in their luck again. After two
years of work, the brothers were back to square one,
or even a little worse off than when they arrived.
So what turned things around? Well, it wasn't just an
improved fertilizer or a better year of weather conditions. In fact,
what made all the difference happened very far away from
(16:28):
a sugarcane field. It happened in the hollowed halls of
the United States government. More coming up after the break.
One of the secret ingredients in the fawn Hul's recipe
(16:48):
for riches is something known as the farm Bill. Now,
the farm Bill might sound like one of the least sexy,
most dry pieces of legislation in this country. If the
Affordable Care Act is the sexy stiletto of the law,
the farm Bill is the size fourteen croc. And buried
in the farm Bill is the Sugar Program, which is
probably how it flies under the radar. The general public
(17:11):
doesn't pay much attention to it. The whole thing only
comes up for renewal every five years, but it's important
and a lot of our country's dollars are at stake. So,
like a desperate lothario, I'm going to cueue up some
mood music and attempt to make this as sexy as possible.
(17:35):
In nineteen seventy four, a price bike drove the sugar
industry into over production and the bottom fell out of
the market. That meant a bunch of sugar cane farmers
were on the brink of losing everything, so the government
rushed in with guaranteed loans and financing, which became the
basis of the current sugar program, which again is part
(17:56):
of the massive farm bill today. What it means is, first,
there are strict import quotas very little sugar grown outside
the US is sold here. And it also means there's
a guaranteed price floor for sugar which the government will
pay for any surplus produced.
Speaker 7 (18:14):
So they're basically guaranteed a price per pound, which is
quite a good deal.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
This is Carl Hyacin, writer and journalist and all around
Florida legend.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
Everyone has their own business. They can appreciate how lovely
it would be if the government said to them, no
matter what the world market is for what you're selling,
you're going to get this much for it, because we're
going to make sure you do. So they've had the
benefit of these massive entitlement programs.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
In twenty twenty one, the average price for cane sugar
in the world market was twenty one dollars forty cents
per pound. In the US the price was forty seven
dollars fifty nine cents. That's more than twice the price
and who foots the bill for this difference. If you're
in the US, US, you and me, every time you
(19:02):
buy anything with sugar in it, from bread to salad dressing,
you pay more. The sugar program as a whole costs
the US consumer up to four billion dollars a year,
and the fun Hools companies personally benefit to the tune
of tens of millions. Here's a clip from a doc
focused on that.
Speaker 8 (19:22):
Critics as to make these plantation owners make an extra
sixty five million dollars a year off the sugar program
and American consumers, the fon.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Hul family makes one hundreds of millions of dollars become
very wealthy because of a government program. And there's no
reason why the federal government should create a program to
make the fun Hools richer. We're in effects subsidizing the
van Hools and hurting the American public buying products that have.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
Sugar in it.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
But hey, if you're talking to the fun Hools, don't
call it a subsidy.
Speaker 7 (19:54):
It's not direct subsidy. They get very prickly when you
talk to them about the whether it's a subsidy or not.
It's a assive in corporate entitlement.
Speaker 5 (20:02):
They don't see what they're getting as anything less than
they deserve, and they have an elaborate way of saying
that this is not a subsidy, that sugar is the
lifeblood of America, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
How do they keep these benefits, Well, they pay for them.
We'll dig into this more in the series, but the
sugar industry is known for its intense lobbying and donating
millions to politicians. But the bottom line is it was
the Farm Bill legislation that helped to catapult the young,
ambitious fund Holes to the position therein Now they.
Speaker 7 (20:37):
Live in Palm Beach. They lived the life of multi millionaires,
and that is strictly due to the onwitting generosity of
federal taxpayers.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
It's not hard to find evidence of their minted lifestyles.
As we both know well, the fun Holes are not
obsessed with talking to journalists, but in one rare media appearance,
Pepe fun Hole was featured in a BBC documentary about
the prestigious Clerages Hotel, a place where everyone from Queen
Victoria to Winston Churchill has stayed.
Speaker 11 (21:09):
Clarridge's Hotel in the heart of London's Mayfair provides a
five star service for the rich, where nothing is too
much trouble. One such guest is Cuban born multimillionaire Pepe
fan Hul. He's been staying at the hotel for over
sixty two years, since he was a small boy.
Speaker 10 (21:31):
He's welcome, thank you, see you again.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
According to the documentary, he's racked up over three hundred
nights at Clarage's over the course of ten years, and
his favorite room has a price tag of three thousand,
five hundred pounds a night that translates to more than
one point three million dollars spent at one hotel over
a decade. He's so loyal the staff makes sure his
room is exactly the same every time he stays. They
(22:02):
even compare it to photos. But according to Pepe, Claridges
is quite quaint. Apparently, I think.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
That you may find hotels that are grander the rich
in Powis maybe or Richard MADRIDU has a wonderful outside
area to have lunch, which is beautiful. But I think
what the clarage is is that people that come here
always they treat them as family.
Speaker 7 (22:28):
Let me just say this, there's no way, they would
be at least the fund Holes would be living that
lifestyle if that weren't for the generosity of the federal
government and American consumers who are paying a much higher
price for sugar.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
They have this nickname. They're called the First Family of
corporate Welfare. Yeah, remember former presidential candidate John McCain even
he used this nickname to talk about the fun Holes.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
The first Family of corporate welfare.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
All right here, I'm going to mention something that you
probably didn't expect in this story The Godfather. If you
were a film buff, you might already know this, But
a major driver behind the production of this movie was
an Austrian man called Charles Bluehorn. I want to introduce
you to Bluehorn because he's pivotal to how the Funholes
became America's most infamous sugar bearings. In nineteen forty two,
(23:24):
he migrated to the US as a wartime refugee and
quickly went from a struggling doorman to ruthless conglomateur. Charles
Bloodhorn started golf and western industries. Initially, he got into
the car parks business, and then musical instruments, defense contracting,
then baking, even supermarkets with all the buying and selling
(23:45):
Golf and Western's revenues increased more than tenfold in less
than a decade. Bluehorn's passionate and frenetic business style earned
him the Moniker the Mad Austrian of Wall Street. Then
in nineteen sixty six, Bluehorn acquired Paramount Pictures. He oversaw
and meddled in the production of hit movies like Rosemary's Baby,
(24:07):
Saturday Night Fever, Raiders of the Lost Arc, and of
course The Godfather. But while he was making Hollywood history,
Bluehorn was known for having a much more intense interest
in one of his investments, sugar. Of course, his favorite
venture was South Puerto Rico Sugar, a company which controlled
ninety thousand acres of sugar property in South Florida and
(24:30):
two hundred and forty thousand acres in the Dominican Republic.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
I at that time in my career started as a
young story editor at Paramount Pictures when Bluehorn still had
Florida Sugar, and there was sugar posters, there were sugar
things that were sold in the lobby at the newsstand.
He was obsessed with sugar.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
But in nineteen eighty three, Charles Bluehorn suddenly died of
a heart attack, and the new owner of Gulf and Western,
Martin Davis, was not so obsessed. He decided to unload
Bluehrned Sugar holdings, and there was one burgeoning sugar magnet
who was primed and ready to take it all. In
nineteen eighty five, a young Alfi von Huel walked into
(25:17):
Martin Davis's office and started negotiating to buy the South
Puerto Rico Sugar Company, and Marty.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
He essentially gave it away for a very reduced price,
which became the basis of Florida Crystals.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
It was this purchase that turned Alfie and Pepe into
some of the biggest sugar producers in the country. You
don't need to wonder about your food, where it comes from,
or how it's made, because we do. For Florida Crystals.
Farmed a table isn't a slogan, it's our promise to you.
(25:52):
These days, Florida Crystals owns about one hundred and ninety
thousand acres of sugarcane in Florida and more than two
hundred thousand acres in the day Minican Republic. There the
fun holes are also hefes of Casa de Compo, a
luxury hotel frequented by Beyonce Bieber and the Clintons. Their brands,
which might be a bit more familiar to me and you,
include Domino c and h Taitan Lyle and Redpath. And
(26:16):
in recent years, the fann Holes Company has expanded its
real estate holdings and they now operate the country's largest
biomass power plant, producing electricity from their own sugarcane waste.
Alphae and Pepe are worth billions. And then there's a
new generation of fanon Hol sugar princes born in America.
For example, Pepe's son Jose Vanhul Junior, he's the executive
(26:40):
vice president of Florida Crystals. In a profile in the
Florida five hundred, he's quoted as saying he's currently reading
a book by the billionaire Ken Langone entitled I Kid
You Not, I Love Capitalism exclamation point. So by the
nineteen seventies and eighties, the Fanhol brothers have their sugar
farms and mills and their not subsidies. But who's cutting
(27:02):
all the sugarcane? This question is really at the heart
of our series. More after the break, How did thousands
of Jamaicans and men from other Caribbean countries wind up
in this very specific and punishing job. It seems a
little random, but it's actually not. It follows a pattern,
(27:26):
a grim motif that's haunted the sugarcane industry since it began.
To tell that story, we need to wind back even
further to before either Pepe or Alfhi had landed in
the US nineteen forty two. A report has just been
(27:46):
slapped on the desk of J. Edgar Hoover, the first
director of the FBI. This report is an investigation into
working conditions in the sugar industry. So why was the
FBI investigating and what did they discover? A few years earlier,
in the nineteen thirties, ads had started appearing in newspapers
(28:07):
in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Alabama saying things like enjoy
Florida sunshine during the winter months and good wages, good
living conditions, free transportation and meals to Florida cash issued daily.
They were advertising jobs cutting sugarcane, and they were specifically
aimed at Black Americans. The promise of good wages must
(28:30):
have been tempting to black men, who earned on average
about thirty three dollars a week in nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 9 (28:38):
Caine Harvest is a social institution. Thousands of housemaids and
cooks beg leave from town and city employers and respond
to the hereditary urge to go back to the plantation
and work at Macon grinds.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
In the first half of the twentieth century, it was
common to hear things like this that Black Americans loved
doing menial labor, or that forcing them to work in
fields and kitchens was beneficial for them. It's a particularly
vicious racist propaganda meant to justify abuse. One city in
South Carolina passed an ordinance that required black men to
(29:15):
work no less than five days a week, even if
they didn't need the money. But the ads touting Florida's
warm weather were aimed at those who struggled to find
good paying jobs. People would respond to the ads thinking
they were about to embark on a rewarding career with
US Sugar, the biggest sugar company in Florida at the time,
But when they'd get to the farms, they'd find that
(29:36):
the transport and accommodation the barracks where they were all
packed in weren't free. At all. They were almost immediately
in debt to US sugar and had to work to
pay it off, in other words, debt slavery. Plus the
work was so much harder than they'd been told or
could even have imagined, And that's why the FBI began
(29:58):
looking into thiszations of mistreatment and modern day slavery. And
that report Hoover was reading describes a working day which
starts before dawn and lasts until dusk. The superintendents and
possibly some of the foremen are armed with pistols and blackjacks.
The food furnished to the men is not of the best,
and they are charged five cents a gallon for fresh water.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Testing testing one two three testing testing.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Khalil Gibron Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History,
Race and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He
studied the report in detail.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
One witness who was subjected to these conditions said it
was worse than being in the penitentiary.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Because if they tried to escape the grueling work on
the sugarcane farms. Well, testimony from one worker says, I
knew if you run away, they come to and get
you and change you to the bed at night. I
saw people locked to the beds. I didn't only see that.
I saw some men get a beating.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
And if they managed to make it on to some
of the trains that ran through the parts of the
state where this work was happening, they'd be chased down
and shot at or in some cases killed.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
The FBI report concludes, there is a dispute as to
whether or not the men are locked in the barracks
at night, whether the camps are guarded by armed men,
and whether the men are free to leave the employee
of the company. There doesn't seem to be any dispute
as to the fact that those men who have attempted
to escape from the plantations are picked up on the
highway or shot at while trying to hitch rides on
(31:32):
the sugar trains, are returned to the plantations and forced
to work, And.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
So the kinds of violence that is associated with sugar
slavery from earlier time periods, according to witness testimony in
the federal investigation, looked a whole lot similar.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
In other words, what was happening on sugar farms in
the nineteen forties paralleled what happened in the sugar industry
in North America, the US, and the Caribbean during the
day of chattel slavery from the sixteenth century until the
nineteenth century. There are few words that can express the
cruelty of slavery, and in sugarcane this barbarity seems to
(32:11):
be especially extreme. Once an enslaved person arrived on a
cane field, in many cases, they'd be dead within seven years.
That's because of the risk of injury, the lack of healthcare,
the intensity of the work, and the weather.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
So you're coupling extreme tropical conditions with extreme works and
so it is literally sun up to sundown. There is
no break, there is no relief. There was constant danger
of people being hurt in the process, losing limbs, getting
infection from being cut in untreated wounds.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
It was relentless.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Unless they nearly dropped dead. They were expected to.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Work even after the life threatening job of cut the
cane was over. Then came the milling, taking the stocks
to be squished into the liquid that becomes sugar granules.
A warning this part is particularly graphic.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
People were subjected to losing limbs and occasionally loss of
life because their body parts might get caught in the
grinding rollers. Cane knives were placed alongside the grinding machine
for the purposes of cutting limbs from people's bodies. Hands
and arms were the most common parts of the body
(33:31):
to get caught in the grinders. In an effort to
save enslaved laborer's life, not out of altruism, but because
it was an investment in the worker.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Power, they'd cut off their arms with a machete if
they were stuck in the machines. It's difficult to think
of a more horrific type of injury, and if an
enslaved person didn't want to do this kind of work.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
The threat and use of violence was ever present.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
A formerly enslaved woman named Missus Webb describe a torture
chamber used by her owner. One of his cruelties was
to place a disobedient slave standing in a box in
which there were nails placed in such a manner that
the poor creature was unable to move. He was powerless
even to chase the flies or sometimes ants crawling on
some parts of his body.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
Their fate was sealed to a kind of deadly routine.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
So eighteen sixty five, slavery is abolished in the US
at least. But in some ways things really don't change,
because when the FBI began its investigation in the nineteen forties,
it had been some eighty years since slavery was abolished.
The sugar industry is now paying their workers, and yet
the conditions weren't a whole lot different from eighteen sixty five.
(34:56):
J Edgar Hoover puts down the report and he decides
to do something. The FBI investigation actually culminated with the
company US Sugar being charged with p andage and conspiracy
to violate the right and privilege of citizens to be
free from slavery conspiracy to commit slavery in the nineteen forties.
(35:16):
The trial never went ahead because of an issue with
jury impartiality. It's a long story, but this investigation changed
the whole sugar industry. Their practices had been exposed and
this left a void. Who was going to cut the
sugar cane? They couldn't carry on as they had been,
But the sugar companies found a way around it hiring overseas.
(35:40):
A plan was hatched. Luckily for the growers, a new
labor program was available. It was a program that made
it easier to bring in workers from abroad because of
labor shortages during World War II. This would eventually morph
into what's today known as the H two way farm
worker Visa SOH. In April nineteen forty three, America's sugar
(36:02):
growers turned to the islands nearby Florida and began hiring
men from the Caribbean to cut the cane, firstly the Bahamas,
then Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Barbados. By the following season they
would be working in the fields.
Speaker 12 (36:20):
Distinguished guests from the Bahamas, the Duke and Ductess of Windsor.
The Duke tells New York City reporters how Bahamians are
helping on Eastern farms. Here come farm workers from the
Bahama Islands off the Atlantic coast.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
In documents from the time, one grower writes that the
farmers preferred workers from the Bahamas because the vast difference
between the Bahama Island labor and domestic is that the
labor transported from the Bahama Islands can be deported and
sent home if it does not work. If you don't
perform well, whatever that means, you're kicked out of the country.
(36:58):
And as you know, through getting to know cutters like
Victor and Selvin in this series. That's exactly what happened.
They were in the US at the mercy of their employers.
They knew if they complained, they would be sent back
to Jamaica. They weren't American citizens and it would be
a lot harder for them to get to the FBI.
So from the nineteen forties until the nineteen nineties, every
(37:21):
year for fifty years, some twenty thousand men from the Caribbean,
Jamaica in particular, would come to Florida. They'd be transported
to sugarcane fields, including those owned by the Funholes.
Speaker 5 (37:33):
And they begin to bring in Jamaicans, thousands and thousands
of Jamaicans to cut the cane, and that's how it begins.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
It seems like they acknowledged that they would not have
been successful had it not been for this program.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
Absolutely, they wouldn't have been.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Carl Hyacin puts it even more dramatically, they.
Speaker 7 (37:54):
Would not have existed if it weren't for migrant labor
that they got visas and kept under basically slave conditions
for years and years and years. It was one of
the grimest labor situations in the whole country.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
When Marie interviewed Alfie and Pepe, she actually asked them
about the job of cutting sugarcane, a job that's been
called the hardest in the world. You asked them if
they had ever actually worked in the fields themselves. What
was their answer?
Speaker 5 (38:24):
Alfie laughed. He said, he tried to cut caine at
one point, but it was so overwhelming he couldn't last
five minutes. That he just found it so impossible what
you had to do.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Did he seem to make that connection with what he
was demanding of the workers in his own fields.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
Absolutely not. No, there was no empathy and no sympathy whatsoever.
The fon Hols really believed that they were giving these
workers a shot at the middle class, or so they
convinced themselves. They believed this was the way they justified
this when they had their huge parties on their yachts,
(39:07):
and they flew in people from all over the world,
and they built their elaborate mansions. This was truly a
kind of colonial narcissistic belief that they were giving these
hard working guys who were mistreated, often injured, would lose fingers,
would lose limbs, would not even be able to have
(39:28):
lunch because they couldn't leave the fields. They believed they
were giving them a shot. Just even reliving it. I'm
just still you can hear, I'm just getting more and
more aggravated.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Yeah, it really bothers you, still.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
Yeah, it does? It does it? Just to see in
our own country the extraordinary you would have to say
racist human rights violations. Where were the white workers in
the fields. These were black Jamaicans who somehow were invisible
to the American legal system.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
There's this grim motif from the beginning, from slavery to
the black Americans in the South to the Caribbean men.
For hundreds of years, the sugarcane industry in North America
almost always relied on the labor of the disenfranchised or unfree.
I got a story about not just this area of Florida,
but the industry of the sugar industry. When I was
(40:28):
in Belglade, I started talking to people about the court
case that this series revolves around, and the accusation that
the growers systematically underpaid the Caribbean men who came to
this area to cut the sugar cane for them. Michael
looked at me in disbelief and said.
Speaker 8 (40:43):
That's what why you think we own a bottom.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
I told you we own.
Speaker 8 (40:47):
A bottle struggle of breaking our bags. Man, those people
don't they still they ain't just stealing money. Man, They're
still in our lives.
Speaker 12 (40:54):
Man.
Speaker 8 (40:55):
That's strangely, man, those people are still in lives many.
Speaker 11 (41:02):
Room.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
In her interview, Marie pressed the fun Holes more about
the conditions the sugarcane cutters lived in.
Speaker 5 (41:12):
They invited me on their boat and it was more
of the same, incredibly gracious saying they had done nothing wrong,
and then they sailed off.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Next time, we're back in the West Palm Beach Courthouse
in the nineteen nineties, where some underdog lawyers decided to
take on the mighty fun Holes. Do you consider yourself
to be a stubborn person?
Speaker 5 (41:45):
I prefer determined.
Speaker 6 (41:46):
I think I will not be run over easily.
Speaker 10 (41:49):
So Dave's practice was slipping badly, and it coincided with
Dave's marriage was breaking up.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
And how exactly their landmark lawsuit went down.
Speaker 5 (42:01):
And he started to cry and there was a silence
in the court room that was so heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
And outside the courtroom the drama.
Speaker 10 (42:10):
The Vanity Fair article had been shimmering in the background.
Then this Whole Movie Deal.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Hit That's Next Time on Big Sugar. Big Sugar is
produced by Imagine Audio, Weekday Fund Productions and novel for iHeartMedia.
The series is hosted by me Celeste Hedley. Big Sugar
(42:38):
is produced by Jeff Eisenman at Weekday Fund Productions. It's
executive produced by Kara Welker, Nathan Kloke, and Marie Brenner.
Story editor and executive producer is Joe Wheeler. The researcher
is Nadia Metti. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor,
and Charlotte Wolf. Our fact checker is Sona Avakian. Reporting
(43:00):
by Amber Amortige and Peter Hayden. Sound design and mixing
by Eli Block, Naomi Clark and Daniel Kempsen. Original music
composed by Troy McCubbin at Alloy Tracks. Additional music by
Nicholas Alexander. Special thanks to Alec Wilkinson, author of the
book Big Sugar, and Stephanie Black, director of the documentary
(43:23):
H two Worker. Big Sugar is based on the Vanity
Fair article in the Kingdom of Big Sugar by Marie Branner.
Check check. Okay, this is Peter Hayden in Cloudy South Florida.
We are outside of the holiday an.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
When you land in West Palm Beach, you see about
what you'd expect from a large city in South Florida.
Palm trees, firebush, seagulls, and lots of people wearing shorts
and flip flops, even in February.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This last headway, I presume. Welcome to Cloudy South Florida.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I've come here from my home in Maryland, and I'm
meeting up with a local reporter, Peter Hayden. But the
scene changes dramatically when you cross from one side of
Lake Worth Lagoon to the other.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
So the bridge is down and we are now crossing. Officially,
Welcome to Palm Beach Island.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, when your car tires hit the pavement on the island,
you almost expect to hear canned laughter or maybe some
audience applause. Everything is so staged, so perfect, you could
be on the set of a sitcom, a very expensive sitcom.
I mean, in some places, even the palm trees that
grow kind of bended naturally are all miraculously standing up straight,
(01:10):
like they've grown them with a scoliosis brace on. They're
that manicured. Palm Beach Island is a super exclusive area,
the kind of place where there's only one gas station
and they don't advertise the price of gas.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
There's the only gas station on the island of Palm Beach,
the Sinoco station, and they never put the price to the.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Gas because well, if you've got to ask, you can't
afford it. And it's not just secret prices, it's also
a history of unspoken restrictive rules. There were never signs
posted saying white Christians only. But we pass by an
elite club that never in its history welcomed a black
or Jewish member. I'm doubly out. I'm black and Jewish,
(01:52):
so I'm really excluded. And to really drive home the point,
this strip of houses is called Billionaire Row. But we're
not aimlessly driving around. We're on a mission. We want
to take a look at Alfi Vanjol's house. First, from
across the Inder Coastal Waterway.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, dead in front of us, across the water I
believe that's Alfy Finals.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So we're looking at Alfi's house and it's huge. I mean,
it looks like a hotel that's a big house. It's
a vision of graceful arches and white brick atop a
carefully manicured lawn surrounded by palm trees and thick hedges.
If you stand on your toes and look carefully, you
(02:37):
can just make out the large swimming pool, a placid
expanse of cerulean water cut out of bright white ceramic tile.
It's a nine thousand square foot mansion with six bedrooms
and a deep water dock. According to public records, it's
valued at around twenty four million dollars. As a very
much non billionaire. Just checking things out from the street,
(03:01):
I couldn't get a good look at Alfie or Pepe's houses.
But one thing I could see very clearly from the
path that runs along the jetty outside Alfi's house was
a yacht, Alfi's twenty three million dollar one hundred and
fifty seven foot yacht. Crily. This is the yacht, and
it's massive. It looks like a battleship, right, it.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Does look like a battleship. The bow of it looks
like a battleship or an ice curvage.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And if you see the people working on it, like
they're like little ants, it's difficult to come up with
an apt metaphor for just how massive this boat is.
If it were a strip mall, it could comfortably house
five stores.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
You work on a crely.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
A crew member walked by us and confirmed the yacht
is one hundred and fifty seven feet and sleeps more
than twenty people.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Ah, it's like around twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Like that's how many people live in whole apartment buildings.
I made the point it's bigger than my house, which
he thought was pretty funny. But the wealth of the
fund Hools is serious. Together, the brothers are worth around
eight point two billion dollars, more than the gross domestic
product of sixty seven nations. So when we left Pepe
(04:22):
and his brother Alfi Fundhul in the last episode, they
had just fled Cuba and were freshly landed in Florida
with their Famili's historic sugar empire in tatters. So how
did they go from there?
Speaker 5 (04:35):
The mansions were gone, the assets were gone.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
To this. This is a massive boat.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
Massive.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I don't even know if you say boat craft. How
they can now afford a yacht that measures half the
length of a football field has a lot to do
with their nickname.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
The First Family of corporate welfare.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
The dollars that paid for Alfie's super yacht they may
have come from.
Speaker 7 (04:58):
Your pocket, and that is strictly due to the onwitting
generosity of federal taxpayers.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
The backdrop to their journey to riches and how these
Cuban brothers ended up at the center of a multi
million dollar lawsuit is winding, complicated, and fascinating. It includes
everything from the FBI to the Godfather. I'm Celeste Hedley,
and from iHeartMedia, Imagine Audio and the teams at Weekday
Fun and Novel. This is Big Sugar episode five, The
(05:28):
American Dream. You might be wondering why you're not hearing
from Alfie and Pepe themselves in this series. Well, look,
(05:51):
we've been trying. Hi, this is Saskia, the podcast produce
coaling again, and I mean really trying. My name's Nadia.
Speaker 8 (06:00):
I'm a reporter who's been leaving Gastons voicemails recently.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Thank you for calling the United States Sugar Corporation to
dial by name Press.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
Warren following Sugarcane Growers Cooperative of Florida.
Speaker 9 (06:11):
Our office hours.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Are eight am to twelve pm. If this is an emergency,
Please hang up in dial nine one one. We've tried
to call the major sugar companies, their lawyers, and their
Florida trade group to offer them a chance to tell
their side of the story, to do an interview. We
want to talk to them about the allegations of how
their workers are treated and paid, and we also want
to talk to the fun Huel brothers about their lives.
(06:35):
But it was hard to get very far. Let's just
say the production team spent a lot of time being
shuffled from media rep to voicemail to assistant bopping along
to this tune. One representative of US Sugar even said
podcasts weren't on her radar because she has a job,
(06:56):
a family, and a life. It became very clear that
no one from US Sugar, Florida Crystals, or any of
the other companies wanted to talk to us. So what
other option did we have? My producer Saskia, I.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Don't think we have another option other than going to
Florida and trying to find them ourselves.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I wasn't just in Palm Beach to admire mansions and
super yachts. I was there to try to find the
Fanjuls on their home turf. I mean it's unlikely that
they'll talk to us. I get that, but unlikely doesn't
mean not possible. So the local reporter, Peter and I
jump in the car and head to the headquarters of
Florida Crystals.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So the first place that we are to go is
to Florida Crystal's headquarters office. Yes, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
The building is a light peach cement block with wheat
colored trim, and it has a somewhat elaborate entrance, a
checkerboard of caramel and cream diamonds with carved columns facing
a huge bonyon tree at the center of a quaint
brick traffic circle. Like the faun holes themselves, the Florida
Crystal HQ is protected and comfortable.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Check check. Okay, I'm going to roll on this before
we get out, I guess let's talk about.
Speaker 6 (08:23):
What we stut.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
I mean, our hope is that we can at least
get onto their floor, right, I mean, we'll go to
the security desk. See what that's what the deal is.
We can be as charming as we can be. Are
you not charming?
Speaker 6 (08:39):
Peter?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I love to smile.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I'm always smiling.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
We will turn on the charm. There are employees heading
into work with lunches and laptops. As we exit the
parking structure and walk the short distance to the front doors,
letter in hand, we're hoping to speak with Alfie of
Florida Crystals. Security. Gud is friendly, but really has no
intention of letting us get more than a few feet
(09:04):
inside the building. They don't ever let anybody through. Instead,
she tells us we could leave the letter with her
and she'll add it to the stack of mail for
Florida Crystal staff to collect later in the day. So
they'll have a runner that'll come down to collect things
for them, and you can include this with them.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Do you know when that person might deliver these letters?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
So apparently that letter asking for an interview was to
be delivered to Alfie and Pepe that day, And we
also put one letter in Alfie's mailbox just to be
sure we're going to stick it to the mailbox here.
That's a sturdy mailbox. It was pretty frustrating, if I'm
being honest, how impenetrable the barriers that the fun holes
(09:45):
had cocooning them are. Whether they are cameras, security guards
or hedges driving away I kept thinking about it. When
you have enough money, you literally can build enough barriers
between yourself and the outside world that you never have
to be confronted if you don't want to, you never
have to be questioned. I mean, it obviously is quite
(10:07):
expensive to do so, but if you have enough money,
you can isolate yourself from pushback. I find that the
only time when a corporation will feel they need to
reply to a story they do not want to talk
(10:27):
about is when they think it's going to look worse
for them to have not said something than to have
said something right. Otherwise, they'll issue a very carefully worded statement.
But if they can get away with not doing that,
then they absolutely will. The phone Holes didn't seem to
(10:50):
have any interest in speaking with us or telling their
side of the story. But then Peter and I took
a short drive to bell Glade, Sugar Country, the town
and hour away from where the fun Holes live. The
streets in Belglade are a stark contrast to Billionaire's Row.
Some of these homes that we're passing by right now,
they're so dilapidated. There's plants growing in the living room
(11:13):
of that one.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Some are abandoned and vacant, and some are not. But
right on the.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Edge around this area is where many of the fun
Hole's farms are located. While there we did find people
who were willing to talk with us. We came across
a group of people relaxing behind the local market.
Speaker 9 (11:32):
People yea, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
There's a couple of metal tables and a collection of
various chairs beneath a tree and a smoldering fire inside
a steel can nearby. They're chatting casually.
Speaker 10 (11:44):
Majority of these people that you see around here, with
family members and themselves have worked for the sugar cane industry. Well,
the toughness actually bring us together. This would make us strong,
This was make This wouldn't make us nick.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Another guy we spoke to, Michael, seemed to be in
his forties. Maybe he didn't want to give us too
many personal details, but he says he's never worked in
the fields. At first, he was pretty reluctant to talk
about the growers, the people like the Van Hools, whose
businesses the sugar cane farms represent the biggest industry in town,
pretty much the only industry. But then it started pouring
(12:25):
out his feelings about the inequity, the difference between his
life and theirs.
Speaker 8 (12:30):
It's good for dim, it's not good for us, cause
we are the one that fucking bottle.
Speaker 6 (12:38):
We are the.
Speaker 8 (12:39):
One that's struggling to keep their pockets fat. We the
one who fucking trying to make it is me. Look
at the town. You see the town speak for itself.
Now you go where they where they stay at, You
go where they stay at. You see the big difference. Yeah,
it's good for Dial, but it ain't good for us.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
The fifty seven foot yacht.
Speaker 5 (13:02):
Yesterday, goddamn robu.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
It's kind of cinematic to imagine when the sugar princes
Pepe and Alfi fun who first arrived in Florida in
the nineteen fifties as young men. Well, Pepe was still
a teenager. Actually, the Cuban Revolution had just concluded, Fidel
Castro was Prime Minister, and their families lost everything. Generations
of immense wealth, more than one hundred thousand acres of land,
(13:47):
ten sugar mills, all now taken by the new communist
government and nationalized. Castro is even living in one of
their seized houses. Picture him tucked up in Alfi's old bed.
Their fortune is in ruins. Well, kind of.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
They had a lot more money in America than a
lot of other Cuban refugees.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Did Marie Brenner, who interviewed the Fanhol brothers for Vanity Fair.
But still you can imagine them disembarking from the nineteen
fifties airplane, a couple of suitcases in hand, with the
instruction from their grandfather echoing in their minds.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
The grandfather had said to them, you have an imperative
to build up this business again.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
So Alfi's able to secure a four thousand acre parcel
of land in one of the most fertile parts of Florida,
the Everglades Agricultural Area. Then he enlists a couple of partners,
buys three dilapidated sugar mills from Louisiana for one hundred
and sixty five thousand dollars and has them dismantled and
taken by barge to Florida.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
So now it is nineteen fifty nine and the sugar
industry in Florida was relatively small, but there was new
types of sugarcane and improve fertilized that were being developed
that was soon going to change all of that.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Not to mention that the US wasn't buying sugar from
Cuba anymore. The US doesn't typically buddy up with communist regimes,
so there was a gap in the market for domestic producers,
and the brothers get to work on their new farm.
This part really sings in the Rags to Rich's yarn.
(15:25):
Alfie told Marie.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
Brenner, so young Alfi fan Hule sets up in a
small office in a deserted school house downwind from the plant.
He said, the smell and the dust blowing in for
months on me was horrendous.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
But after a year of struggle it paid off all
that grit.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
Their first crop came in nineteen sixty one. It brought
in a million dollars, which was astonishing.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
They were making good on their commitment to their grandfather.
But the good times didn't last.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
The second year, the Everglades flooded and they lost everything,
and then.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Some They were down in their luck again. After two
years of work, the brothers were back to square one,
or even a little worse off than when they arrived.
So what turned things around? Well, it wasn't just an
improved fertilizer or a better year of weather conditions. In fact,
what made all the difference happened very far away from
(16:28):
a sugarcane field. It happened in the hollowed halls of
the United States government. More coming up after the break.
One of the secret ingredients in the fawn Hul's recipe
(16:48):
for riches is something known as the farm Bill. Now,
the farm Bill might sound like one of the least sexy,
most dry pieces of legislation in this country. If the
Affordable Care Act is the sexy stiletto of the law,
the farm Bill is the size fourteen croc. And buried
in the farm Bill is the Sugar Program, which is
probably how it flies under the radar. The general public
(17:11):
doesn't pay much attention to it. The whole thing only
comes up for renewal every five years, but it's important
and a lot of our country's dollars are at stake. So,
like a desperate lothario, I'm going to cueue up some
mood music and attempt to make this as sexy as possible.
(17:35):
In nineteen seventy four, a price bike drove the sugar
industry into over production and the bottom fell out of
the market. That meant a bunch of sugar cane farmers
were on the brink of losing everything, so the government
rushed in with guaranteed loans and financing, which became the
basis of the current sugar program, which again is part
(17:56):
of the massive farm bill today. What it means is, first,
there are strict import quotas very little sugar grown outside
the US is sold here. And it also means there's
a guaranteed price floor for sugar which the government will
pay for any surplus produced.
Speaker 7 (18:14):
So they're basically guaranteed a price per pound, which is
quite a good deal.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
This is Carl Hyacin, writer and journalist and all around
Florida legend.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
Everyone has their own business. They can appreciate how lovely
it would be if the government said to them, no
matter what the world market is for what you're selling,
you're going to get this much for it, because we're
going to make sure you do. So they've had the
benefit of these massive entitlement programs.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
In twenty twenty one, the average price for cane sugar
in the world market was twenty one dollars forty cents
per pound. In the US the price was forty seven
dollars fifty nine cents. That's more than twice the price
and who foots the bill for this difference. If you're
in the US, US, you and me, every time you
(19:02):
buy anything with sugar in it, from bread to salad dressing,
you pay more. The sugar program as a whole costs
the US consumer up to four billion dollars a year,
and the fun Hools companies personally benefit to the tune
of tens of millions. Here's a clip from a doc
focused on that.
Speaker 8 (19:22):
Critics as to make these plantation owners make an extra
sixty five million dollars a year off the sugar program
and American consumers, the fon.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Hul family makes one hundreds of millions of dollars become
very wealthy because of a government program. And there's no
reason why the federal government should create a program to
make the fun Hools richer. We're in effects subsidizing the
van Hools and hurting the American public buying products that have.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
Sugar in it.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
But hey, if you're talking to the fun Hools, don't
call it a subsidy.
Speaker 7 (19:54):
It's not direct subsidy. They get very prickly when you
talk to them about the whether it's a subsidy or not.
It's a assive in corporate entitlement.
Speaker 5 (20:02):
They don't see what they're getting as anything less than
they deserve, and they have an elaborate way of saying
that this is not a subsidy, that sugar is the
lifeblood of America, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
How do they keep these benefits, Well, they pay for them.
We'll dig into this more in the series, but the
sugar industry is known for its intense lobbying and donating
millions to politicians. But the bottom line is it was
the Farm Bill legislation that helped to catapult the young,
ambitious fund Holes to the position therein Now they.
Speaker 7 (20:37):
Live in Palm Beach. They lived the life of multi millionaires,
and that is strictly due to the onwitting generosity of
federal taxpayers.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
It's not hard to find evidence of their minted lifestyles.
As we both know well, the fun Holes are not
obsessed with talking to journalists, but in one rare media appearance,
Pepe fun Hole was featured in a BBC documentary about
the prestigious Clerages Hotel, a place where everyone from Queen
Victoria to Winston Churchill has stayed.
Speaker 11 (21:09):
Clarridge's Hotel in the heart of London's Mayfair provides a
five star service for the rich, where nothing is too
much trouble. One such guest is Cuban born multimillionaire Pepe
fan Hul. He's been staying at the hotel for over
sixty two years, since he was a small boy.
Speaker 10 (21:31):
He's welcome, thank you, see you again.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
According to the documentary, he's racked up over three hundred
nights at Clarage's over the course of ten years, and
his favorite room has a price tag of three thousand,
five hundred pounds a night that translates to more than
one point three million dollars spent at one hotel over
a decade. He's so loyal the staff makes sure his
room is exactly the same every time he stays. They
(22:02):
even compare it to photos. But according to Pepe, Claridges
is quite quaint. Apparently, I think.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
That you may find hotels that are grander the rich
in Powis maybe or Richard MADRIDU has a wonderful outside
area to have lunch, which is beautiful. But I think
what the clarage is is that people that come here
always they treat them as family.
Speaker 7 (22:28):
Let me just say this, there's no way, they would
be at least the fund Holes would be living that
lifestyle if that weren't for the generosity of the federal
government and American consumers who are paying a much higher
price for sugar.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
They have this nickname. They're called the First Family of
corporate Welfare. Yeah, remember former presidential candidate John McCain even
he used this nickname to talk about the fun Holes.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
The first Family of corporate welfare.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
All right here, I'm going to mention something that you
probably didn't expect in this story The Godfather. If you
were a film buff, you might already know this, But
a major driver behind the production of this movie was
an Austrian man called Charles Bluehorn. I want to introduce
you to Bluehorn because he's pivotal to how the Funholes
became America's most infamous sugar bearings. In nineteen forty two,
(23:24):
he migrated to the US as a wartime refugee and
quickly went from a struggling doorman to ruthless conglomateur. Charles
Bloodhorn started golf and western industries. Initially, he got into
the car parks business, and then musical instruments, defense contracting,
then baking, even supermarkets with all the buying and selling
(23:45):
Golf and Western's revenues increased more than tenfold in less
than a decade. Bluehorn's passionate and frenetic business style earned
him the Moniker the Mad Austrian of Wall Street. Then
in nineteen sixty six, Bluehorn acquired Paramount Pictures. He oversaw
and meddled in the production of hit movies like Rosemary's Baby,
(24:07):
Saturday Night Fever, Raiders of the Lost Arc, and of
course The Godfather. But while he was making Hollywood history,
Bluehorn was known for having a much more intense interest
in one of his investments, sugar. Of course, his favorite
venture was South Puerto Rico Sugar, a company which controlled
ninety thousand acres of sugar property in South Florida and
(24:30):
two hundred and forty thousand acres in the Dominican Republic.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
I at that time in my career started as a
young story editor at Paramount Pictures when Bluehorn still had
Florida Sugar, and there was sugar posters, there were sugar
things that were sold in the lobby at the newsstand.
He was obsessed with sugar.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
But in nineteen eighty three, Charles Bluehorn suddenly died of
a heart attack, and the new owner of Gulf and Western,
Martin Davis, was not so obsessed. He decided to unload
Bluehrned Sugar holdings, and there was one burgeoning sugar magnet
who was primed and ready to take it all. In
nineteen eighty five, a young Alfi von Huel walked into
(25:17):
Martin Davis's office and started negotiating to buy the South
Puerto Rico Sugar Company, and Marty.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
He essentially gave it away for a very reduced price,
which became the basis of Florida Crystals.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
It was this purchase that turned Alfie and Pepe into
some of the biggest sugar producers in the country. You
don't need to wonder about your food, where it comes from,
or how it's made, because we do. For Florida Crystals.
Farmed a table isn't a slogan, it's our promise to you.
(25:52):
These days, Florida Crystals owns about one hundred and ninety
thousand acres of sugarcane in Florida and more than two
hundred thousand acres in the day Minican Republic. There the
fun holes are also hefes of Casa de Compo, a
luxury hotel frequented by Beyonce Bieber and the Clintons. Their brands,
which might be a bit more familiar to me and you,
include Domino c and h Taitan Lyle and Redpath. And
(26:16):
in recent years, the fann Holes Company has expanded its
real estate holdings and they now operate the country's largest
biomass power plant, producing electricity from their own sugarcane waste.
Alphae and Pepe are worth billions. And then there's a
new generation of fanon Hol sugar princes born in America.
For example, Pepe's son Jose Vanhul Junior, he's the executive
(26:40):
vice president of Florida Crystals. In a profile in the
Florida five hundred, he's quoted as saying he's currently reading
a book by the billionaire Ken Langone entitled I Kid
You Not, I Love Capitalism exclamation point. So by the
nineteen seventies and eighties, the Fanhol brothers have their sugar
farms and mills and their not subsidies. But who's cutting
(27:02):
all the sugarcane? This question is really at the heart
of our series. More after the break, How did thousands
of Jamaicans and men from other Caribbean countries wind up
in this very specific and punishing job. It seems a
little random, but it's actually not. It follows a pattern,
(27:26):
a grim motif that's haunted the sugarcane industry since it began.
To tell that story, we need to wind back even
further to before either Pepe or Alfhi had landed in
the US nineteen forty two. A report has just been
(27:46):
slapped on the desk of J. Edgar Hoover, the first
director of the FBI. This report is an investigation into
working conditions in the sugar industry. So why was the
FBI investigating and what did they discover? A few years earlier,
in the nineteen thirties, ads had started appearing in newspapers
(28:07):
in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Alabama saying things like enjoy
Florida sunshine during the winter months and good wages, good
living conditions, free transportation and meals to Florida cash issued daily.
They were advertising jobs cutting sugarcane, and they were specifically
aimed at Black Americans. The promise of good wages must
(28:30):
have been tempting to black men, who earned on average
about thirty three dollars a week in nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 9 (28:38):
Caine Harvest is a social institution. Thousands of housemaids and
cooks beg leave from town and city employers and respond
to the hereditary urge to go back to the plantation
and work at Macon grinds.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
In the first half of the twentieth century, it was
common to hear things like this that Black Americans loved
doing menial labor, or that forcing them to work in
fields and kitchens was beneficial for them. It's a particularly
vicious racist propaganda meant to justify abuse. One city in
South Carolina passed an ordinance that required black men to
(29:15):
work no less than five days a week, even if
they didn't need the money. But the ads touting Florida's
warm weather were aimed at those who struggled to find
good paying jobs. People would respond to the ads thinking
they were about to embark on a rewarding career with
US Sugar, the biggest sugar company in Florida at the time,
But when they'd get to the farms, they'd find that
(29:36):
the transport and accommodation the barracks where they were all
packed in weren't free. At all. They were almost immediately
in debt to US sugar and had to work to
pay it off, in other words, debt slavery. Plus the
work was so much harder than they'd been told or
could even have imagined, And that's why the FBI began
(29:58):
looking into thiszations of mistreatment and modern day slavery. And
that report Hoover was reading describes a working day which
starts before dawn and lasts until dusk. The superintendents and
possibly some of the foremen are armed with pistols and blackjacks.
The food furnished to the men is not of the best,
and they are charged five cents a gallon for fresh water.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Testing testing one two three testing testing.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Khalil Gibron Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History,
Race and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He
studied the report in detail.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
One witness who was subjected to these conditions said it
was worse than being in the penitentiary.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Because if they tried to escape the grueling work on
the sugarcane farms. Well, testimony from one worker says, I
knew if you run away, they come to and get
you and change you to the bed at night. I
saw people locked to the beds. I didn't only see that.
I saw some men get a beating.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
And if they managed to make it on to some
of the trains that ran through the parts of the
state where this work was happening, they'd be chased down
and shot at or in some cases killed.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
The FBI report concludes, there is a dispute as to
whether or not the men are locked in the barracks
at night, whether the camps are guarded by armed men,
and whether the men are free to leave the employee
of the company. There doesn't seem to be any dispute
as to the fact that those men who have attempted
to escape from the plantations are picked up on the
highway or shot at while trying to hitch rides on
(31:32):
the sugar trains, are returned to the plantations and forced
to work, And.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
So the kinds of violence that is associated with sugar
slavery from earlier time periods, according to witness testimony in
the federal investigation, looked a whole lot similar.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
In other words, what was happening on sugar farms in
the nineteen forties paralleled what happened in the sugar industry
in North America, the US, and the Caribbean during the
day of chattel slavery from the sixteenth century until the
nineteenth century. There are few words that can express the
cruelty of slavery, and in sugarcane this barbarity seems to
(32:11):
be especially extreme. Once an enslaved person arrived on a
cane field, in many cases, they'd be dead within seven years.
That's because of the risk of injury, the lack of healthcare,
the intensity of the work, and the weather.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
So you're coupling extreme tropical conditions with extreme works and
so it is literally sun up to sundown. There is
no break, there is no relief. There was constant danger
of people being hurt in the process, losing limbs, getting
infection from being cut in untreated wounds.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
It was relentless.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Unless they nearly dropped dead. They were expected to.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Work even after the life threatening job of cut the
cane was over. Then came the milling, taking the stocks
to be squished into the liquid that becomes sugar granules.
A warning this part is particularly graphic.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
People were subjected to losing limbs and occasionally loss of
life because their body parts might get caught in the
grinding rollers. Cane knives were placed alongside the grinding machine
for the purposes of cutting limbs from people's bodies. Hands
and arms were the most common parts of the body
(33:31):
to get caught in the grinders. In an effort to
save enslaved laborer's life, not out of altruism, but because
it was an investment in the worker.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Power, they'd cut off their arms with a machete if
they were stuck in the machines. It's difficult to think
of a more horrific type of injury, and if an
enslaved person didn't want to do this kind of work.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
The threat and use of violence was ever present.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
A formerly enslaved woman named Missus Webb describe a torture
chamber used by her owner. One of his cruelties was
to place a disobedient slave standing in a box in
which there were nails placed in such a manner that
the poor creature was unable to move. He was powerless
even to chase the flies or sometimes ants crawling on
some parts of his body.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
Their fate was sealed to a kind of deadly routine.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
So eighteen sixty five, slavery is abolished in the US
at least. But in some ways things really don't change,
because when the FBI began its investigation in the nineteen forties,
it had been some eighty years since slavery was abolished.
The sugar industry is now paying their workers, and yet
the conditions weren't a whole lot different from eighteen sixty five.
(34:56):
J Edgar Hoover puts down the report and he decides
to do something. The FBI investigation actually culminated with the
company US Sugar being charged with p andage and conspiracy
to violate the right and privilege of citizens to be
free from slavery conspiracy to commit slavery in the nineteen forties.
(35:16):
The trial never went ahead because of an issue with
jury impartiality. It's a long story, but this investigation changed
the whole sugar industry. Their practices had been exposed and
this left a void. Who was going to cut the
sugar cane? They couldn't carry on as they had been,
But the sugar companies found a way around it hiring overseas.
(35:40):
A plan was hatched. Luckily for the growers, a new
labor program was available. It was a program that made
it easier to bring in workers from abroad because of
labor shortages during World War II. This would eventually morph
into what's today known as the H two way farm
worker Visa SOH. In April nineteen forty three, America's sugar
(36:02):
growers turned to the islands nearby Florida and began hiring
men from the Caribbean to cut the cane, firstly the Bahamas,
then Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Barbados. By the following season they
would be working in the fields.
Speaker 12 (36:20):
Distinguished guests from the Bahamas, the Duke and Ductess of Windsor.
The Duke tells New York City reporters how Bahamians are
helping on Eastern farms. Here come farm workers from the
Bahama Islands off the Atlantic coast.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
In documents from the time, one grower writes that the
farmers preferred workers from the Bahamas because the vast difference
between the Bahama Island labor and domestic is that the
labor transported from the Bahama Islands can be deported and
sent home if it does not work. If you don't
perform well, whatever that means, you're kicked out of the country.
(36:58):
And as you know, through getting to know cutters like
Victor and Selvin in this series. That's exactly what happened.
They were in the US at the mercy of their employers.
They knew if they complained, they would be sent back
to Jamaica. They weren't American citizens and it would be
a lot harder for them to get to the FBI.
So from the nineteen forties until the nineteen nineties, every
(37:21):
year for fifty years, some twenty thousand men from the Caribbean,
Jamaica in particular, would come to Florida. They'd be transported
to sugarcane fields, including those owned by the Funholes.
Speaker 5 (37:33):
And they begin to bring in Jamaicans, thousands and thousands
of Jamaicans to cut the cane, and that's how it begins.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
It seems like they acknowledged that they would not have
been successful had it not been for this program.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
Absolutely, they wouldn't have been.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Carl Hyacin puts it even more dramatically, they.
Speaker 7 (37:54):
Would not have existed if it weren't for migrant labor
that they got visas and kept under basically slave conditions
for years and years and years. It was one of
the grimest labor situations in the whole country.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
When Marie interviewed Alfie and Pepe, she actually asked them
about the job of cutting sugarcane, a job that's been
called the hardest in the world. You asked them if
they had ever actually worked in the fields themselves. What
was their answer?
Speaker 5 (38:24):
Alfie laughed. He said, he tried to cut caine at
one point, but it was so overwhelming he couldn't last
five minutes. That he just found it so impossible what
you had to do.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Did he seem to make that connection with what he
was demanding of the workers in his own fields.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
Absolutely not. No, there was no empathy and no sympathy whatsoever.
The fon Hols really believed that they were giving these
workers a shot at the middle class, or so they
convinced themselves. They believed this was the way they justified
this when they had their huge parties on their yachts,
(39:07):
and they flew in people from all over the world,
and they built their elaborate mansions. This was truly a
kind of colonial narcissistic belief that they were giving these
hard working guys who were mistreated, often injured, would lose fingers,
would lose limbs, would not even be able to have
(39:28):
lunch because they couldn't leave the fields. They believed they
were giving them a shot. Just even reliving it. I'm
just still you can hear, I'm just getting more and
more aggravated.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Yeah, it really bothers you, still.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
Yeah, it does? It does it? Just to see in
our own country the extraordinary you would have to say
racist human rights violations. Where were the white workers in
the fields. These were black Jamaicans who somehow were invisible
to the American legal system.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
There's this grim motif from the beginning, from slavery to
the black Americans in the South to the Caribbean men.
For hundreds of years, the sugarcane industry in North America
almost always relied on the labor of the disenfranchised or unfree.
I got a story about not just this area of Florida,
but the industry of the sugar industry. When I was
(40:28):
in Belglade, I started talking to people about the court
case that this series revolves around, and the accusation that
the growers systematically underpaid the Caribbean men who came to
this area to cut the sugar cane for them. Michael
looked at me in disbelief and said.
Speaker 8 (40:43):
That's what why you think we own a bottom.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
I told you we own.
Speaker 8 (40:47):
A bottle struggle of breaking our bags. Man, those people
don't they still they ain't just stealing money. Man, They're
still in our lives.
Speaker 12 (40:54):
Man.
Speaker 8 (40:55):
That's strangely, man, those people are still in lives many.
Speaker 11 (41:02):
Room.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
In her interview, Marie pressed the fun Holes more about
the conditions the sugarcane cutters lived in.
Speaker 5 (41:12):
They invited me on their boat and it was more
of the same, incredibly gracious saying they had done nothing wrong,
and then they sailed off.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Next time, we're back in the West Palm Beach Courthouse
in the nineteen nineties, where some underdog lawyers decided to
take on the mighty fun Holes. Do you consider yourself
to be a stubborn person?
Speaker 5 (41:45):
I prefer determined.
Speaker 6 (41:46):
I think I will not be run over easily.
Speaker 10 (41:49):
So Dave's practice was slipping badly, and it coincided with
Dave's marriage was breaking up.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
And how exactly their landmark lawsuit went down.
Speaker 5 (42:01):
And he started to cry and there was a silence
in the court room that was so heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
And outside the courtroom the drama.
Speaker 10 (42:10):
The Vanity Fair article had been shimmering in the background.
Then this Whole Movie Deal.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Hit That's Next Time on Big Sugar. Big Sugar is
produced by Imagine Audio, Weekday Fund Productions and novel for iHeartMedia.
The series is hosted by me Celeste Hedley. Big Sugar
(42:38):
is produced by Jeff Eisenman at Weekday Fund Productions. It's
executive produced by Kara Welker, Nathan Kloke, and Marie Brenner.
Story editor and executive producer is Joe Wheeler. The researcher
is Nadia Metti. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor,
and Charlotte Wolf. Our fact checker is Sona Avakian. Reporting
(43:00):
by Amber Amortige and Peter Hayden. Sound design and mixing
by Eli Block, Naomi Clark and Daniel Kempsen. Original music
composed by Troy McCubbin at Alloy Tracks. Additional music by
Nicholas Alexander. Special thanks to Alec Wilkinson, author of the
book Big Sugar, and Stephanie Black, director of the documentary
(43:23):
H two Worker. Big Sugar is based on the Vanity
Fair article in the Kingdom of Big Sugar by Marie Branner.
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