The earliest records in the Braga Brothers Collection date to 1860 and bear the name of a commission merchant, Lewis Benjamin. Benjamin was one of many traders buying and selling a variety of commodities in Manhattan's vibrant financial district. In 1873, Benjamin and Joaquín Rionda y Polledo (1850-1889) formed the partnership of Benjamin, Rionda and Company. Joaquín Rionda was the middle brother in a family of six sisters (Maria, Isidora, Gregoria, Ramona, Concepción, and Bibiana) and three brothers (Francisco, Joaquín and Manuel), offspring of Don Bernardo de la Rionda y Alvarez and Doña Josefa Polledo y Mata. All were born in the village of Noreña in the Oviedo district of Asturias.

The eldest brother, Francisco (1844-1898), resided in Cuba most of his life. It is uncertain when he arrived in Cuba, but he worked with his uncle, Joaquín Polledo, in the firm Polledo, Rionda and Company. The company was a sugar export house with its office and warehouse in Matanzas. The family also owned sugar plantations near that Cuban port. By 1875, Francisco had married Elena de la Torriente, the daughter of one of Cuba's wealthiest sugar barons. His father-in-law, Cosmé de la Torriente, awarded him management of a sugar estate dubbed La Elena after Francisco's bride.

The Polledos and Riondas also enjoyed a long and profitable association with George S. Hunt, owner of the Eagle Sugar Refinery at Portland, Maine. In addition to the refinery, Hunt operated a fleet of ships that traded primarily in Maine lumber products and Cuban sugar and molasses. Hunt took under his wing Joaquín and Manuel when they came to America and oversaw their preparation for the business world. Joaquín spent his adolescent years at the Abbott School in Farmington, Maine, before he settled in New York City. Manuel (1854-1943) left Spain in 1870 and followed Joaquín at the Abbott School before joining his brother at Benjamin, Rionda and Company in 1874.

In the meantime, Francisco and his uncle enlarged their Cuban sugar holdings. By 1877, they had acquired the Central China and contracted with Franklin Farrel of the Farrel Foundry and Machine Company of Ansonia, Connecticut, to modernize the estate's industrial plant. However, debts incurred by the purchase of expensive mill machinery, coupled with declining sugar prices, forced the bankruptcy of Polledo, Rionda and Co. in December, 1878. $400,000 of that debt was to Rionda, Benjamin and Co.

As part of a 1880 court settlement of Polledo, Rionda's remaining assets, the Rionda brothers acquired the Central China and the Matanzas warehouses. Joaquín subsequently moved to Cuba to take charge of the Central China. Francisco continued at the Elena estate until the de la Torrientes sold it. He then joined Joaquín at the Central China. Manuel also moved to Cuba and assumed control of the Matanzas warehouses for a brief period. While all three of the brothers were in Cuba, the New York business was left in the hands of a partner, Hugh Kelly.

Quickly, though, the business network began to crumble. By 1883, Rionda, Benjamin and Co. was declared insolvent. Manuel returned to New York and attempted a new partnership with Kelly, but that lasted only a year. The Matanzas operations also failed and the Central China eventually became the property of the New York Sugar Manufacturing Company, established by Farrell, Kelly and Lewis Cooke.

The Riondas then focused their energies on sugar properties they acquired in the vicinity of Sancti Spiritus in Santa Clara province. Manuel returned to Cuba briefly to work with his brothers. By 1886, though, he was back in New York working with the firm of J. M. Ceballos and Co. The record trail in Record Group 1, however, stops in 1885. Record Group 2 starts in 1895, and there are no records in the collection for the intervening years. The memoirs and recollections of family members (see also: Addendum) recount the history of the intervening years.

Record Group 1 of the Braga Brothers Collection is a valuable resource for studies of early North American investments in the Cuban sugar industry. It also documents the Spanish communities in the United States and Cuba and the important role they played in the development of Cuba's sugar industry. The Benjamins' business interests are also well documented in the correspondence with Lewin and Sohr of Antwerp and Truninger and Company of London. Record Group 1 includes correspondence, bound and unbound business records, shipping contracts and other maritime documents, legal papers, and trade circulars. A small amount of family correspondence can also be found.

Record Group 1 is divided into six series.

Series 6 includes cargo pouches, charter parties, maritime protests, insurance policies, and contractual records. The largest part of the collection consists of cargo pouches. The original pouch envelopes, many of which were wrapped in bundles marked "consignment envelopes," have been retained.

A typical cargo pouch contains sales receipts, import slips, invoices, insurance receipts, memoranda and charter memoranda. Some pouches (especially 1876 and 1877) may also include towing bills, quarantine bills, shipwright bills, bills of lading, storage receipts, consulate bills, custom house receipts, warden's office legislative acts, bank correspondence, sugar weight return notices, marine protests, import bonds and trust receipts. Sugar transactions are prominent throughout most years, but also included are railroad grain transactions (1879), iron rails (1880) and bat guano sales (1882). Some cargo pouches contain charter parties and have been labeled as such. Charter parties found independent of cargo pouches are listed separately.

Box 6 contains insurance policies, receipts and ledgers (1870-1885) related to ships, cargoes on ships, and cargoes stored in wharves and bulkheads. The ledger entitled "Marine Insurance G.R. and Co." lists vessels with merchandise, exit ports, dates and amounts of insurance (in gold or currency), and compliments material found in many of the cargo pouches.

The majority of the maritime papers are written in English with some in Spanish and a few in French and German.

Series 31 consists primarily of business correspondence received at the early Rionda trading houses in New York City. Also included in the series are copies of letters sent from the trading houses, but most of the outgoing correspondence will be found in the letterbooks in Series 32. Some internal business correspondence, including memoranda, is also found along with contracts and other business documents. The series also contains a small number of private letters and documents from family members in Spain and Cuba. The majority of letters revolve around the purchase and sale of various commodities, including sugar. The Riondas interest in sugar production factors more heavily in the later years of the series. Of particular interest are the letters and documents related to the modernization of several mills in the 1880s. Discussion related to the abolition of slavery can be found in the correspondence of the brothers, most notably in 1879.

The materials were bundled with titles and dates written on the bundle wrappers. Unless otherwise noted in brackets, the folder titles here are the same as those that were on the wrappers. About a tenth of the series was found loose with no identification. Those letters have been arranged by date and marked in the contents lists with an asterisk. A considerable portion of the series was lost to rodent damage.

Legal size documents are in box 8, oversize documents in box 9.

Series 32 consists of twenty letterbooks containing copies of outgoing correspondence from the Rionda trading houses in New York City. Eight of the volumes contain letters from Rionda, Benjamin and Co., exclusively, while the remainder carry correspondence from various houses. A small amount of personal and family correspondence is also included.

The letterbooks do not form a continuous series and there is considerable overlapping of dates. Special care should be taken when looking for specific dates.

In general the records of this series are in good condition, with only minor mutilation and some ink fading.

Series 33 consists of trade circulars and market reports received by the various firms associated with Record Group 1, including Rionda, Benjamin and Company. Most of the circulars and reports relate to the sugar trade and were issued in the United States, Cuba, and Europe. There are also publications on other commodities traded by Rionda, Benjamin.

Digitized items from the series can be found here.

Series 34 contains the ledgers, journals, and other bound financial records of Benjamin, Rionda and Company and several related firms. An interesting feature of this series is the inclusion of several items from the years prior to Joaquin Rionda's partnership with Lewis Benjamin. This includes ledgers from A. Wolf, one of several business associates of Lewis Benjamin. The series also contains a cashbook for the Central China.

Most of the daily correspondence of the Rionda trading houses was in the form of international cables. The availability of cheap telegrahpic messaging allowed smaller and newer firms as Rionda, Benjamin and Company to compete with older established firms. Cable messages relayed the price and availability of specific commodities. To save money, commercial codes were employed to reduce the number of letters used in a single cable. Series 59 contains only a sampling of the hundreds of thousands of largely undeciperable cables originally foound in the collection. Series 59 contains several telegraph code books employed by Rionda, Benjamin and Company and Gomez, Rionda and Company, a cable book containing copies of outgoing cable messages, and some examples of incoming cables.

Manuel Rionda worked at the firm J. M. Ceballos and Co. from approximately 1886 to 1896. During that time, he established a sound reputation among Wall Street's sugar brokers and important links with Cuba's sugar producers. In 1896, he left Ceballos and became a commission agent in Czarnikow, MacDougall and Company (est. 1891). Czarnikow, MacDougall was the North American branch of the eminent London trading house C. Czarnikow, Ltd., one of the world's largest sugar traders.

While Manuel's star rose in New York business circles, his brothers continued to expand and modernize the family's sugar properties in Sancti Spiritus. Manuel's employer, Juan Ceballos, was encouraged to invest in the venture and the Central Tuinucu Sugar Cane Manufacturing Company was incorporated in New Jersey in 1891. (The company's name was shortened to the Tuinucú Sugar Company in 1903.) Tragically, though, Joaquín had died in a drowning accident while fording the Rio Tuinicú on April 7,1889. Francisco Rionda managed the cane fields and factory, and cane was ground at the new mill for the first time in 1895. No sooner had Tuinucu's new mill begun operations, but civil war in 1895 plunged Cuba into economic chaos. Cuba's sugar industry was devastated, and the Central Tuinucu was one of many plantations whose cane fields were put to the torch by Cuban insurgents. Francisco's letters to Manuel in Series 1 chronicle the turmoil of that period. Fearing execution by the insurgents, Francisco and other family members left Cuba in 1898. Before leaving, though, Francisco acquired a significant tract of land around the Bahía de Guayabal in Camagüey province.

Francisco died in New York City in November, 1898, leaving Manuel as the head of the family's properties and businesses. By this time, the United States' victory over Spain in the Spanish-American War had initiated a period of peace in Cuba under U.S. military occupation. Despite initial reluctance to continue in Cuba after 1898, Rionda decided to reinvest in the Cuban sugar industry. First, he was able to secure funds to revive Tuinucu. Then he organized a new company, the Francisco Sugar Company, to exploit the Camagüey land holdings acquired by his brother. Lacking capital of his own to build a sugar mill, Rionda sought out investors. The principal investors in the Francisco Sugar Company were the owners of the W. J. McCahan Sugar Refinery in Philadelphia. The McCahan group managed the company until 1909 when it relinquished ownership and control to the Riondas.

Cuba's war for independence also interrupted Rionda's work in Czarnikow, MacDougall and forced the firm to seek alternative sources of sugar. With the end of fighting in Cuba, however, Rionda plunged into the work he had been hired to do. Ironically, the war had removed or hurt many of his competitors. With the capital resources of C. Czarnikow behind him, Rionda financed old clients and aggressively sought new ones. By 1903, Czarnikow, MacDougall was the dominant company in the Cuban sugar trade. When the company's senior partner, Caesar Czarnikow, died in 1909, a new company was organized. The Czarnikow-Rionda Company was incorporated September 1, 1909, with Manuel Rionda as its president. The new firm was a private company and management of the company was vested in the common stock owned coequally by five individuals. Four of the common stockholders were the remaining partners in C. Czarnikow, Ltd.; the fifth was Rionda. Consequently, control of the company remained in London.

Rionda's relations with the other stockholders were never satisfactory. Rionda believed the Europeans were too conservative to effectively compete for the Cuban sugar market. The London stockholders, for their part, were wary of Cuba's political instability. Incidents such as the Guerrito de Agosto, which resulted in a second U.S. occupation of Cuba in 1906, and a racial conflict in 1912 further soured business interest in the island. In 1915, Rionda announced his intention to retire from Czarnikow-Rionda. His aim was to create his own brokerage house with his nephews, Manuel Enrique Rionda and Bernardo Braga Rionda, as his seconds and successors. Negotiations between the New York and London offices led, instead, to a new five year agreement that reduced British participation in Czarnikow-Rionda. Rionda continued to serve as the company's chief executive and chairman of the board.

Between 1902 and 1922, the Riondas expanded their operations and holdings in Cuba. When several mills passed into the hands of Czarnikow, MacDougall after their owners failed to meet debt obligations, the Riondas stepped in to acquire and manage the properties. In this manner, the Riondas acquired the Central San Vicente in 1907. Another foreclosed mill, the Central San José, was reorganized as the Washington Sugar Company in 1911. Other acquisitions included the Central Elia, a sugar mill adjacent to the Francisco Sugar Company, and the Central Céspedes near La Florida in Camagüey.

Among the financial backers of the Washington Sugar Company was Walter E. Ogilvie, a North American businessman and a major stockholder in the United Railways of the Havana and Regla Warehouses. Rionda and Ogilvie would collaborate on other business ventures. Together, they organized the Regla Coal Company in 1911 and broke the Berwind White Coal Company's monopoly on coal distribution in Cuba. For a brief period in the early 1920s, Ogilvie served as Czarnikow-Rionda's president and attempted a reorganization of the company's operations. When the reorganization failed to bring the desired results, Rionda returned to his position as president.

In 1907, Rionda began a long and beneficial relationship with the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell. Several partners of the firm invested in the Stewart Sugar Company that operated a large sugar factory in Camagüey province. Rionda served as president during the construction of the mill and the company's initial harvest. His success prompted further business collaboration with Sullivan and Cromwell, and Sullivan and Cromwell

Sullivan and Cromwell also invested in the largest sugar mill constructed by the Riondas. In 1911, Rionda brought together a group of investors that also included Claus Spreckels, Edmund Converse, Regino Truffin, and the financial house of J. and W. Seligman to exploit extensive land holdings around the Bahia de Manatí. The Manati Sugar Company was an immense undertaking and presaged Rionda's most ambitious business venture, the creation of the Cuba Cane Sugar Corporation in 1915. Backed by the financial resources of the Morgan trust, Cuba Cane was able to acquire the properties of seventeen mills that controlled over sixteen percent of Cuba's annual sugar production. Rionda served as president of Cuba Cane from 1915 to 1920.

The organization of the Cuba Cane Sugar Corporation in 1915 was encouraged by the rise in sugar prices brought on by the war in Europe. The entry of the United States in that conflict, however, produced demands at home and abroad for market controls. To achieve price stability and insure supplies of sugar at the same time, various national and international regulatory bodies were created. In recognition of Czarnikow-Rionda's influence in the sugar industry, Rionda was appointed by Cuban President Mario G. Menocal to the Cuban Commission. The Commission, which included Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and Robert B. Hawley, represented Cuba in international negotiations on sugar prices and allocations. Members of Czarnikow-Rionda also served on the Cuban Adjustment Committee, the Cuban Allotment Committee, and the Committee on Compensation to United States Brokers. Market prices for Cuban sugar were tightly regulated during the war, and Rionda played a prominent role in determining the price of Cuban raw sugar.

Despite protests from Rionda and others in the sugar trade, the United States lifted price restrictions on raw sugar in 1919. The result was a frenzy of market speculation known as the "Dance of the Millions." In the space of a few months, the price of raw sugar rose and fell dramatically ruining hundreds of planters and merchants in the process. In response to the market collapse, President Menocal named Rionda and several other sugar merchants to the Sugar Finance Committee. The Committee's task was to assist in financing and marketing the unsold portion of the 1920 Cuban harvest.

The committee's efforts were largely unsuccessful, and Rionda's presence on the committee led to complaints of favoritism and charges of illegal business practices. Other attempts to control the marketing of Cuban sugar followed. In 1929, the Compañía Exportadora Nacional del Azucar, or Vendedor Unico as it was often called, was organized as a single cooperative agency for the sale of Cuban sugars. Rionda exerted influence in Vendedor Unico and its successor, the Cooperative Export Agency.

Efforts to regulate sugar production and marketing on a world-wide scale were also made and Czarnikow-Rionda participated in all of the early international marketing agreements. The company's representative at many of the sugar conferences was Aurelio Portuondo, a Cuban lawyer and a vice-president in the Cuban Trading Company. Portuondo later represented the Cuban government in tariff negotiations with the United States in 1933 and was the company's principal liaison to the Cuban government for many years. In addition to Portuondo, Manuel Rionda corresponded with Thomas Chadbourne, the architect of the 1929 Chadbourne Plan. Rionda also carried on a lengthy correspondence with Viriato Gutierrez and José Miguel Tarafa. Both were prominent Cuban businessmen and important figures in international negotiations.

The 1920s and 1930s marked a slow and steady decline in the Rionda business fortunes. The sugar industry had barely recovered from the effects of the 1920 collapse when the Great Depression brought new economic difficulties and crippling tariff protection. The Francisco, Cespedes, and Manati sugar companies were forced into receivership and reorganized. Cuba Cane, in which the Riondas invested heavily, was a serious drain on the family's resources and was dissolved in 1938. By the mid-1930s, Czarnikow-Rionda's market dominance had been supplanted by its major competitor, Galban, Lobo and Company. Although it continued to play a significant role in Cuba's economic life, Czarnikow-Rionda never regained the influence it enjoyed during the first three decades of the twentieth century.

In his last years, Rionda was preoccupied with keeping his various businesses afloat. Despite losses in its market share, Czarnikow-Rionda escaped dissolution and Francisco, Manati, and Cespedes passed through receivership still under the control of the Riondas. San Vicente and Washington, however, were sold. As the years progressed Rionda's participation in industry affairs waned, but he was active until his death, at 89, on September 2, 1943. Rionda was succeeded as president of Czarnikow-Rionda by his nephew, Bernardo Braga Rionda.

Manuel Rionda's papers include more than 150 letterbooks and over seventy-five Linear feet. of subject files from his Wall Street office as well as documents kept at Rio Vista, his New Jersey estate on the palisades of the Hudson River. Manuel Rionda was the epitome of the hands-on industrial manager and demanded of his subalterns, many of whom were nephews and in-laws, detailed and regular reports. The magnitude and detail of his papers is, in turn, matched by a richness of opinions and convictions. He required prompt and detailed correspondence from each mill manager and company president. Rionda also responded personally to the entreaties of his colonos, the cane farmers who supplied cane for the sugar mills. Also included in this record group are Rionda's financial papers including records related to the execution of this estate. Of special note is Series 11 containing the correspondence of Aurelio Portuondo while he served as a negotiator for Cuba in the talks leading up to the Reciprocity Treaty of 1934.

Record Group 2 is divided into fourteen series.

Much of Record Group 2 is available on microfilm in Latin American History and Culture, Series 7 and 8: Cuba and the American Sugar Trade: The Braga Brothers Collection. Thomson Gale, 2006.

The material in this series was gathered from several disorganized files. They have been rearranged into a single alphabetical file. Arrangement is by the personal or corporate names of the correspondents. Series 1 consists of letters written to Manuel Rionda during the years 1896-1917 and complements the letterbooks found in Series 2. In the mid-1910s, Rionda began to keep a subject file containing both outgoing and incoming correspondence (See Series 10.) Rionda also kept separate files for Czarnikow-Rionda's internal memoranda and his correspondence with his nephews, Manuel Enrique Rionda and Bernardo Braga Rionda. (See Series 5 and Series 12.)

The earliest correspondence, dating from 1896, is mainly from family members in Spain and Cuba. Manuel's brother, Francisco, managed the Central Tuinucu, the family's estate in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba. Francisco wrote many letters describing the effects of the Cuban war for independence from Spain. Francisco's correspondence and that of Manuel's sisters and nieces, recount the activities of guerrillas camping nearby, the arrival of General Weyler and his attempts to defeat the rebels, and the damage done to the sugar industry and Cuba. The family filed a successful damage claim to the government of the United States for which there is documentation. After Francisco's death in 1898, Manuel Rionda's brother-in-law, Pedro Alonso, took over the management of Tuinucu, and later Manuel E. Rionda, José B. Rionda, and D. A. Walsh assumed that position. Each of these men wrote extensively to Manuel Rionda, who wanted daily reports about all his holdings. There is also extensive correspondence from long-time business associates of Manuel Rionda, including Louis Placé, Ramon Pelayo, Tiburcio and Pedro Bea, Juan Ceballos, and Julio Rabel. Manuel Rionda followed their careers as they dissolved companies and formed new ones or took on colonos. He also took a personal interest in their families and educated several of their sons at academies in Maine and New York and found positions for them in his companies.

The Zevallos brothers, Rafael and Victor, figure prominently in this series. Victor Zevallos became the president of the Cuban Trading Company, which negotiated Czarnikow-Rionda's business and legal transactions in Cuba. Victor Zevallos and Higinio Fanjul, another nephew of Rionda, were known affectionately as the "Havana boys." Manuel E. Rionda and Bernardo Braga Rionda were called the "New York boys." Legal counsel for the Cuban Trading Company during this period was Manuel Rafael Angulo. There is extensive correspondence with John F. Craig and William J. Craig of the W. J. McCahan Sugar Refining Company of Philadelphia, principal backers for the Francisco Sugar Company. There are also detailed reports from some of the Francisco managers, Gabriel Menocal, Francisco Coma, Pedro Alonso, John Durham, Leandro Rionda, and Gerard Smith. They discuss daily management of problems, including acts of sabotage, deliberate fires, attempts by the workers to unionize and the response by managers, and the roles of the Cuban and United States governments in maintaining order on the island.

The Stewart Sugar Company, located in Camagüey, was another major venture that involved Rionda. Subscribers included C. Czarnikow Ltd., D. Stewart and Company of Glasgow, and the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell. There are files for each of these, as well as William Nelson Cromwell, Alfred Jaretski, and Francis Pollak, all of Sullivan and Cromwell. (See also Series 7.) Sullivan and Cromwell was also influential in the formation of the Manati Sugar Company in 1912. Eduardo Ulzurrun became the administrator of the Central Manati and filed detailed reports on the operations of the estate. His files include lists of colonos, petitions by the colonos and administration responses, his requests for United States forces to protect the property during rebellions, and even such details as menus for the workers. In addition to Tuinucu, Francisco, Stewart, and Manati, the series also contains smaller files on the following Cuban sugar factories: the Central Jobo and Central Julio (See files of Pedro Laborde), the Central Perservancia, and the Rosario Sugar Company. There are also files on Puerto Rican sugar companies including the Plazuela Sugar Company (see Eduardo Giorgetti) and the Loiza Sugar Company (see William S. Marr).

There are a wide variety of other correspondents--individual and corporate--represented in this series. These include heads of railroad companies and steamship lines, such as the Cuba Railroad Company and the Munson Steamship Line, American sugar refineries, machinery companies (see especially Honolulu Iron Works Company and the Krajewski-Pesant Corporation), banking interests such as J. and W. Seligman and Company (see files of Albert and Frederick Strauss), and several import-export agents. Another prominent business associate of Manuel Rionda was Walter E. Ogilvie. There are also files on the British stockholders in Czarnikow-Rionda. These include Charles Lagemann, Jules Ganzoni, Theodore Westrick, and George MacDougall.

Series 2 is the major letterbook series in Record Group 2 and contains copies of Manuel Rionda's outgoing correspondence written from his New York office. Each volume has a name index with the page number of each entry. Confidential letters written by Rionda were kept in separate books (Series 4), as were letters written during his trips to Cuba during the sugar harvest (Series 3).

Correspondence is in both Spanish and English and is mostly typewritten. Of the original ninety-five volumes three are missing--volumes 1, 2, and 86.