Feature Articles

A Review by Tiffany Lyon

Recently YBP hosted an author luncheon with Muriel McAvoy-Weissman, professor emerita, Fitchburg State College, Massachusetts, and author of the book, Sugar Baron.

Sugar Baron was a labor of love for McAvoy-Weissman, who was 84 when Sugar Baron was ultimately published.

During the ten years she gathered research to write the book, McAvoy-Weissman worked in the Braga Brothers archival collection at the University of Florida gathering background on the Rionda and Braga families, the international sugar trade, and the Rionda's rise and fall. After the research was gathered, McAvoy-Weissman spent another 5 years writing the book.

McAvoy-Weissman first became interested in the Sugar market during her Graduate work at Boston University, writing her doctoral dissertation on the Sugar industry before the Civil War, focusing on the Boston sugar market. McAvoy-Weissman chose the sugar industry as her dissertation topic because she wanted to research a commodity dealt with in the international market. All the politics, trade issues, intrigue and cultural issues that factor into the Sugar market made for interesting research and great writing. This research sparked a career-long interest in the sugar industry, but it was the introduction to the Braga Collection which prompted her to again write about the Sugar trade and pen the work Sugar Baron.

Why did McAvoy-Weissman decide to write a book on the history of the sugar industry, choosing the Rionda family as her focus? Initially, due to an article she read which described the Braga Brothers archival collection at the University of Florida. McAvoy-Weissman thought the collection sounded like a fascinating resource to study the history of the Cuban-U.S. sugar market, and decided to go to Florida and "make sense" of the collection. But only once she was granted access to the collection, did McAvoy-Weissman realize what a national treasure the collection represented. In exploring the rich cache of documents and letters, and in "making sense" of the collection, McAvoy-Weissman was compelled to share what she had found and began her research in earnest to write about this intriguing family and the industry they dominated.

About the collection:
The Braga Brothers Collection holds the most complete archival records of the pre-Castro Cuban sugar industry. The collection includes the financial records of the Rionda sugar companies, detailing the Cuban-U.S. trade relationship and the social and political issues which were borne of this trade. The collection details the Rionda's growth from the Cuban sugar fields to Wall Street offices, the rise of the industry, and the ultimate fall of the Rionda Sugar enterprise. Included in the collection are many letters written by the Rionda Sugar Company, their partners, business associates and also a treasure of personal, family letters. The rich collection details a family's struggles and successes, one country's social climate and adapting to another country's culture. The collection is a also a excellent resource to study the history of the developing U.S. sugar market, the development of trade subsidies, and the refinement of the international market.