Milton Hershey's Cuba
a film by Ric Morris
About
In 1916, American chocolatier Milton S. Hershey went to Cuba to grow sugarcane. While he was there, he built a massive empire on the tropical island, including a town for 2,000 employees and their families, 251 miles of electric railroad, and the largest sugar refinery ever built in Cuba. In its first year of production, the Hershey refinery produced enough sugar to make 1.6 million Hershey's chocolate bars.
Milton S. Hershey was a philanthropist, and it was in Cuba that his belief in a kinder, gentler society was brought into sharpest focus. From the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression and beyond, Hershey not only provided steady work to thousands of Cubans, he also offered them a better life. Archival film, still photographs, and never-before-seen interviews make this a journey through time and space you won't soon forget.
USA / 2013 / 40 minutes / English and Spanish with English subtitles
Accolades
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Filmmaker
Ric Morris is an independent filmmaker and fulltime professor. You can explore his other documentary projects on his YouTube channel.
Story behind the film
For most people, the story begins with a drive through Central Hershey, Cuba, on a comfortable, air-conditioned tourbus. That's how it began for me in 2000, on my first trip to Cuba. "How peculiar," I thought. "A whole town in Cuba named after an American millionaire." I took a few pictures and stretched my legs a bit, got back on the bus, and on we went to our next destination.
Only over the course of several more trips to Cuba–12 in all–did I realize just how peculiar that Cuban town really was, and how unique it remains today. The United States and Cuba have an intertwined history going back centuries, and that history is made up mostly of military, economic, and political hegemony and ice-cold mutual suspicion. The more I investigated the story of "Central Hershey," the more I realized what a bright moment it was in the otherwise stormy history, and that the story urgently needed to be told.
Having secured all the necessary paperwork and permissions, I traveled to Cuba in May 2013 to film. I am grateful to have a network of professional friends in Cuba (many have asked not to have their names mentioned) who greased a few bureaucratic gears so I could spend a whole day in Central Hershey filming more or less freely. Some of the footage you will see in Milton Hershey's Cuba, such as the old company lockbox and the tattered blueprints in the archives, depicts things that had never been filmed (by anyone) prior to my visit.
Central Hershey may no longer be secret, but it is a place defined, in many ways, by secrecy, still deciding how to share its legacy with the world. Just below its surface lies a tremendous story to tell, of which Milton Hershey's Cuba is just the beginning.