Life — December 9, 1920 — page 29: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes the relationship between Cuban sugar production and alcohol manufacturing. A relaxed sugar planter sleeps beneath a fantastical "Bacardi tree"—a fictional hybrid grafted with sugar cane and lime. The joke plays on Bacardi rum's Cuban origins and its key ingredients: sugar cane and citrus. The siesta-taking planter represents leisure and wealth derived from Cuba's sugar industry. The impossible hybrid tree is absurdist humor suggesting how intimately connected these products are—that you could literally grow rum ingredients on a single tree. A glass sits nearby, completing the satirical image of colonial ease built on agricultural wealth. The cartoon likely appeared during a period when American interest in Cuba's resources was high, mocking both the planter class and American fascination with Cuban rum and sugar commodities.